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StreamLake vs Dolphin
StreamLake is Kuaishou's AI cloud for agentic coding. Dolphin is a decentralized network serving uncensored and open models on consumer GPUs.
By The Subconscious Team · Updated
StreamLake vs Dolphin: key differences
StreamLake sells the proprietary KAT-Coder-Pro V2.5 per token or through a KwaiKAT Coding Plan, plus bare-metal compute, backed by Kuaishou's video infrastructure. Pricing and data residency lead with China. Dolphin's API launched in October 2026 with one model, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, at $0.01 in and $0.07 out per million tokens, served on idle consumer GPUs across a decentralized network. It publishes no speed, context or SLA, and signup runs through a crypto wallet and Telegram.
StreamLake is the pick for coding agents with a large company behind the service. Dolphin is the pick for very cheap general calls or models without refusals, where its new API and variable latency are acceptable.
What StreamLake and Dolphin do
StreamLake
StreamLake is the AI cloud brand of Kuaishou, the Chinese short-video company behind the Kling video models. It sells model-as-a-service inference and bare-metal compute to internet businesses, drawing on the infrastructure Kuaishou built to serve video at massive scale. Its developer site offers APIs, SDKs and integration guides aimed at taking teams from testing to production, and it also hosts third-party open models like DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731.
Example models: KAT-Coder-Pro V2.5, KAT-Coder-Air V2.5
Full StreamLake 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 StreamLake or Dolphin?
StreamLake
Choose StreamLake for
- Agentic coding on a subscription
- A large company behind the service
- Bare-metal capacity in China
Dolphin
Choose Dolphin for
- Very low prices on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
- Cheap background or batch calls
- Models without vendor-imposed refusals
StreamLake vs Dolphin at a glance
| Attribute | StreamLake |  Dolphin |
|---|---|---|
| Model access | Proprietary coding models, plus hosted open models | Open weights, uncensored fine-tunes |
| Flagship models | KAT-Coder-Pro V2.5, KAT-Coder-Air V2.5 | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Dolphin Mistral 24B |
| Speed | Unknown | Unknown |
| Price | $0.74 in, $2.96 out (Pro V2.5), or KwaiKAT Coding Plan | $0.01 in, $0.07 out (DeepSeek V4.1 Flash) |
| Customization | Unknown | Own uncensored fine-tunes |
| Deployment | MaaS API, bare metal | Decentralized serverless API |
| Long context | 256K | Unknown |
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between StreamLake and Dolphin?
StreamLake is Kuaishou's AI cloud for agentic coding. Dolphin is a decentralized network serving uncensored and open models on consumer GPUs.
When should I choose StreamLake over Dolphin?
Agentic coding on a subscription; A large company behind the service; Bare-metal capacity in China.
When should I choose Dolphin over StreamLake?
Very low prices on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash; Cheap background or batch calls; Models without vendor-imposed refusals.
Is StreamLake or Dolphin cheaper?
StreamLake: $0.74 in, $2.96 out (Pro V2.5), or KwaiKAT Coding Plan. Dolphin: $0.01 in, $0.07 out (DeepSeek V4.1 Flash). The cheaper choice depends on the model and workload.
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