# Relace vs Dolphin

> Relace builds fast tool models for coding agents. Dolphin serves uncensored open models on a decentralized network of consumer GPUs.

Canonical: https://www.subconscious.dev/compare/relace-vs-dolphin · By The Subconscious Team · Updated October 11, 2026

## How they compare

Relace sells apply, agentic search and context compaction models for coding agents, through a hosted API or self-hosted deployment. Dolphin launched its API in October 2026 with one model, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, at $0.01 in and $0.07 out, served on idle consumer GPUs. It publishes no speed, context or SLA, and signup needs a crypto wallet and Telegram.

The two rarely compete. Relace fits teams building coding tools, including enterprises that keep code in-house. Dolphin fits cheap background calls and products that need models without vendor-imposed refusals.

## What each one does

### Relace

Relace trains small, fast models that act as tools for coding agents. Its best-known product is Instant Apply: a frontier model writes a lazy edit snippet, and relace-apply-3 merges it into the original file at about 10,000 tokens per second with 128K tokens of input and output. Relace says this runs over 3x faster and cheaper than having the big model rewrite the file. It exposes both a REST endpoint and an OpenAI-compatible one, and the model is also listed on OpenRouter.

### 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.

## Which is best, and when

### Choose Relace for

- Fast code-edit apply and repo search
- Self-hosted deployment for private code
- CI pipelines and PR review

### Choose Dolphin for

- Very cheap DeepSeek V4.1 Flash calls
- Models without vendor-imposed refusals
- Latency-tolerant background jobs

## At a glance

| Attribute | Relace | Dolphin |
|---|---|---|
| Model access | Specialist models | Open weights, uncensored fine-tunes |
| Flagship models | relace-apply-3, agentic search | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Dolphin Mistral 24B |
| Speed | ~10,000 tok/s apply | - |
| Price | 3x+ cheaper than full rewrites | $0.01 in, $0.07 out (DeepSeek V4.1 Flash) |
| Customization | - | Own uncensored fine-tunes |
| Deployment | Hosted API or self-hosted | Decentralized serverless API |
| Long context | 128K max | - |

## FAQ

### What is the difference between Relace and Dolphin?

Relace builds fast tool models for coding agents. Dolphin serves uncensored open models on a decentralized network of consumer GPUs.

### When should I choose Relace over Dolphin?

Fast code-edit apply and repo search; Self-hosted deployment for private code; CI pipelines and PR review.

### When should I choose Dolphin over Relace?

Very cheap DeepSeek V4.1 Flash calls; Models without vendor-imposed refusals; Latency-tolerant background jobs.

### Is Relace or Dolphin cheaper?

Relace: 3x+ cheaper than full rewrites. Dolphin: $0.01 in, $0.07 out (DeepSeek V4.1 Flash). The cheaper choice depends on the model and workload.

## Running long-horizon agents?

If your agents run past 200K tokens, compare both against Subconscious: [Subconscious vs Relace](https://www.subconscious.dev/compare/subconscious-vs-relace.md), [Subconscious vs Dolphin](https://www.subconscious.dev/compare/subconscious-vs-dolphin.md).

Full profiles: [Relace](https://www.subconscious.dev/providers/relace.md), [Dolphin](https://www.subconscious.dev/providers/dolphin.md).