The best AI model APIs and GPU hosting in 2026

The best AI model APIs and GPU hosting right now are Hugging Face, OpenRouter and Modal, out of 13 we have reviewed. Each is ranked by our rating, with its price, our verdict and who it suits.

By Andrew Miller · Updated Oct 26, 2026 · How we review

How we ranked: by our rating out of 5, from reviews built on each product's own pricing, documentation and policies plus independent benchmarks where they exist, each checked on the date shown in the review. We take no affiliate commission.

1
Hugging Face
Indispensable as a model hub, competitive but unremarkable as a host, and soon to be owned by the largest seller of AI chips.
Best for: Engineers and research teams who find, share, test or fine-tune open models, and organisations that need a private model registry.
Price: Free account (100GB private storage, no included inference credit); PRO $9/month ($2 compute credit); Team $20/user/month; Enterprise $50/user/month. Spaces GPUs from $0.40/hour; Inference Endpoints from $0.03/hour (CPU), H100 $4.50/hour.
Read our Hugging Face review
4.7/5
2
OpenRouter
OpenRouter is the sensible first stop if your app needs more than one model, but once you settle on a single model at steady high volume, its credit fee is worth cutting out.
Best for: Developers and small teams who want to test, compare or offer many AI models through a single integration.
Price: Pay provider list prices for models. Fee on credit purchases: 5.5% (Standard) or 8% (Business). Bring-your-own-key free for the first $25,000/month of usage, then 5%. Free models: 50 requests/day, or 1,000/day after a $10 purchase.
Read our OpenRouter review
4.6/5
3
Modal
Modal turns a Python function into a GPU service with less ceremony than any cloud we have read about, and charges a premium the moment you need guarantees.
Best for: Python developers and ML teams who want to serve custom models or run GPU jobs without managing servers.
Price: Starter $0 + compute ($30/month credit, 3 seats, 10 GPUs at once); Team $250/month + compute ($100 credit, unlimited seats, 50 GPUs); Enterprise custom. Per second: H100 about $3.95/hour, A100 80GB about $2.50/hour, B200 about $6.25/hour.
Read our Modal review
4.5/5
4
Together AI
Together runs open models at every stage on one bill, from a $15 API top-up to a reserved H100 cluster, and its dedicated hardware costs less than the specialist hosts charge.
Best for: Teams building on open models who want to move from API calls to fine-tuning and their own GPUs with one provider.
Price: Prepaid, $15 minimum first purchase, no free trial. Per 1M tokens, e.g. gpt-oss-120B $0.15 in / $0.60 out, Kimi K3 $3 / $15; batch up to 50% off. Dedicated endpoints: H100 $5.49/hour, B200 $8.99/hour. GPU clusters: H100 $3.99/hour on demand, $1.99 preemptible. Fine-tuning from $0.34 per 1M tokens.
Read our Together AI review
4.5/5
5
fal
If image or video generation sits at the centre of your product, fal is where the new models arrive first and the per-output prices are easiest to budget.
Best for: Product teams adding image or video generation to apps who want many models behind one API.
Price: Per output, e.g. Nano Banana about $0.04/image, Nano Banana Pro $0.15/image, Kling v3 Pro $0.14/second of video, FLUX.1 [schnell] $0.003/megapixel. GPUs: H100 $4.50/hour list (from $2.49), B200 $7.99/hour (from $5.49). Purchased credits last 365 days. Enterprise by quote.
Read our fal review
4.4/5
6
Fireworks AI
Fireworks is a safe production home for open models, keeping nothing by default and serving fine-tuned models at base prices, and its dedicated GPUs are the one expensive part.
Best for: Teams running open models in production who want fine-tuning and predictable per-token pricing.
Price: Prepaid credits. Per 1M tokens, e.g. GPT OSS 120B $0.15 in / $0.60 out, Kimi K3 $3 / $15. Batch 50% off. Dedicated H100/H200 $8/hour, B200 $13/hour. Fine-tuning from $0.50 per 1M training tokens.
Read our Fireworks AI review
4.4/5
7
Amazon Bedrock
If your company already runs on AWS, Bedrock makes Claude and the big open models just another AWS service; if it doesn't, you are signing up for a long pricing page and a quota system to learn.
Best for: Companies already on AWS that need Claude or open models with enterprise data controls and one bill.
Price: Per 1M tokens on demand, e.g. DeepSeek V3.2 $0.62 in / $1.85 out (US), Qwen3 Next 80B $0.15 / $1.20 (US). Batch and Flex 50% off; Priority +75%. Provisioned throughput per model unit per hour. Custom Model Import $0.05718 per model-unit minute (US East and West). Guardrails from $0.10 per 1,000 text units.
Read our Amazon Bedrock review
4.3/5
8
Runpod
Runpod is where cheap GPU hours live, provided you are happy to package your own containers and to check which cloud tier your compliance actually covers.
Best for: ML engineers who want cheap GPUs for training, fine-tuning or a self-managed inference endpoint and can work with Docker.
Price: Pods per hour: H100 SXM $3.99 Secure / $2.69 Community; A100 SXM $1.79 / $1.39; B200 $7.99 / $5.98. Serverless per second: H100 about $4.79/hour, A100 80GB $2.72/hour, 4090 $1.10/hour. Storage from $0.05/GB/month.
Read our Runpod review
4.3/5
9
Baseten
Baseten runs your models in production with the compliance paperwork already done, but its dedicated GPUs cost noticeably more than you could rent them for elsewhere.
Best for: Companies serving custom or fine-tuned models in production that need zero data retention, HIPAA and the option to run in their own cloud.
Price: Basic $0/month, pay as you go; Pro and Enterprise by quote. Model APIs per 1M tokens, e.g. GPT OSS 120B $0.10 in / $0.50 out, Kimi K3 $3 / $15. Dedicated GPUs per minute: T4 about $0.63/hour, A100 about $4.00/hour, H100 about $6.50/hour, B200 about $9.98/hour.
Read our Baseten review
4.2/5
10
Google Agent Platform (Vertex AI)
Gemini arrives here first and Claude shares the same invoice, but two launch prices double within ten weeks and Google's rename has split the documentation in two.
Best for: Teams on Google Cloud, or anyone standardising on Gemini, who want enterprise controls and Claude under one account.
Price: Per 1M tokens, e.g. Gemini 3.8 Flash $0.75 in / $3.75 out (to 31 Dec 2026, then $1.50 / $7.50), Gemini 4 Argon $2 / $10 (to 30 Nov 2026, then $4 / $20), Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview $2 / $12, Claude Sonnet 5.5 $2 / $10. Non-global endpoints cost 10% more; batch is half price. Provisioned throughput $2.74 to $7.14 per GSU-hour by term.
Read our Google Agent Platform (Vertex AI) review
4.2/5
11
Replicate
Replicate is where a developer goes to try a new image or video model this afternoon, and where the bill starts to hurt once one model runs all day.
Best for: Developers adding image, video or audio generation to an app without running their own GPUs.
Price: Pay per output (e.g. FLUX 1.1 Pro $0.04/image, FLUX Schnell $3 per 1,000 images) or per second of hardware: T4 $0.81/hour, L40S $3.51/hour, A100 80GB $5.04/hour, H100 $5.49/hour, 8x H100 $43.92/hour. No free tier listed; volume discounts for large spend.
Read our Replicate review
4.2/5
12
Cerebras
Cerebras sells speed by the token, and at more than twice Groq's input price for gpt-oss it only pays off when latency is the product.
Best for: Developers building latency-sensitive agents or coding tools that can work with gpt-oss or Qwen models.
Price: $5 one-time trial credit (30 days), then pay-as-you-go. gpt-oss-120b $0.35 in / $0.75 out per 1M tokens; Qwen 3.8 27B $0.99 / $1.49. Dedicated Inference by agreement. Cerebras Code subscriptions ($50 and $200/month) listed as sold out.
Read our Cerebras review
4.0/5
13
Groq
Groq still sells some of the fastest tokens around at bargain prices, but the company behind it has changed and its list of models has shrunk to fit.
Best for: Developers building voice, real-time or agent features where response speed matters more than model choice.
Price: Free plan with rate limits (30 requests/minute and 1,000/day for gpt-oss-120b). Pay-as-you-go Developer plan: gpt-oss-120b $0.15 in / $0.60 out per 1M tokens, gpt-oss-20b $0.075 / $0.30, qwen3.8-27b $0.80 / $4.00; Whisper large-v3-turbo $0.04/hour of audio. Llama and some newer models via sales.
Read our Groq review
4.0/5