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Subconscious vs Nebius
Nebius is a strong European GPU cloud. Subconscious is purpose-built for long-horizon agents and bills a compressed fraction of every trace past 200K tokens.
By The Subconscious Team · Updated
Subconscious vs Nebius: key differences
Nebius competes on sovereignty and scale. It is headquartered in Amsterdam, offers EU or US placement on dedicated endpoints with a 99.9% SLA, and sells everything from H100s at $2.15 an hour preemptible to GB300 racks. Its Token Factory serves 60+ open models from $0.06 per million input tokens, and it serves uploaded fine-tunes at the same price. Subconscious is narrower and deeper. It serves two open models on its managed API but rebuilds the runtime around long traces, pruning the KV cache, billing processed tokens rather than tokens sent, and delivering 2x faster task completion and a 5M+ effective context window.
For a European enterprise that must keep AI workloads in-region, Nebius has the clearer story, and its path from managed tokens into raw GPU training suits teams that expect to grow into their own models. Artificial Analysis has measured it among the top hosts on raw throughput. Subconscious answers a different question: what a long coding or research agent costs after an hour of work. Per-token pricing, however low, applies to every token in a growing context, while Subconscious bills a compressed fraction. Its on-prem option also lets teams keep data under their own control.
What Subconscious and Nebius do
Subconscious
Subconscious is an MIT CSAIL spinout in Kendall Square that builds inference for long-horizon agents, the workloads where a single trace runs past 200K tokens and often into the millions. Its runtime drops in as a replacement for vLLM or SGLang. Instead of rereading an ever-growing context on every step, it prunes the KV cache and preserves suffix state, and Subconscious co-designs the runtime with post-trained model variants it calls Marathon. Against open models on standard inference, Subconscious delivers 2x faster task completion, delivers a 5M+ effective context window, cuts cost 50% and up to 80%, and scores neutral to 10% better on agentic benchmarks.
Example models: GLM 5.3, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
Full Subconscious profileNebius
Nebius is an Amsterdam-headquartered AI cloud and the strongest European alternative to the US hyperscalers. It sells raw NVIDIA GPU compute, from H100s at $2.15 an hour preemptible up to GB300 NVL72 racks, and it has begun adding Vera Rubin. Hyperscale buyers back it: a Microsoft capacity deal worth about $17.4B in September 2025, then a Meta agreement worth up to about $27B in March 2026.
Example models: DeepSeek V3, GPT-OSS
Full Nebius profileShould you choose Subconscious or Nebius?
Subconscious
Choose Subconscious for
- Hour-long agents where per-token cost on full context compounds
- On-prem deployment with no prompt logging
- Traces past 200K tokens on GLM 5.3 or DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
Nebius
Choose Nebius for
- European buyers needing EU data residency
- Growing from managed tokens into raw GPU training
- Serving uploaded fine-tunes at standard token prices
Subconscious vs Nebius at a glance
| Attribute | Subconscious | Nebius |
|---|---|---|
| Model access | Open weights | Open weights, 60+ models |
| Flagship models | GLM 5.3, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | DeepSeek, Qwen, GLM, Kimi, GPT-OSS |
| Speed | 2x faster task completion | Among top hosts on throughput |
| Price | 50–80% lower cost; billed on processed tokens | From $0.06 per 1M input |
| Customization | Marathon post-trained variants | Serve uploaded fine-tunes |
| Deployment | Managed API, dedicated, on-prem | Token Factory, dedicated, raw GPUs |
| Long context | 5M+ effective context | Varies by model |
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Subconscious and Nebius?
Nebius is a strong European GPU cloud. Subconscious is purpose-built for long-horizon agents and bills a compressed fraction of every trace past 200K tokens.
When should I choose Subconscious over Nebius?
Hour-long agents where per-token cost on full context compounds; On-prem deployment with no prompt logging; Traces past 200K tokens on GLM 5.3 or DeepSeek V4.1 Flash.
When should I choose Nebius over Subconscious?
European buyers needing EU data residency; Growing from managed tokens into raw GPU training; Serving uploaded fine-tunes at standard token prices.
Is Subconscious or Nebius cheaper?
Subconscious: 50–80% lower cost; billed on processed tokens. Nebius: From $0.06 per 1M input. The cheaper choice depends on the model and workload.
Which has more context, Subconscious or Nebius?
Subconscious: 5M+ effective context. Nebius: Varies by model.
Related comparisons
Run your longest agent traces on Subconscious
Point the OpenAI or Anthropic SDK, or the coding agent you already use, at Subconscious. Keep Nebius for the work it does best and send the long runs to us.