fastai vs Lightning AI Studios
fastai
fast.aiLightning AI Studios
lightning.aiSide by side
| Figure | fastai | Lightning AI Studios |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $20/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 9 |
| Spec score · Deep Learning Software | 8.1 (#10) | 9.1 (#1) |
| Purpose | fastai simplifies training fast and accurate neural networks using modern best practices. | AI Studio is a persistent, collaborative GPU cloud workspace for training models, running inference, building agents and AI apps, and coding together. |
| Support | The fast.ai forums include a category for help installing and using the fastai library for users at any level. | Lightning lists email, Discord, and Twitter as support channels, and a dedicated Slack channel for enterprise support. |
Plans
Lightning AI Studios
- FreeFree
- FreeFree
- Pro$20 a month
- Pro (annual)$20 a month
- Pro (monthly)$50 a month
- Teams$119 a month
- Teams (annual)$119 a month
- Teams (monthly)$140 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
Lightning AI Studios
Lightning AI Studios is a cloud workspace for training models, running inference, building agents and AI apps, and coding collaboratively. Its persistent environments save installed packages, custom Python versions, and downloaded files. Studios offer browser-accessible VS Code and JupyterLab, plus AI copilots for AI and machine-learning work, including CUDA and PyTorch debugging. Teams can collaborate in real time on private projects, use a full-stack runtime, and deploy full-stack applications. Users can connect S3 buckets and EFS volumes through Lightning Drive, import models from Hugging Face and GitHub, or connect local IDEs such as VS Code, Cursor, and PyCharm over SSH. An SDK supports workflow automation. The Free plan is free and includes one active Studio, 50 GB persistent storage, and up to two concurrent GPUs; that Studio requires a restart every four hours. Pro and Teams plans have higher storage and GPU limits. Enterprise offers deployment in a customer VPC using AWS or GCP cloud credits.