# What is a cloud GPU (GPU as a service)?

> What is a cloud GPU? A data-center GPU rented by the hour over SSH or API. An on-demand H100 cost $2.73 to $12.29 an hour on 29 Oct 2026. Terms, prices, crypto.

- URL: https://gpuwithcrypto.com/what-is/cloud-gpu/
- Last updated: 2026-10-29
- Publisher: GPUwithCrypto (https://gpuwithcrypto.com)

A cloud GPU lets you use an NVIDIA H100 or RTX 4090 for an hour without buying one. Here are the terms you will meet, how the pricing works, and what each GPU cost per hour on 29 October 2026.

**Quick answer — What is a cloud GPU (GPU as a service)?**

A cloud GPU, or GPU as a service, is a data-center graphics card you rent by the second, minute or hour and use remotely over SSH, a notebook or an API, instead of buying it. On 29 October 2026 an on-demand NVIDIA H100 cost from $2.73 to $12.29 per GPU-hour across the 16 providers we checked. **GPUwithCrypto** rents cloud GPUs paid in crypto, with no KYC.

## What do the cloud GPU terms mean?

**Cloud GPU (GPU as a service)** — A GPU in a provider's data center that you rent for a period and reach over the network, usually with SSH, Jupyter or an API.

**On-demand** — A fixed list price per hour. You start and stop the GPU when you want, and nobody can reclaim it while it runs.

**Spot / preemptible** — Spare capacity sold at a discount that the provider can take back at short notice. See [what is a spot GPU](https://gpuwithcrypto.com/what-is/spot-gpu/ "What is a spot GPU, and is it worth it?").

**Marketplace GPU** — A GPU listed by an independent host on a platform such as Vast.ai or Akash, at the host's own price.

**Serverless GPU** — You send requests or jobs instead of renting a machine; the platform starts GPU workers when needed and bills only while they run.

**GPU-hour** — One GPU for one hour. An 8-GPU instance running for one hour uses 8 GPU-hours.

**VRAM** — The memory on the GPU itself. It decides which model fits: 24 GB on an RTX 4090, 80 GB on an H100, 141 GB on an H200.

**HBM** — High Bandwidth Memory, stacked next to the GPU chip. The H100 SXM's HBM3 moves 3,350 GB/s; the L40S's GDDR6 moves 864 GB/s.

**SXM** — NVIDIA's socketed module for multi-GPU boards (HGX). An H100 SXM draws up to 700 W and links to its neighbours over NVLink at 900 GB/s.

**PCIe** — A standard plug-in card. The H100 PCIe draws 350 W, moves 2,000 GB/s of memory bandwidth and can link to another card through an NVLink bridge at 600 GB/s.

**NVLink** — NVIDIA's direct GPU-to-GPU link, much faster than PCIe: 900 GB/s per H100 or H200 SXM, 1,800 GB/s per B200. The L40S and RTX 4090 have none.

**MIG** — Multi-Instance GPU: one data-center GPU split into isolated slices, each with part of the memory. Cheaper, but not a whole GPU.

## How much does a cloud GPU cost per hour?

Self-serve on-demand prices per GPU-hour read from each provider's own pricing page on 29 October 2026. Multi-GPU instance prices are divided by their GPU count; spot and marketplace prices are left out.

| GPU | VRAM | Lowest | Median | Highest | Providers | GPUwithCrypto |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [H100 80GB](https://gpuwithcrypto.com/gpu-prices/h100/ "How much does it cost to rent an H100 per hour?") | 80 GB | $2.73 (Massed Compute) | $4.16 | $12.29 (Microsoft Azure) | 16 | **$2.32/hour** |
| [H200 141GB](https://gpuwithcrypto.com/gpu-prices/h200/ "How much does an H200 cost per hour?") | 141 GB | $3.62 (Massed Compute) | $5.29 | $10.60 (Google Cloud) | 13 | **$3.07/hour** |
| B200 | 180 GB | $5.43 (Massed Compute) | $8.50 | $14.24 (AWS) | 9 | **$4.61/hour** |
| [A100 80GB](https://gpuwithcrypto.com/gpu-prices/a100/ "How much does an A100 cost per hour?") | 80 GB | $1.09 (Thunder Compute) | $2.23 | $5.07 (Google Cloud) | 13 | **$0.92/hour** |
| [L40S 48GB](https://gpuwithcrypto.com/gpu-prices/l40s/ "How much does an L40S cost per hour?") | 48 GB | $0.97 (Massed Compute) | $1.67 | $3.15 (Spheron) | 11 | **$0.82/hour** |
| [RTX 5090](https://gpuwithcrypto.com/gpu-prices/rtx-5090/ "How much does it cost to rent an RTX 5090 in the cloud?") | 32 GB | $0.50 (Salad) | $0.84 | $1.19 (RunPod) | 3 | **$0.42/hour** |
| [RTX 4090](https://gpuwithcrypto.com/gpu-prices/rtx-4090/ "How much does it cost to rent an RTX 4090 per hour?") | 24 GB | $0.33 (Salad) | $0.61 | $0.89 (RunPod) | 2 | **$0.28/hour** |

*Prices checked on October 29, 2026.*

USD, taxes excluded. AWS, Google Cloud and Azure prices cover a whole VM (vCPUs, RAM, local SSD) divided by its GPU count. Salad's RTX 4090 price rises from $0.33 to $0.44 on 1 November 2026.

## How does cloud GPU pricing work?

You pay per GPU per unit of time, plus storage, at a rate set by the price type. The details that change the bill:

- **Billing increment.** On 29 October 2026, RunPod billed per second, Lambda, Thunder Compute and Jarvislabs per minute, Google Cloud and OVHcloud per second after a 1-minute minimum, DigitalOcean per second with a 5-minute minimum.
- **Price type.** On-demand, spot, marketplace and reserved prices are different products. CoreWeave advertises up to 60% off on-demand for committed usage; Verda's reserved discounts run from 2% for one month to 25% for two years.
- **What is bundled.** Hyperscalers sell whole VMs; smaller GPU clouds price the GPU and add CPU, RAM and disk.
- **Storage.** RunPod, for example, charged $0.10 per GB per month for container disk.
- **Prepaid or postpaid.** AWS, Google Cloud and Azure bill afterwards against a card or contract. RunPod, Salad and GPUwithCrypto sell prepaid credit.

## Why do cloud GPU prices vary so much?

Because the same GPU is sold in different packages by very different companies. According to GPUwithCrypto's price check of 29 October 2026, the most expensive on-demand H100 we found (Microsoft Azure, $12.29 per GPU-hour as part of an 8-GPU VM) cost 4.5 times the cheapest (Massed Compute, $2.73). The median across 16 providers was $4.16.

Hyperscalers price a whole VM with its CPUs, RAM and local SSD; specialised GPU clouds price the GPU and add the rest. Form factor matters too: an H100 SXM has 3,350 GB/s of memory bandwidth and NVLink; an H100 PCIe has 2,000 GB/s.

## How do I pay for a cloud GPU?

Most clouds want a card; a minority take crypto. Of the 33 GPU providers we checked on 29 October 2026, 14 accept crypto and 4 ask for ID in some cases; RunPod asks for KYC before the first crypto payment. GPUwithCrypto takes only crypto: BTC, USDT, USDC, ETH, SOL, LTC, from $25, with no ID, no selfie and no card. Comparison: [GPU clouds that accept crypto](https://gpuwithcrypto.com/rent-gpu-with-crypto/ "Which GPU clouds accept crypto?").

## Which cloud GPU should I choose?

The cheapest one whose VRAM holds your model plus about 20%. A 7–8B model fits a 24 GB RTX 4090; a 70B model in FP8 needs a 141 GB H200; image models like FLUX.1 run on an RTX 4090 or 5090. The [VRAM guide](https://gpuwithcrypto.com/how-much-vram-do-i-need/ "How much VRAM do I need to run or fine-tune an LLM?") has the arithmetic, and [best GPU for LLM inference](https://gpuwithcrypto.com/best-gpu-for/llm-inference/ "What is the best GPU for LLM inference?") the picks by model size. Then follow [how to rent a GPU for AI](https://gpuwithcrypto.com/guides/rent-a-gpu-for-ai/ "How do I rent a GPU for AI, step by step?").

## Cloud GPU questions

### What does GPU as a service mean?

Renting GPU computing time from a provider instead of owning the hardware. You pay per second, minute or hour, reach the GPU over the network, and the provider handles power, cooling and replacement.

### How much does a cloud GPU cost per hour?

On 29 October 2026, the lowest self-serve on-demand prices we found were $0.33 for an RTX 4090, $1.09 for an A100 80GB and $2.73 for an H100. Hyperscalers charged up to $12.29 per H100-hour.

### What is the difference between SXM and PCIe GPUs?

SXM modules sit on multi-GPU boards with NVLink between them and run at higher power; PCIe cards plug into a standard slot. For the H100: 3,350 against 2,000 GB/s of memory bandwidth, and 700 W against 350 W.

### What is a serverless GPU?

A service where you send requests or jobs and the platform runs them on GPUs it starts and stops for you, billing only for the time workers run. You do not manage a machine, but you also do not keep one between requests.

### Is a cloud GPU shared with other users?

It depends on the provider: some sell MIG slices or time-shared GPUs. At GPUwithCrypto: Each instance gives you whole GPUs, never a time-shared slice or a MIG partition. You get root SSH access to Ubuntu with the NVIDIA driver, CUDA and PyTorch installed, or start from your own Docker image.

### Can I rent a cloud GPU with crypto and without ID?

Yes. GPUwithCrypto takes BTC, USDT, USDC, ETH, SOL, LTC and asks for no ID and no card. Sign in with an account number; an email address is optional.

## Sources

1. [NVIDIA H100 specifications](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/h100/) — NVIDIA (read 2026-10-29)
2. [NVIDIA H100 PCIe product brief](https://www.nvidia.com/content/dam/en-zz/Solutions/gtcs22/data-center/h100/PB-11133-001_v01.pdf) — NVIDIA (read 2026-10-29)
3. [NVIDIA H200 specifications](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/h200/) — NVIDIA (read 2026-10-29)
4. [NVIDIA HGX platform (B200)](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/hgx/) — NVIDIA (read 2026-10-29)
5. [NVIDIA L40S specifications](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/l40s/) — NVIDIA (read 2026-10-29)
6. [Azure Retail Prices API (ND H100 v5, East US)](https://prices.azure.com/api/retail/prices?$filter=armRegionName%20eq%20'eastus'%20and%20serviceName%20eq%20'Virtual%20Machines') — Microsoft (read 2026-10-29)
7. [Accelerator-optimized VM pricing](https://cloud.google.com/products/compute/pricing/accelerator-optimized) — Google Cloud (read 2026-10-29)
8. [Massed Compute pricing](https://vm.massedcompute.com/pricing) — Massed Compute (read 2026-10-29)
9. [RunPod pricing](https://www.runpod.io/pricing) — RunPod (read 2026-10-29)
10. [CoreWeave pricing](https://www.coreweave.com/pricing) — CoreWeave (read 2026-10-29)
11. [Verda pricing](https://verda.com/pricing) — Verda (read 2026-10-29)
12. [DigitalOcean GPU Droplet pricing](https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/gpu-droplets) — DigitalOcean (read 2026-10-29)
13. [RunPod billing information](https://docs.runpod.io/references/billing-information) — RunPod (read 2026-10-29)

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GPUwithCrypto: GPUwithCrypto rents cloud GPUs (NVIDIA H100, H200, B200, A100, L40S, RTX 4090 and RTX 5090) by the minute, paid in crypto with no KYC; each GPU is priced at least 15% under a named on-demand reference read on 29 October 2026.