Neuralwatt
Hacker ApprovedRanked 5 of 14 inference providers by recommenders
People recommend Neuralwatt for cheap, energy-metered access to open-weight models, with per-call energy reporting. Main caveat: it raised its prices after a cheap start.
People recommend Neuralwatt for cheap, energy-metered access to open-weight models, with per-call energy reporting. Main caveat: it raised its prices after a cheap start.
19 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 18
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 95%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 18 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 18 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Cheap, energy-based pricing
“providers like neuralwatt cut that cost down even more by using energy as the actual cost.”
Comment from 6 Jul 2026 in “GLM 5.2 and the coming AI margin collapse” “very generous pricing since we have options to bill per kWh instead of per token”
Comment from 31 Mar 2026 in “Anthropic: Claude Code users hitting usage limits 'way faster than expected'” “I'm using synthetic.new and Neuralwatt with pi and its good and also cheap”
Comment from 28 Jun 2026 in “Semgrep: GLM 5.2 beats Claude in our Cyber Benchmarks” - Comment from 14 Jul 2026 in “The real prices of frontier models. Tokens * Price, right?”
- Comment from 22 Jun 2026 in “Sakana Fugu”
- Comment from 28 Sep 2026 in “Ember-1”
- Comment from 28 Jun 2026 in “Semgrep: GLM 5.2 beats Claude in our Cyber Benchmarks”
Measures and reports energy use
“the energy numbers I get from Neuralwatt are within the ballpark of what is available elsewhere”
Comment from 2 Oct 2026 in “One month coding with GLM 5.3 Flash” “we have a service which actually optimizes and measures the energy of your AI use”
Comment from 20 Jan 2026 in “Electricity use of AI coding agents” “They report energy usage with every call as well as aggregate statistics.”
Comment from 29 Sep 2026 in “GPT 6.1 Sol: Near-Astra intelligence for a fifth of the price” - Comment from 2 Oct 2026 in “One month coding with GLM 5.3 Flash”
Happy existing customers
“Switched from Standard to Pro last week, it's great”
Comment from 3 Oct 2026 in “One month coding with GLM 5.3 Flash” “Price/performance for api pricing was great.”
Comment from 29 Jun 2026 in “Semgrep: GLM 5.2 beats Claude in our Cyber Benchmarks” “not affiliated, just a happy customer”
Comment from 21 Jun 2026 in “Anthropic to Require ID Verification for Certain Capabilities Starting July 8”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Raised prices after cheap start
“Neuralwatt was cheap (but slow) but they cranked their price.”
Comment from 16 Jul 2026 in “Kimi K3 is now live” “But Neuralwatt significantly raised their rates since then.”
Comment from 14 Aug 2026 in “GLM-5.3: Frontier Coding with Emergent Cyber Capabilities”
Other inference providers people recommend
The four most recommended other inference providers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fireworks AI | 67 | 19 | 78% | 11 | — | Approved |
| DeepInfra | 36 | 11 | 77% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Together AI | 20 | 7 | 74% | 9 | — | Approved |
| fal.ai | 19 | 7 | 73% | 8 | — | Approved |
| NeuralwattThis page | 18 | 1 | 95% | 7 | — | Approved |
What people said
24 of the 25 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“unintuitive/abstracted pricing model I have no interest in”
“Switched from Standard to Pro last week, it's great”
“the energy numbers I get from Neuralwatt are within the ballpark of what is available elsewhere”
“Neuralwatt can hit up to 98% but DeepSeek can do 99.x... That may not sound like a big difference but it quickly widens the gap on long tasks”
“Makes models’ “efficiency” much more visible than tokens.”
“They report energy usage with every call as well as aggregate statistics.”
“They are ZDR and great energy based K3 pricing.”
“But Neuralwatt significantly raised their rates since then.”
“Neuralwatt was cheap (but slow) but they cranked their price.”
“One of the reasons this is a bit cheaper, especially for agentic systems”
“it does seem like you get a lot more usage even on the cheap plan”
“providers like neuralwatt cut that cost down even more by using energy as the actual cost.”
“Opencode Go subscription ($5 to try for one month) or Neuralwatt are what I use”
“Price/performance for api pricing was great.”
“Uncertainty and selective stats puts people off signing up, they tend to assume the worst.”
“it only cost me $18 on energy-based pricing”
“I'm using synthetic.new and Neuralwatt with pi and its good and also cheap”
“One can also try https://neuralwatt.com using it in opencode.”
“I've read a lot of reviews that its very cheap to run”
“not affiliated, just a happy customer”
“Took them 1 day to include GLM 5.2 ... Yes, the remove old models fast because they do not have the server capacity to keep old models around.”
“the cloud offering doesn't seem that well-run”
“very generous pricing since we have options to bill per kWh instead of per token”
“we have a service which actually optimizes and measures the energy of your AI use”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.