Rent vs buy: the break-even calculator
Buying one H100 at $29,900 beats renting at $1.80 an hour after 17,384 GPU-hours, about 16.7 years at 20 hours a week. Change any input; the formula is shown below.
Hardware price: H100 NVL 94GB at NetworkOutlet, $29,900, in stock, checked 5 November 2026. Enter your own quote.
About 16.7 years at 20 h/week.
Over 3 years at 20 h/week (3,120 GPU-hours): renting costs $5,616; owning costs $30,150 ($29,900 hardware + $250 electricity). Renting is cheaper by $24,534.
Starting usage, electricity and ownership values are editable examples, not measured consumption. The power draw opens on the GPU's rated board power, as the specifications on its GPU page give it; under a lighter load it draws less. The example sells nothing back, switches the card off when idle and adds no cooling overhead.
Formula: break-even hours = (hardware price + rest of the machine) × (1 − resale %) ÷ (rental $/hr − running $/hr), where running $/hr = watts ÷ 1000 × $/kWh × PUE, plus the idle draw for the hours of the week you do not use it, spread over the hours you do. Over your years, owning costs hardware + rest of the machine + electricity − resale and renting costs rental $/hr × hours a week × 52 × years. Your time, repairs and the money tied up in the hardware are not included.
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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