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One product model, three operating choices

InferCrane’s domain model does not change depending on who operates the control plane or supplies compute. Applications keep the same logical endpoint, deployments remain durable, and release evidence keeps the same meaning.

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InferCrane Community

The public repository is the complete self-operated product and is licensed under Apache 2.0. It contains the control plane, gateway, provider and runtime contracts, CLI, SDKs, Terraform provider, monitoring, durable operations, Release Guard, Replay, benchmarking, optimization evidence, and local console boundary. Community users can:
  • deploy a compatible model through vLLM, SGLang, or an immutable custom OCI workload;
  • operate capacity in AWS, GCP, Kubernetes, RunPod, or another implemented adapter;
  • connect existing OpenAI-compatible inference without migrating it first;
  • keep one stable application endpoint while serving plans change;
  • inspect requests, diagnose production behavior, and gate releases with evidence.
The catalog is not an allowlist. A model accepted by the selected runtime can enter the same planning and lifecycle flow. Hardware fit, model terms, runtime capabilities, and performance remain properties of the exact serving plan.

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InferCrane Cloud direction

InferCrane Cloud is the planned operated form of the same product. It is intended to provide a hosted control plane, hosted console, upgrades, backups, longer evidence retention, billing, and an InferCrane-supplied compute option. It does not exist as a generally available public service yet. The current hosted console is deny-by-default private preview and current real compute uses the customer’s provider account. The portability rule is:
Hosted supplier credentials, payment systems, abuse controls, rate cards, and warm-pool operations belong outside the open-source process. Cloud code may consume public InferCrane APIs and extension contracts; the open-source core must never depend on a proprietary package.

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InferCrane Enterprise direction

Enterprise packaging is for contractual operation and organization-wide governance, not a second inference engine. Expected commercial capabilities include SSO and SCIM, fine-grained access control, audit export, private connectivity, residency policy, customer-managed encryption, multi-region recovery, approval workflows, support, and SLAs. Basic deployment, monitoring, autoscaling, release safety, and provider/runtime extensibility stay in Community. Commercial value comes from operating InferCrane, providing governed capacity, reducing organizational risk, and accepting contractual responsibility.

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Repository and license boundary

Apache 2.0 is deliberately retained for the core. It is permissive for commercial use and includes an explicit patent grant. A proprietary service does not change the license of the public core, and mixing proprietary source into this repository is not required for Cloud or Enterprise operation.

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Existing orchestration systems

An existing OpenAI-compatible serving system can be connected through InferCrane’s generic adoption path without transferring lifecycle ownership. The existing system remains responsible for its own GPU scheduling, engine configuration, workers, and replica mutation. InferCrane can own stable endpoint identity, higher-level revisions, release policy, and evidence only after the operator chooses the corresponding ownership mode. This boundary prevents two controllers from scaling the same replicas. InferCrane will not add a native lifecycle adapter for another orchestration system unless repeated user demand justifies the extra controller and qualification surface.

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Current availability

Product direction is not current availability. Review Capability qualification before relying on a provider, runtime, hosted surface, or exact model and accelerator combination.
Today, InferCrane is distributed as the self-operated Community control plane with a private-preview console. Hosted control-plane operation, InferCrane-supplied compute, public billing, and enterprise SLAs remain future commercial milestones.