SambaNova Cloud
Open models at record tokens-per-second on RDU silicon
Overview
An enterprise inference platform serving open-weight models like Llama and DeepSeek from SambaNova's custom RDU chips, via an OpenAI-compatible API. For developers and teams chasing low-latency, high-throughput generation on open models.
Pricing
Pricing shown for reference only. These figures reflect RECATOOLS research as of 13 Jul 2026 and may be out of date or incomplete. This is not financial or purchasing advice — always confirm the current price on the provider’s official website before making any decision.
- $5 credit, short expiry
- ~20M tokens/day cap
- OpenAI-compatible API
- Open models included
- Higher rate limits
- Production throughput
- Priced per model size
- Dedicated deployment
- SLA and support
- Volume pricing
What you can produce with SambaNova Cloud
- Open-weight inference on custom RDU (SN40L) chips
- OpenAI-compatible API for drop-in migration
- Record tokens-per-second on Llama and DeepSeek
- Hosts Llama 3.1/3.2/3.3, DeepSeek and Tulu 3
- Free developer tier with $5 credit
- Pay-as-you-go per-token pricing
- Enterprise deployment and higher rate limits
ASEAN Perspective
SambaNova Cloud in Southeast Asia
ASEAN-region availability and pricing notes coming soon. Drop the editorial team a note via /contact/ if you can supply local context (Singapore/Malaysia/Indonesia/Thailand/Vietnam).
SambaNova's pitch is speed, and the benchmarks back it. Its custom RDU chips (the SN40L) run big open models at token rates that GPU-based serverless providers struggle to match, with third-party measurements putting Llama 3.1 405B well past 100 tokens/second and DeepSeek and gpt-oss models faster still. The OpenAI-compatible API makes migration a base-URL change, and a free developer tier lets you kick the tires with $5 in credit. Know what you're buying: this is a hardware-and-inference play, not a model lab. You're limited to the open models SambaNova chooses to host, and the surrounding ecosystem is smaller than OpenAI's or Anthropic's. The free credit expires fast and reviewers routinely hit daily token caps, so treat it as a trial, not a runway. Strong fit for teams optimizing latency on open models at scale; less relevant if you need proprietary frontier models. Global API, English docs, usable from ASEAN.
What people say
SambaNova competes on one axis harder than any other: raw inference speed. Its Reconfigurable Dataflow Units, marketed as up to roughly 10x faster than standard GPUs for some workloads, post numbers reviewers and independent benchmarkers keep citing. Llama 3.1 405B runs at speeds reported between about 129 and 200 tokens per second depending on the source and configuration, DeepSeek-V3.1 reaches up to 200 tokens per second as measured by Artificial Analysis, and gpt-oss-120b clears 600 tokens per second. A single SN40L node has been shown pushing 2,800 tokens per second on Llama 4 Maverick at batch one.
Getting started is low-friction. The API is OpenAI-compatible, so existing SDK code migrates with a base-URL swap, and there's a free developer tier granting $5 of credit, described as over 30 million tokens on Llama 8B. Available models span Llama 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3, DeepSeek, and Tulu 3, all open-weight.
The free tier draws the most pointed feedback. Reviewers and community-forum users report the $5 credit and the developer-tier ceiling, around 20 million tokens per day across all models, get consumed quickly, so it functions as a brief trial rather than a sustained free runway. Credits also carry short expiry windows. Several users on SambaNova's own developer community have asked for higher free-tier limits, which signals both interest and frustration.
On pricing, per-token rates land in a competitive band for open models: reports put Llama 3.1 405B at roughly $5 per million input tokens and $10 per million output. Reviewers frame the speed-per-dollar as genuinely strong for teams running large open models where latency is the priority.
The recurring caveat is scope. SambaNova is an inference-and-hardware company, not a frontier model lab, so you're betting on the open models it hosts and a smaller ecosystem than the big proprietary labs. Reviewers consistently recommend it for developers and enterprises optimizing latency and throughput on open weights, and steer anyone who needs proprietary frontier models elsewhere.
Summary of public user & expert reviews, compiled by RECATOOLS.
About this listing
This entry was compiled from publicly available data including SambaNova Cloud's official website, press releases, documentation, and reputable third-party publications. RECATOOLS is not affiliated with SambaNova Cloud unless explicitly stated.
Third-party AI tools update their pricing, features, availability, and policies frequently. Information here may be outdated by the time you read this — we make reasonable efforts to keep listings current, but cannot guarantee absolute accuracy.
For the latest details, please refer to SambaNova Cloud directly →
Spotted something out of date? Suggest an update →
Alternatives to SambaNova Cloud
More in LLMs & Chat
