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Parasail vs Dolphin
Both run on hardware they do not own. Parasail pools GPUs from hardware providers behind SLAs; Dolphin pools idle consumer GPUs behind a crypto token.
By The Subconscious Team · Updated
Parasail vs Dolphin: key differences
Parasail aggregates GPUs from many hardware providers and serves any Hugging Face model through serverless, elastic, dedicated and batch endpoints, under standard ZDR and SLA agreements. Dolphin pays gamers and other GPU owners in $POD tokens to serve while their cards sit idle, and validators check logprobs so nodes cannot swap in a smaller model. Its API launched in October 2026 with one model, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, at $0.01 in and $0.07 out, with no published speed, context or SLA.
Parasail is the more mature option for production and batch work on open models of your choice. Dolphin is cheaper on its one model and hosts uncensored models, but latency and uptime are less predictable, and wallet-and-Telegram signup will not clear most procurement teams.
What Parasail and Dolphin do
Parasail
Parasail calls itself the inference cloud for AI-native startups. It aggregates GPUs across about 40 data centers in 15 countries, runs some clusters of its own, and since July 2026 has deployed d-Matrix Corsair accelerators alongside NVIDIA Hopper and Blackwell, all sold through one OpenAI-compatible API. It raised a $32M Series A in April 2026, led by Touring Capital and Kindred Ventures. Customers choose serverless per-token endpoints across about 40 curated models, Elastic Endpoints that scale with traffic and bill tokens at 1.25x serverless rates on selected models, dedicated deployments with negotiated latency SLAs, or batch. Its commit-to-spend model lets one commitment draw down across any model or hardware.
Example models: Kimi K3, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, GLM-5.3, MiniMax M3
Full Parasail profile
Dolphin
Dolphin began in 2023 as Eric Hartford's series of open-source, uncensored fine-tunes, trained to drop the refusals and baked-in guidelines of their base models so that the developer sets the rules through the system prompt. Current releases include Dolphin Llama 3.1 8B and Dolphin Mistral 24B Venice Edition, built with Venice, and the project publishes nearly 100 models on Hugging Face. It also runs a chat app, a Telegram bot and a synthetic data service that generates answers to commonly refused prompts.
Example models: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Dolphin Mistral 24B
Full Dolphin profileShould you choose Parasail or Dolphin?
Parasail vs Dolphin at a glance
| Attribute | Parasail |  Dolphin |
|---|---|---|
| Model access | Any Hugging Face model | Open weights, uncensored fine-tunes |
| Flagship models | Kimi K3, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, GLM-5.3, MiniMax M3 | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Dolphin Mistral 24B |
| Speed | 600ms p99 real-time budget | Unknown |
| Price | Per-parameter rates; batch 50% off | $0.01 in, $0.07 out (DeepSeek V4.1 Flash) |
| Customization | Private Hugging Face repos | Own uncensored fine-tunes |
| Deployment | Serverless, elastic, dedicated, batch | Decentralized serverless API |
| Long context | Varies by model | Unknown |
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Parasail and Dolphin?
Both run on hardware they do not own. Parasail pools GPUs from hardware providers behind SLAs; Dolphin pools idle consumer GPUs behind a crypto token.
When should I choose Parasail over Dolphin?
Any Hugging Face model, private repos included; Production endpoints under ZDR and SLA; Large batch and eval jobs.
When should I choose Dolphin over Parasail?
Very cheap DeepSeek V4.1 Flash calls; Models without vendor-imposed refusals; Latency-tolerant background jobs.
Is Parasail or Dolphin cheaper?
Parasail: Per-parameter rates; batch 50% off. Dolphin: $0.01 in, $0.07 out (DeepSeek V4.1 Flash). The cheaper choice depends on the model and workload.
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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.