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Cloud · head to head

Cerebrium vs Hookdeck

Cerebrium logo

Cerebrium

Cloud

Serverless GPU infrastructure for real-time AI inference and applications

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Full reviewWebsite
Hookdeck logo

Hookdeck

Developer Tools

Event gateway that receives, queues, retries and replays inbound webhooks

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Cerebrium free Hobby tier limited to 3 apps and 5 GPU concurrency; Hookdeck pricing meters delivered events, so fan-out multiplies the bill: one inbound event routed to four services counts as four deliveries.
  • They diverge on capability: Cerebrium covers Ultra-fast cold starts, Hookdeck covers Ingest and persist.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Cerebrium and Hookdeck actually diverge.

Attributes where Cerebrium and Hookdeck differ
AttributeCerebriumHookdeck
Pricing modelFreemium with monthly plans and per-second compute chargesPer month by delivered event count
PlatformsCloud, DockerWeb, Linux, macOS, Windows
CategoryCloudDeveloper Tools

Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Cerebrium

  • Ultra-fast cold starts
  • Elastic scaling
  • Bring your own code
  • Multi-region failover
  • WebSocket and streaming
  • Asynchronous jobs
  • CI/CD with gradual rollouts
  • OpenTelemetry integration

Only in Hookdeck

  • Ingest and persist
  • Automatic retries
  • Filters and fan-out
  • Transformations
  • Local development CLI
  • Rate limiting

What people use each for

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

Cerebrium

  • Deploying voice agents and conversational AI applicationsnot Hookdeck
  • Video and image model serving with low latencynot Hookdeck
  • LLM inference and completion endpointsnot Hookdeck
  • Real-time embeddings and vector database operationsnot Hookdeck
  • Distributed model training with hyperparameter sweepsnot Hookdeck

Hookdeck

  • A payments integration where losing a Stripe event during a deploy causes an order to go unfulfillednot Cerebrium
  • Fanning one provider webhook out to several internal services without each subscribing separatelynot Cerebrium
  • Debugging a partner integration by replaying the exact failing payload after shipping a fixnot Cerebrium
  • Receiving production-shaped webhooks on a developer laptop without running a public tunnelnot Cerebrium

Where each one falls short

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

Cerebrium

  • Free Hobby tier limited to 3 apps and 5 GPU concurrency
  • Standard plan at $100/month required for production deployments
  • Per-second compute pricing requires continuous cost monitoring
  • Storage costs add up for large model files

Hookdeck

  • Pricing meters delivered events, so fan-out multiplies the bill: one inbound event routed to four services counts as four deliveries.
  • Free-tier retention is three days, which is shorter than the time it typically takes to notice a failing integration, so the payloads needed for a replay are often already gone.
  • It becomes a single point of failure in front of every third-party integration, and an outage there means every provider webhook queues or fails at once.
  • The transformation layer runs JavaScript in a constrained environment, so anything that needs a database lookup or an external call has to happen downstream instead.
  • For a team already running Kafka or SQS the value is mostly the console and the replay UI, which is a hard cost to justify against infrastructure they already operate.

Pricing, plan by plan

Cerebrium

Free
  • HobbyFree
    • 3 user seats
    • Up to 3 deployed apps
    • 5 GPU concurrency
  • Standard$100/month
    • Unlimited seats and apps
    • 30 GPU concurrency
    • Custom domains
  • Enterprise$undefined/custom
    • Unlimited resources
    • Volume discounts
    • Dedicated support
  • GPU Compute$undefined/per-second
    • T4: $0.000164/s
    • H100: $0.00167/s

Hookdeck

Free
  • DeveloperFree
    • Up to ten thousand events per month
    • Three-day retention
    • One user
  • Team$39/month
    • Ten thousand events included
    • Unlimited users
    • Pay as you go metering above the included events
  • Growth$499/month
    • Ten thousand events included plus metered usage
    • Thirty-day retention
    • Uptime and latency SLAs
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Negotiated event volume
    • Custom retention
    • Dedicated support

Which should you pick?

Choose Cerebrium if

  • You need ultra-fast cold starts.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Cloud, Docker.
  • You also want elastic scaling.
Cerebrium review

Choose Hookdeck if

  • You need ingest and persist.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows.
  • You also want automatic retries.
Hookdeck review

Questions people ask

Is Cerebrium or Hookdeck better?
Neither clearly leads. Cerebrium starts at Free and Hookdeck at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Cerebrium or Hookdeck?
Cerebrium starts at Free and Hookdeck at Free.
Does Cerebrium or Hookdeck run on more platforms?
Cerebrium runs on Cloud, Docker. Hookdeck runs on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows.
Can I use Cerebrium for free?
Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Cerebrium best used for?
Cerebrium is most often used for deploying voice agents and conversational ai applications, video and image model serving with low latency, llm inference and completion endpoints, real-time embeddings and vector database operations. Of those, deploying voice agents and conversational ai applications and video and image model serving with low latency are not what Hookdeck is typically brought in for.
What can Cerebrium do that Hookdeck cannot?
Cerebrium covers Ultra-fast cold starts, Elastic scaling, Bring your own code, Multi-region failover. Hookdeck covers Ingest and persist, Automatic retries, Filters and fan-out, Transformations.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Cerebrium: Is Cerebrium only for inference or can it train models?

Cerebrium supports both inference serving and model training with hyperparameter sweeps. It enables deployment of voice agents, LLMs, video models, and other AI applications.

Source
Hookdeck: Is there a free plan?

Yes, ten thousand events a month with three-day retention and one user.

Cerebrium: How do the cold starts compare to other platforms?

Cerebrium achieves 2-4 second cold starts through memory and GPU snapshotting, significantly faster than traditional 30+ second cold boots. This is competitive with platforms like Beam Cloud.

Source
Hookdeck: How is usage counted?

By delivered events, so a single inbound webhook fanned out to three destinations counts as three.

Cerebrium: What compliance certifications does Cerebrium have?

Cerebrium maintains SOC 2 Type II compliance, HIPAA certification, GDPR compliance, and ISO certification. It provides gVisor container isolation and configurable data residency for regulated workloads.

Source
Hookdeck: Can I replay a failed webhook?

Yes, individually or in bulk from the console, with the original payload.

Hookdeck: Does it work for outbound webhooks too?

Yes, the same queueing, retry and observability applies to webhooks you send.

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