vs
Novita AI vs Luminal
Novita is a cheap cloud with 200+ open models and LoRA swapping. Luminal is a compiler startup selling throughput on models you bring.
By The Subconscious Team · Updated
Novita AI vs Luminal: key differences
Novita serves 200+ open models across text, image, video and speech from $0.02 per million tokens, with hot-swappable LoRA adapters and 50% off batch. It has looser SLAs and no public SOC 2. Luminal compiles a model you bring into native GPU kernels ahead of time, served on early-access endpoints or licensed on-prem.
Novita is the pick for low prices on popular models today. Luminal is the pick when one model needs more throughput than stock engines give, or must run on your own hardware; it reports 36K tokens per second on GPT-OSS 120B across 8 H100s. Neither is a strong compliance story yet.
What Novita AI and Luminal do
Novita 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 profileLuminal
Luminal builds an inference compiler. Where vLLM and SGLang interpret a model at runtime, Luminal compiles it ahead of time into native kernels for GPUs and ASICs. Models get lowered to a small graph of 15 primitive ops, and the compiler searches over fusion, tiling, memory and scheduling choices instead of relying on hand-written rules, which it says can find optimizations like Flash Attention on its own. The compiler is open source in Rust under Apache 2.0 or MIT, runs on CUDA and Metal with ROCm on the roadmap, and works as a torch.compile backend.
Example models: GPT-OSS 120B, Llama 3 8B
Full Luminal profileShould you choose Novita AI or Luminal?
Novita AI vs Luminal at a glance
| Attribute | Novita AI | Luminal |
|---|---|---|
| Model access | Open weights | Bring your own weights |
| Flagship models | DeepSeek V4 Pro, Gemma 4 | No public catalog |
| Speed | ~36 tok/s on DeepSeek V4 Pro | 36K tok/s on GPT-OSS 120B, 8xH100 (vendor) |
| Price | From $0.02 per 1M; batch 50% off | Pay per use; rates not published |
| Customization | Hot-swappable LoRA adapters | Compiles any PyTorch or HF model |
| Deployment | Serverless, GPU cloud, dedicated | Serverless (early access), on-prem license |
| Long context | Full 1M on DeepSeek V4 Pro | Unknown |
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Novita AI and Luminal?
Novita is a cheap cloud with 200+ open models and LoRA swapping. Luminal is a compiler startup selling throughput on models you bring.
When should I choose Novita AI over Luminal?
Low prices across a large catalog; Hot-swappable LoRA adapters; Batch at half price.
When should I choose Luminal over Novita AI?
Maximum throughput per GPU on a self-chosen model; On-prem deployments with custom kernel work and SLAs; Serving custom or fine-tuned architectures off any catalog.
Is Novita AI or Luminal cheaper?
Novita AI: From $0.02 per 1M; batch 50% off. Luminal: Pay per use; rates not published. The cheaper choice depends on the model and workload.
Related comparisons
Running long-horizon agents?
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.