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Crusoe vs RunInfra
RunInfra serves a tiny set of mid-size models and uses an agent to build your deployment. Crusoe runs larger open models on owned capacity with managed LoRA and SLAs.
By The Subconscious Team · Updated
Crusoe vs RunInfra: key differences
RunInfra has two products. Its Model APIs serve a small library, including Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B, Qwen 3.8 27B and Ornith 1.5 35B, behind one key for the OpenAI and Anthropic SDKs, with coding plans from $10 a month that plug into Claude Code, Codex, Cline and Aider. Its deployment agent takes a plain-English request, benchmarks models across GPUs from L4 to B200, searches AWQ, GPTQ and FP8 variants, applies its Forge kernels and ships an OpenAI-compatible endpoint that scales to zero with cold starts under two seconds. Crusoe's serverless list leans larger, with DeepSeek V4, GLM 5.3, Kimi K2.6 and Nemotron, from $0.05 in and $0.20 out per million.
Customization runs in different directions. RunInfra accepts custom uploads up to 50 GB in SafeTensors, GGUF or ONNX on paid plans, and chains models into pipelines such as Whisper to an LLM to a TTS voice. Crusoe offers managed LoRA fine-tuning, self-serve dedicated deployments per GPU-hour, tailored SLAs and raw clusters with Kubernetes or Slurm. Crusoe's cluster-wide KV cache targets agents that resend long context. RunInfra is a 2026 company with little independent benchmarking, and its hosted models sit well below frontier quality. It suits small teams without ML ops staff; Crusoe suits scale.
What Crusoe and RunInfra do
Crusoe
Crusoe started in 2018 turning wasted natural gas into power for computing and has since become a vertically integrated AI infrastructure company: it sources energy, builds data centers and rents GPUs through Crusoe Cloud. It designed and built the Abilene, Texas campus behind the OpenAI and Oracle Stargate project, planned at 1.2 GW, and in March 2026 announced an adjacent 900 MW campus for Microsoft. On September 17, 2026 it closed the first part of a $3.9B Series F at a $30.9B post-money valuation, and it reports over 6 GW of contracted capacity. Crusoe Cloud lists GB200 NVL72, B200 and AMD MI355X by quote, with H100 at $3.90 and H200 at $4.29 per GPU-hour on demand.
Example models: DeepSeek V4 Pro, GLM 5.3, Kimi K2.6
Full Crusoe profileRunInfra
RunInfra pitches open models built for agents, with two ways in. Its hosted Model APIs serve a small curated library, including Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B, Qwen 3.8 27B and Ornith 1.5 35B, behind one key that works with both the OpenAI and Anthropic SDKs. Cached context bills at a discount. Coding plans start at $10 a month with limits that reset every five hours and every week, and they plug into Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Cline, Aider and dozens of other agent CLIs.
Example models: Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B, Qwen 3.8 27B
Full RunInfra profileShould you choose Crusoe or RunInfra?
Crusoe vs RunInfra at a glance
| Attribute | Crusoe | RunInfra |
|---|---|---|
| Model access | Open weights | Open weights |
| Flagship models | DeepSeek V4, GLM 5.3, Kimi K2.6, Nemotron 3 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B, Qwen 3.8 27B |
| Speed | Up to 9.9x faster TTFT vs vLLM (vendor claim) | Cold starts under 2s |
| Price | $0.05–$1.74 in, $0.20–$4.40 out per 1M | Coding plans from $10 a month |
| Customization | Serverless LoRA fine-tuning | Uploads up to 50 GB; auto-quantization |
| Deployment | Serverless, self-serve and tailored dedicated, raw GPUs | Model APIs, agent-built endpoints |
| Long context | Varies by model; cluster-wide KV cache | Varies by model |
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Crusoe and RunInfra?
RunInfra serves a tiny set of mid-size models and uses an agent to build your deployment. Crusoe runs larger open models on owned capacity with managed LoRA and SLAs.
When should I choose Crusoe over RunInfra?
Large open models like DeepSeek V4 or Kimi K2.6; Enterprise deployments with SLAs; LoRA training next to serving.
When should I choose RunInfra over Crusoe?
Cheap coding plans for agent CLIs; Auto-benchmarked, scale-to-zero endpoints; Voice pipelines without ML ops staff.
Is Crusoe or RunInfra cheaper?
Crusoe: $0.05–$1.74 in, $0.20–$4.40 out per 1M. RunInfra: Coding plans from $10 a month. The cheaper choice depends on the model and workload.
Which has more context, Crusoe or RunInfra?
Crusoe: Varies by model; cluster-wide KV cache. RunInfra: Varies by model.
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