{
  "type": "option",
  "name": "Hosted proving services",
  "slug": "hosted-proving",
  "section": {
    "id": "frameworks",
    "number": "02",
    "title": "Choosing a framework",
    "url": "https://zkpick.com/frameworks/"
  },
  "url": "https://zkpick.com/frameworks/hosted-proving/",
  "markdown": "https://zkpick.com/md/frameworks/hosted-proving.md",
  "category": "Operations — managed proving",
  "summary": "Hosted proving services: Operations — managed proving. Services that run prover hardware on your behalf behind an API, typically bundled with an SDK, CI integration and autoscaling. Maturity: Commercially available; vendor maturity varies. Maintained by: Several vendors: Axiom (proving API), RISC Zero (remote proving and Boundless), Succinct (prover network), among others — none is endorsed here. Choose it when: Pre-product-market-fit teams, bursty or low-volume workloads, and proving over public inputs. A poor fit for privacy-critical witnesses or systems requiring censorship resistance.",
  "description": "Services that run prover hardware on your behalf behind an API, typically bundled with an SDK, CI integration and autoscaling. Some are multi-zkVM, reducing lock-in at the operational layer.",
  "notes": [],
  "sections": [],
  "strengths": [
    "Removes GPU capital expenditure and cluster operations entirely — the fastest path from a working guest program to proofs in production",
    "Lets you defer the buy-versus-build hardware decision until proof volume is known"
  ],
  "tradeoffs": [
    "Introduces a liveness and censorship dependency on a single company: a proof you cannot generate is a system you cannot advance",
    "Cost per proof at steady volume is usually materially higher than self-hosting",
    "Sending witnesses to a third party can leak private inputs — for privacy applications this can defeat the entire purpose unless client-side witness generation is supported"
  ],
  "bestFit": "Pre-product-market-fit teams, bursty or low-volume workloads, and proving over public inputs. A poor fit for privacy-critical witnesses or systems requiring censorship resistance.",
  "maintainers": "Several vendors: Axiom (proving API), RISC Zero (remote proving and Boundless), Succinct (prover network), among others — none is endorsed here",
  "maturity": "Commercially available; vendor maturity varies",
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "source": "https://www.axiom.xyz/proving-api",
  "facts": [],
  "relatedFailureModes": [
    {
      "name": "Discovering the licence after writing the code",
      "url": "https://zkpick.com/frameworks/failure-modes/discovering-the-licence-after-writing-the-code/"
    }
  ],
  "sources": [
    {
      "title": "RISC Zero remote proving — hosted proving documentation",
      "url": "https://dev.risczero.com/api/generating-proofs/remote-proving",
      "kind": "documentation"
    }
  ],
  "updated": "2026-09-12",
  "version": "1.3",
  "canonical": "https://zkpick.com/frameworks/hosted-proving/",
  "authors": [
    "MarketComp"
  ]
}