FluidStack vs Banana
A detailed comparison to help you choose between FluidStack and Banana.
Quick Verdict
3.6/5
FluidStack
0 reviews
1.2/5
Banana
0 reviews
FluidStack is rated higher (3.6 vs 1.2). FluidStack aggregates GPU capacity from multiple providers to offer H100, A100, and consumer GPU instances. Pay-as-you-go and reserved capacity. EU and US datacenters with competitive pricing. Banana was an ML inference hosting platform (Docker-based, Potassium framework). The service shut down permanently on March 31, 2024; do not purchase. Alternatives: Replicate, Modal, RunPod, Beam, Baseten.
FluidStack Enterprise GPU cloud at competitive pricing | Banana DEFUNCT — serverless GPU inference platform sunset Feb 2024, shut down March 31, 2024 | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.6 (0 reviews)✓ | 1.2 (0 reviews) |
| Pricing model | usage-based | usage-based (historical; shut down 2024-03-31) |
| Starting price | From $1.3/mo✓ | From $2024/mo |
| Best for | AI labs and platform teams committing to 8-10k+ GPUs for training or heavy inference who want managed Slurm/Kubernetes, per-GPU-hour transparency, and a hands-on infrastructure partner | Nobody — the platform shut down on March 31, 2024. Use Replicate, Modal, RunPod, Beam, or Baseten for serverless GPU inference. |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ||
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ✓ | |
| Free tier | ||
| Data-center locations | ||
| Regions | Canada, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden | — |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | hourly billinggpu availableeu datacenterus datacenter | gpu availableus datacenterapi access |
| Visit FluidStack → | Visit Banana → | |
FluidStack
Pros
- + Published per-GPU-hour rate card with no egress or ingress fees
- + Fully managed Slurm and Kubernetes on bare metal with 24/7 engineering support
- + Scales from 8 GPUs on-demand to 10k+ reserved — cluster sizes most clouds cannot match quickly
- + EU capacity in the Netherlands and Nordics for data-residency-sensitive training
- + Engineering response times measured in hours by SemiAnalysis during ClusterMAX testing
Cons
- - Aggregated third-party capacity means hardware and day-one polish vary by deployment
- - Contract-first commercial model — 8-GPU on-demand floor, 256-GPU reserved floor, no free tier
- - No public uptime SLA, datacenter list, or documentation library
- - Reactive software supply chain security — unpatched NVIDIA container toolkit found at cluster handover in evaluation
- - Track record is short relative to the scale of its recent customer commitments
Banana
Pros
- + Historical: developer-friendly Docker/Potassium deployment with scale-to-zero GPU autoscaling
- + Historical: per-second GPU billing with no charge while idle
- + Historical: warm pools and model caching reduced cold starts for popular models
- + The founder published an unusually candid shutdown account and migration guidance
Cons
- - Permanently shut down on March 31, 2024 — the service cannot be purchased or used
- - Pricing was opaque even while alive ($1,200/month Team tier, per-GPU costs unpublished)
- - No published uptime SLA and no independent benchmarks
- - Startup platform risk realized: GPU economics forced closure within two months' notice
- - Third-party listings of its pricing and features conflict and cannot be verified against a live product
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