I Compared 5 GPU Clouds for LLM Inference in 2026 — Here's What I Found
Researched October 2026. Prices from public pricing pages and third-party trackers.
Running LLMs in production gets expensive fast. I spent a week comparing GPU cloud providers to find the cheapest way to serve inference workloads. Here are the results.
The Contenders
I looked at five providers that offer on-demand GPU instances suitable for LLM inference:
- RunPod — community favorite, wide GPU selection
- Lambda Labs — straightforward pricing, good availability
- Vast.ai — marketplace model, often cheapest
- AWS — the default choice, premium pricing
- Google Cloud — strong TPUs, GPU pricing varies
Price Comparison (A100 80GB, per hour)
| Provider | A100 80GB/hr | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Vast.ai | ~$1.20 | Marketplace, prices fluctuate |
| RunPod | ~$1.89 | Secure Cloud pricing |
| Lambda Labs | ~$1.50 | On-demand |
| AWS (p4d) | ~$3.20 | On-demand, us-east-1 |
| GCP (a2-highgpu) | ~$2.90 | On-demand |
Prices are approximate, researched October 2026. Always check current pricing.
What About RTX 4090?
For smaller models (7B-13B), a 4090 is often enough and much cheaper:
| Provider | RTX 4090/hr |
|---|---|
| Vast.ai | ~$0.35 |
| RunPod | ~$0.69 |
A 4090 can handle Llama 3 8B inference comfortably. If your model fits, don't overpay for an A100.
My Takeaways
- Marketplace > fixed pricing — Vast.ai is consistently 30-50% cheaper, but you trade reliability
- Match GPU to model size — Don't rent an H100 for a 7B model
- Spot/preemptible instances — Can cut costs another 50-70% if your workload tolerates interruptions
- Watch egress fees — Some providers charge heavily for data transfer out
What's Next
I'm building a free tool that recommends the cheapest GPU for your specific workload. Drop a comment with your use case and I'll share early access.
What's your go-to GPU cloud? Am I missing a cheaper option?
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