Rent vs buy: the break-even calculator

Buying one H100 at $29,900 beats renting at $1.80 an hour after 17,283 GPU-hours, about 16.6 years at 20 hours a week. Change any input; the formula is shown below.

GPURental rate ($/hr)Hardware price to buy ($)Your usage (hours per week)Electricity price ($/kWh)Card power draw (watts)

Hardware price: H100 NVL 94GB at NetworkOutlet, $29,900, in stock, checked 22 October 2026. Enter your own quote.

Break-even

17,283GPU-hours

About 16.6 years at 20 h/week.

Use the card for fewer hours than that and renting is cheaper; use it more and buying wins. At your usage that is $1,799 a year of rental spend (after the electricity you would pay to run your own card), against a one-time $29,900.

Starting usage, electricity and wattage values are editable examples, not measured consumption.

Formula: break-even hours = hardware price ÷ (rental $/hr − electricity $/hr), where electricity $/hr = watts ÷ 1000 × $/kWh. Resale value, cooling and your time are not included: the calculation covers purchase price, GPU electricity and rental compute only.

The rental input covers GPU compute. Check egress, storage and stopped-instance charges before treating this break-even as an all-in cloud budget.

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