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Relace vs Wafer
Wafer hosts big open models tuned for speed, sold per token for coding tools. Relace hosts small tool models for applying edits and searching code. They stack rather than compete.
By The Subconscious Team · Updated
Relace vs Wafer: key differences
Wafer speeds up general open models. Its agents tune the serving stack for each workload, and it reports a tuned Qwen 3.5 397B running 2.8x faster than stock SGLang, with GLM 5.1 and DeepSeek V4 Pro each 2x faster than a vLLM baseline, all self-reported. Wafer Serverless bills per token and works in Claude Code, Cline and OpenHands. Relace also hosts a few open models, overlapping with Wafer on GLM-5.3 and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, but it is better known for its tools. relace-apply-3 merges edits at about 10,000 tokens per second, and Relace adds agentic search and compaction at 50,000 tokens per second.
A coding agent can run a Wafer-hosted open model as its main brain and hand edits and retrieval to Relace, cutting work the big model would otherwise do. Wafer suits teams with a strict latency SLO who want a dedicated, continually retuned deployment on NVIDIA or AMD. Relace suits teams that want to self-host tool models next to their code. Both are young, specialized vendors. Wafer's catalog is small, and Relace's apply model stops at 128K tokens.
What Relace and Wafer do
Relace
Relace started out training small, fast models that act as tools for coding agents, and by October 2026 its homepage led with open-model inference instead. It says it served 30 trillion tokens in the 30 days to late October and ranks among the top providers on OpenRouter. The hosted catalog covers DeepSeek V4 Pro, V4 Flash and V4.1 Flash, Kimi K3, GLM 5.3, GLM 5.3 Flash and GLM 5.2 over OpenAI and Anthropic compatible APIs, billed per token with no subscription. Prices run from $0.07 in and $0.14 out per million tokens on DeepSeek V4 Flash to $2.00 in and $14.00 out on Kimi K3, and Relace says it reprices often.
Example models: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Kimi K3, GLM 5.3, relace-apply-3
Full Relace profileWafer
Wafer builds AI agents that act as GPU performance engineers, then sells inference on the stacks those agents tune. The company came out of Y Combinator's Summer 2025 batch as a "Cursor for CUDA" that turned slow PyTorch into custom kernels. Founders Emilio Andere and Steven Arellano are based in San Francisco. Wafer raised a $4M seed led by Fifty Years in April 2026 and a $40M Series A co-led by Marathon and Chemistry in September 2026 at a $220M post-money valuation, with AMD Ventures and Wing joining. Its agents profile a workload, generate candidate configs across batching, decoding, quantization, engines, kernels and hardware, measure each one and deploy the winner.
Example models: GLM-5.3, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
Full Wafer profileShould you choose Relace or Wafer?
Relace vs Wafer at a glance
| Attribute | Relace | Wafer |
|---|---|---|
| Model access | Open weights, plus specialist coding models | Open weights |
| Flagship models | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Kimi K3, GLM 5.3, relace-apply-3 | GLM-5.3, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash |
| Speed | ~10,000 tok/s apply | ~168 tok/s on GLM-5.3; 2–2.8x vs stock vLLM or SGLang (vendor) |
| Price | $0.07 in, $0.50 out (DeepSeek V4.1 Flash) | Per token, prepaid credits |
| Customization | Unknown | Agent-tuned dedicated deployments |
| Deployment | Hosted API, OpenRouter or self-hosted | Serverless, dedicated |
| Long context | 128K on apply; varies by open model | Up to 1M (GLM-5.3, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash) |
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Relace and Wafer?
Wafer hosts big open models tuned for speed, sold per token for coding tools. Relace hosts small tool models for applying edits and searching code. They stack rather than compete.
When should I choose Relace over Wafer?
Offloading file edits from the main model; Codebase search in seconds; Self-hosted utility models.
When should I choose Wafer over Relace?
Fast main models for coding agents; Dedicated endpoints tuned to a latency SLO; Serving on NVIDIA or AMD hardware.
Is Relace or Wafer cheaper?
Relace: $0.07 in, $0.50 out (DeepSeek V4.1 Flash). Wafer: Per token, prepaid credits. The cheaper choice depends on the model and workload.
Which has more context, Relace or Wafer?
Relace: 128K on apply; varies by open model. Wafer: Up to 1M (GLM-5.3, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash).
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.