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Baseten vs Factory

Baseten logo

Baseten

Software Development

Inference is everything

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Factory logo

Factory

Software Development

The autonomy stack for enterprise teams

From
$20/month
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Baseten has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: Baseten pro and Enterprise pricing not published; requires contacting sales; Factory business and Enterprise plans require direct sales contact for pricing
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 29 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Baseten and Factory actually diverge.

Attributes where Baseten and Factory differ
AttributeBasetenFactory
Starting priceFree$20/month
Pricing modelusage-basedsubscription
Free tierYesNo

Identical on both: platforms (Web), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Software Development).

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Baseten

  • Custom model deploymentnot Factory
  • Fine-tuned LLM hostingnot Factory
  • Inference API scalingnot Factory

Factory

  • AI agent development and deploymentnot Baseten
  • Multi-platform automationnot Baseten
  • Background task executionnot Baseten
  • Agent orchestrationnot Baseten

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Baseten

  • Pro and Enterprise pricing not published; requires contacting sales
  • Pricing varies significantly by compute type and model

Factory

  • Business and Enterprise plans require direct sales contact for pricing
  • Individual plans (Pro, Plus, Max) have limited feature details

Pricing, plan by plan

Baseten

Free
  • BasicFree
    • Pay-as-you-go deployments
    • Dedicated model APIs
    • SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA compliance
  • Pro$null/month
    • Priority GPU access
    • Unlimited autoscaling
    • Volume discounts available
  • Enterprise$null/month
    • Self-hosted options
    • Custom SLAs
    • Data residency control

Factory

$20/month
  • Pro$20/month
    • Agent-native multi-platform experience
    • Desktop, CLI, and SDK access
    • Cloud and local background agents
  • Plus$100/month
    • Everything in Pro
    • Approximately 5x usage limits
    • Droid Computers for remote agents
  • Max$200/month
    • Everything in Plus
    • Approximately 10x usage limits
    • Early access to new features
  • Business$null/mo

Which should you pick?

Choose Baseten if

  • You want to start without paying.
Baseten review

Choose Factory if

Nothing in the data separates Factory from Baseten on the points above - pick on price and on how each one feels to use.

Factory review

Questions people ask

Is Baseten or Factory better?
Neither clearly leads. Baseten starts at Free and Factory at $20/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Baseten or Factory?
Baseten has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Baseten and $20/month for Factory.
Does Baseten or Factory run on more platforms?
Both run on Web, so platform support will not decide this one for you.
Can I use Baseten for free?
Yes. Baseten has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Factory starts at $20/month.
What is Baseten best used for?
Baseten is most often used for custom model deployment, fine-tuned llm hosting, inference api scaling. Of those, custom model deployment and fine-tuned llm hosting are not what Factory is typically brought in for.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Baseten: Does Baseten have a free tier?

Yes, Baseten's Basic plan is free with a pay-as-you-go model for dedicated deployments and model APIs.

Source
Factory: What is Factory.ai's pricing?

Factory.ai offers individual plans starting at USD$20 per month for Pro, USD$100 per month for Plus, and USD$200 per month for Max. Team plans including Business and Enterprise tiers are available at custom pricing based on the number of seats required.

Source
Baseten: How are GPU instances priced on Baseten?

GPU instances are priced per minute: T4 at $0.01052/min, H100 at $0.10833/min, and B200 at $0.16633/min. CPU instances range from $0.00058 to $0.01382 per minute.

Source
Factory: What are the usage limits for each plan?

The Pro plan is the baseline tier. Plus provides approximately 5 times the usage limits of Pro, while Max provides approximately 10 times the usage limits of Pro. Exact usage limits are not specified on the pricing page.

Source
Baseten: What are Model API costs on Baseten?

Model API pricing varies by model: DeepSeek V4 Flash costs $0.13 per million input tokens and $0.028 per million output tokens; GLM-5.3-Flash costs $0.15 and $0.03 respectively.

Source
Factory: What AI models are included with Factory.ai?

All Factory.ai plans include access to GPT-5, Claude Opus and Sonnet, Google Gemini, and open-weight models. Business and Enterprise plans also include dedicated compute with partitioned inference and options for on-premise deployment.

Source
Baseten: Does Baseten charge for idle compute time?

No, Baseten does not charge for idle time; billing only covers active compute usage on deployments.

Source
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