Is the A100 still worth renting?
Yes, for many workloads the A100 is still the best value. It is an older generation than the H100, so it rents for less while offering the same 80GB of memory on the top SKU, which is plenty for a lot of inference and fine-tuning. The cheapest verified A100 in our index is $0.89/hr. You give up speed, not capability, for most jobs that are memory-bound rather than compute-bound.
| GPU | VRAM | $/hr | Where | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A100 PCIe 80GB | 80 GB | $0.679 | Microsoft Azure spot / interruptible | Rent → |
| A100 PCIe 80GB | 80 GB | $0.679 | Microsoft Azure spot / interruptible | Rent → |
| A100 PCIe 80GB | 80 GB | $0.679 | Microsoft Azure spot / interruptible | Rent → |
| A100 SXM 40GB | 40 GB | $0.738 | Microsoft Azure spot / interruptible | Rent → |
| A100 SXM 40GB | 40 GB | $0.748 | Microsoft Azure spot / interruptible | Rent → |
| A100 SXM 40GB | 40 GB | $0.89 | Jarvislabs on-demand | Rent → |
| A100 (unspecified) | 80 GB | $0.95 | Hyperstack reserved / committed | Rent → |
| A100 SXM 80GB | 80 GB | $1.00 | Lium secure cloud | Rent → |
The H100 and newer cards win clearly on raw throughput and on features like faster tensor cores, so heavy training and high-volume serving finish sooner on them and can cost less per unit of work despite the higher rate. If you are compute-bound, pay for the newer card.
But a large share of real workloads are limited by memory, not math: serving a mid-sized model, running batch inference, or fine-tuning with parameter-efficient methods. There the A100 does the job and the lower hourly rate makes it the cheaper path.
Check the current spread before deciding. When H100 supply is loose the price gap narrows and the newer card can be worth it; when H100s are scarce the A100 discount widens. The table below shows where the A100 currently sits across providers.
Related GPUs
A100 rental prices · H100 vs A100 · A100 vs H200
Related questions
- What is the cheapest 80GB GPU to rent?
- How much does an H100 cost per hour?
- Is renting a GPU cheaper than buying one?
Numbers on this page come from today's verified snapshot. Full table on the homepage; method in the methodology.