Particle.AI vs Boundless

Particle.AI and Boundless both serve Flash-class open models on Vercel AI Gateway. Boundless adds larger and closed models plus tuned reserved capacity.

By The Subconscious Team · Updated October 29, 2026

Particle.AI vs Boundless: key differences

On Vercel AI Gateway, Particle.AI lists DeepSeek V4.1 Flash at $0.25 in and $1 out per million tokens at about 193 tokens per second, and GLM 5.3 Flash at $0.10 in and $0.40 out, with $0.03 cache reads and 1M context. Boundless charges $0.20 in, $0.01 cached and $1.00 out for DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, which Vercel measures at 121 tokens per second, and $0.24 in and $0.96 out for a 1017 version that measures 342. Its GLM-5.3 Flash costs $0.12 in and $0.40 out at 276 tokens per second. Boundless also serves larger models up to Kimi K3, resells GPT and Claude, and sells reserved capacity that its engineers tune and run.

Pick Particle.AI for the lowest GLM 5.3 Flash input price, or for new Flash-class models soon after release. Pick Boundless for cheaper cached input, larger models like Kimi K3, or a reserved deployment with latency targets in the contract.

What Particle.AI and Boundless do

Particle.AI

Particle AI is an early San Francisco infrastructure startup with a mission to make intelligence as cheap and abundant as electricity. The team works on post-training, inference optimization and distributed systems, all aimed at pushing down cost per unit of intelligence. It is still hiring its founding team and works fully in person. Mixpanel founder Suhail Doshi started it, with backing from Y Combinator, 8VC, Caffeinated Capital and angels including Patrick Collison, Adam D'Angelo and Aaron Levie.

Example models: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, GLM 5.3 Flash

Full Particle.AI profile

Boundless

Boundless launched in September 2026 as an inference partner for AI-native startups. It sells two things. The Model API serves pre-tuned models on shared capacity, billed per token from prepaid credits with a budget per API key. Tailored inference reserves capacity for one customer, and Boundless engineers pick the model on the customer’s own evals, tune precision, batching, caching, speculative decoding and parallelism, then run the deployment against uptime, throughput and latency targets written into the contract. A free two-week evaluation tests those targets on real traffic against the customer’s current provider first.

Example models: GLM-5.3, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Kimi K3

Full Boundless profile

Should you choose Particle.AI or Boundless?

Particle.AI

Choose Particle.AI for

GLM 5.3 Flash at $0.10 in
New Flash models soon after release
Cheap routing inside Vercel AI Gateway

Boundless

Choose Boundless for

$0.01 cached input on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
342 tok/s on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017
Larger and closed models on one API

Particle.AI vs Boundless at a glance

Attribute	Particle.AI	Boundless
Model access	Open weights	Open weights, plus closed GPT and Claude
Flagship models	DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, GLM 5.3 Flash	GLM-5.3, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Kimi K3
Speed	~193 tok/s on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash	342 tok/s on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (Vercel)
Price	$0.10 in, $0.40 out (GLM 5.3 Flash)	$0.04–$2.30 in, $0.21–$11.40 out per 1M (open)
Customization	Unknown	Serving-stack tuning, no fine-tuning
Deployment	Via Vercel AI Gateway	Serverless API, reserved tailored capacity
Long context	1M	1M context on most models

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between Particle.AI and Boundless?

Particle.AI and Boundless both serve Flash-class open models on Vercel AI Gateway. Boundless adds larger and closed models plus tuned reserved capacity.

When should I choose Particle.AI over Boundless?

GLM 5.3 Flash at $0.10 in; New Flash models soon after release; Cheap routing inside Vercel AI Gateway.

When should I choose Boundless over Particle.AI?

$0.01 cached input on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash; 342 tok/s on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017; Larger and closed models on one API.

Is Particle.AI or Boundless cheaper?

Particle.AI: $0.10 in, $0.40 out (GLM 5.3 Flash). Boundless: $0.04–$2.30 in, $0.21–$11.40 out per 1M (open). The cheaper choice depends on the model and workload.

Which has more context, Particle.AI or Boundless?

Particle.AI: 1M. Boundless: 1M context on most models.

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.

Subconscious vs Particle.AI Subconscious vs Boundless