# Baseten vs Anthropic

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/baseten-vs-anthropic/

Every value below is read from Baseten's and Anthropic's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | Baseten | Anthropic |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Pricing model | No platform fee: per-token Model APIs for open models, and dedicated deployments billed per minute of compute with volume discounts. The Pro tier buys priority access to high-demand GPUs rather than a lower rate. | Per million tokens, priced separately for input and output and per model, with multipliers stacked on top: prompt caching, a 50% batch discount, a 1.1x uplift for US-only inference on Claude 4.6 and later, and a fast-mode premium. |
| Input price, top model | $1.40 per million input tokens for GLM-5.3, with cached input at $0.14 and output at $4.40. GLM-5.2 Fast, a speed variant, is $2.10. | $10 per million input tokens for Claude Fable 5.1, the most capable model. Claude Opus 5 is $5 and Claude Sonnet 5 is $2. |
| Output price, top model | $4.40 per million output tokens for GLM-5.3. | $50 per million output tokens for Claude Fable 5.1. Claude Opus 5 is $25 and Claude Sonnet 5 is $10. |
| Input price, cheapest model | $0.10 per million input tokens for GPT OSS 120B, with output at $0.50. GLM-5.3-Flash is $0.15 in and $0.50 out. | $1 per million input tokens for Claude Haiku 4.5, the cheapest current model, with output at $5. |
| Context window | 1,048K tokens on the DeepSeek V4 line and the GLM 5.2/5.3 family, the widest it serves; 262K on the Kimi K2 models, 200K on GLM 4.7 and 128K on GPT OSS 120B. Baseten's table publishes these in thousands, so the magnitude is 1,048,000 rather than the 1,048,576 a power-of-two reading would give — the vendor's own figure, not a conversion of it. | 1M tokens on Claude Fable 5.1, Claude Opus 5 and Claude Sonnet 5; 200K on Claude Haiku 4.5. Anthropic states the full 1M window is billed at standard per-token rates. |
| Max output tokens | 262K tokens on most models, and it is a separate ceiling from the context window rather than the remainder of it: DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 allows 384K output inside a 1,048K window, while GLM 4.7, Nemotron Ultra and GPT OSS 120B cap output at their full context. The Inkling models are the outlier at 32K. | 128K tokens on the top three models, 64K on Claude Haiku 4.5. The Batch API supports up to 300K output tokens on several models behind a beta header. |
| Prompt caching | Supported | Supported |

## Where they differ

### Pricing model

- Baseten: No platform fee: per-token Model APIs for open models, and dedicated deployments billed per minute of compute with volume discounts. The Pro tier buys priority access to high-demand GPUs rather than a lower rate. ([source](https://www.baseten.co/pricing/))
- Anthropic: Per million tokens, priced separately for input and output and per model, with multipliers stacked on top: prompt caching, a 50% batch discount, a 1.1x uplift for US-only inference on Claude 4.6 and later, and a fast-mode premium. ([source](https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/about-claude/pricing))

### Input price, top model

- Baseten: $1.40 per million input tokens for GLM-5.3, with cached input at $0.14 and output at $4.40. GLM-5.2 Fast, a speed variant, is $2.10. ([source](https://www.baseten.co/pricing/))
- Anthropic: $10 per million input tokens for Claude Fable 5.1, the most capable model. Claude Opus 5 is $5 and Claude Sonnet 5 is $2. ([source](https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/about-claude/pricing))

### Output price, top model

- Baseten: $4.40 per million output tokens for GLM-5.3. ([source](https://www.baseten.co/pricing/))
- Anthropic: $50 per million output tokens for Claude Fable 5.1. Claude Opus 5 is $25 and Claude Sonnet 5 is $10. ([source](https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/about-claude/pricing))

### Input price, cheapest model

- Baseten: $0.10 per million input tokens for GPT OSS 120B, with output at $0.50. GLM-5.3-Flash is $0.15 in and $0.50 out. ([source](https://www.baseten.co/pricing/))
- Anthropic: $1 per million input tokens for Claude Haiku 4.5, the cheapest current model, with output at $5. ([source](https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/about-claude/pricing))

### Context window

- Baseten: 1,048K tokens on the DeepSeek V4 line and the GLM 5.2/5.3 family, the widest it serves; 262K on the Kimi K2 models, 200K on GLM 4.7 and 128K on GPT OSS 120B. Baseten's table publishes these in thousands, so the magnitude is 1,048,000 rather than the 1,048,576 a power-of-two reading would give — the vendor's own figure, not a conversion of it. ([source](https://docs.baseten.co/inference/model-apis/overview))
- Anthropic: 1M tokens on Claude Fable 5.1, Claude Opus 5 and Claude Sonnet 5; 200K on Claude Haiku 4.5. Anthropic states the full 1M window is billed at standard per-token rates. ([source](https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/about-claude/models/overview))

### Max output tokens

- Baseten: 262K tokens on most models, and it is a separate ceiling from the context window rather than the remainder of it: DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 allows 384K output inside a 1,048K window, while GLM 4.7, Nemotron Ultra and GPT OSS 120B cap output at their full context. The Inkling models are the outlier at 32K. ([source](https://docs.baseten.co/inference/model-apis/overview))
- Anthropic: 128K tokens on the top three models, 64K on Claude Haiku 4.5. The Batch API supports up to 300K output tokens on several models behind a beta header. ([source](https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/about-claude/models/overview))

## Which should you choose?

Pick Baseten if Teams that want per-token APIs and dedicated GPUs from one vendor with no plan fee — minute-granularity billing means a model that runs for ten minutes costs ten minutes.

Pick Anthropic if Teams that want the full 1M-token window at the standard per-token rate rather than a long-context surcharge, and that can use caching and batch to cut a frontier-model bill roughly in half.

Consider something else: Baseten — Its dedicated H100 works out at $6.50 an hour, roughly three times DeepInfra's, so steady GPU workloads pay a premium for the platform around them.

Consider something else: Anthropic — Its cheapest model is $1 per million input tokens, several times what the budget tiers at Google, OpenAI and DeepSeek charge, so high-volume simple work is priced against you.

## Documented by only one

- Entry paid plan: Baseten: $0 per month on the Basic plan — pay as you go, with dedicated deployments, model APIs and training included rather than gated behind a fee.
- Batch discount: Anthropic: 50% off both input and output tokens through the Batch API, for asynchronous processing.
- Rate limits: Baseten: Two limits, requests and tokens per minute, set by account status rather than spend: an unverified Basic account gets 15 RPM and 100,000 TPM, a verified Basic or Pro account 120 RPM and 500,000 TPM, Enterprise custom. Cached input counts toward TPM at full weight even though it is billed cheaper.
- H100 SXM, per GPU-hour: Baseten: $6.50 per hour for a dedicated H100 80GB. Baseten publishes $0.10833 per MINUTE — the hourly figure is that times 60, ours rather than Baseten's, and the page offers an hourly toggle. A100 80GB is $0.06667 a minute and B200 $0.16633.
- Largest GPU offered: Baseten: 180GB per GPU on a B200, at $0.16633 per minute — $9.98 an hour.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Should I choose Baseten or Anthropic?**

Pick Baseten if Teams that want per-token APIs and dedicated GPUs from one vendor with no plan fee — minute-granularity billing means a model that runs for ten minutes costs ten minutes.
Pick Anthropic if Teams that want the full 1M-token window at the standard per-token rate rather than a long-context surcharge, and that can use caching and batch to cut a frontier-model bill roughly in half.