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Nebius vs Novita AI
Two open-model clouds that pair per-token APIs with GPUs. Nebius sells EU residency and SLAs; Novita sells a wider, cheaper multimodal catalog.
By The Subconscious Team · Updated
Nebius vs Novita AI: key differences
Nebius and Novita AI have a similar shape: a serverless open-model API next to GPU rental on one account. The difference is who each is built for. Nebius is an Amsterdam-headquartered cloud backed by capacity deals with Microsoft and Meta, with EU or US placement, a 99.9% SLA on dedicated endpoints and raw GPUs up to GB300 NVL72 racks. Novita is a lean San Francisco cloud that competes on price and breadth: 200+ models across LLMs, image, video, speech, voice cloning and embeddings, LLM prices from $0.02 per million tokens, and batch at 50% off. Nebius lists its own catalog as smaller than Novita's, and Mistral has left its public list.
Compliance is where the choice usually lands. Novita has no public SOC 2, HIPAA or VPC peering, looser serverless SLAs and Discord-based support, which rules it out for many enterprise buyers. Nebius targets exactly those buyers, especially European ones that need data kept in-region. For an indie product or prototype that wants the cheapest tokens, day-zero open models and image generation on the same key, Novita is the better value. Both serve customer fine-tunes: Nebius at base token pricing on uploaded checkpoints, Novita with hot-swappable LoRA adapters on dedicated endpoints.
What Nebius and Novita AI do
Nebius
Nebius is an Amsterdam-headquartered AI cloud and the strongest European alternative to the US hyperscalers. It sells raw NVIDIA GPU compute, from H100s at $2.15 an hour preemptible up to GB300 NVL72 racks, and it has begun adding Vera Rubin. Hyperscale buyers back it: a Microsoft capacity deal worth about $17.4B in September 2025, then a Meta agreement worth up to about $27B in March 2026.
Example models: DeepSeek V3, GPT-OSS
Full Nebius profileNovita AI
Novita AI is a San Francisco inference cloud founded in late 2023 by Frank Lewis and Junyu Huang, and it competes on price and breadth. Its serverless API covers 200+ open models across LLMs, image, video, speech, voice cloning and embeddings, with LLM prices starting at $0.02 per million tokens. The API speaks both OpenAI and Anthropic formats. It became an official Hugging Face Inference Partner in April 2026 and was the day-zero launch partner for Google's Gemma 4.
Example models: DeepSeek V4 Pro, Gemma 4
Full Novita AI profileShould you choose Nebius or Novita AI?
Nebius
Choose Nebius for
- European enterprises that need EU data residency
- Dedicated endpoints with a 99.9% SLA and autoscaling past 100M tokens a minute
- Scaling from managed inference into large GPU clusters
Novita AI
Choose Novita AI for
- Cost-first LLM and image generation for indie products
- Day-zero access to new open models across many modalities
- LoRA-heavy workloads using hot-swappable adapters
Nebius vs Novita AI at a glance
| Attribute | Nebius | Novita AI |
|---|---|---|
| Model access | Open weights, 60+ models | Open weights |
| Flagship models | DeepSeek, Qwen, GLM, Kimi, GPT-OSS | DeepSeek V4 Pro, Gemma 4 |
| Speed | Among top hosts on throughput | ~36 tok/s on DeepSeek V4 Pro |
| Price | From $0.06 per 1M input | From $0.02 per 1M; batch 50% off |
| Customization | Serve uploaded fine-tunes | Hot-swappable LoRA adapters |
| Deployment | Token Factory, dedicated, raw GPUs | Serverless, GPU cloud, dedicated |
| Long context | Varies by model | Full 1M on DeepSeek V4 Pro |
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Nebius and Novita AI?
Two open-model clouds that pair per-token APIs with GPUs. Nebius sells EU residency and SLAs; Novita sells a wider, cheaper multimodal catalog.
When should I choose Nebius over Novita AI?
European enterprises that need EU data residency; Dedicated endpoints with a 99.9% SLA and autoscaling past 100M tokens a minute; Scaling from managed inference into large GPU clusters.
When should I choose Novita AI over Nebius?
Cost-first LLM and image generation for indie products; Day-zero access to new open models across many modalities; LoRA-heavy workloads using hot-swappable adapters.
Is Nebius or Novita AI cheaper?
Nebius: From $0.06 per 1M input. Novita AI: From $0.02 per 1M; batch 50% off. The cheaper choice depends on the model and workload.
Which has more context, Nebius or Novita AI?
Nebius: Varies by model. Novita AI: Full 1M on DeepSeek V4 Pro.
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If your agents run past 200K tokens, compare both against Subconscious. Our inference stack treats a long-horizon trace as the primary workload, so speed, cost, and accuracy hold up deep into the trace.