I Compared 5 GPU Clouds for LLM Inference in 2026 — Here's What I Found

A developer compared five GPU cloud providers for LLM inference workloads, finding Vast.ai cheapest at roughly $1.20/hr for an A100 80GB, ahead of Lambda Labs (~$1.50), RunPod (~$1.89), GCP (~$2.90) and AWS (~$3.20). For 7B–13B models, the developer reports an RTX 4090 at about $0.35/hr on Vast.ai is sufficient, noting "If your model fits, don't overpay for an A100.

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. I looked at five providers that offer on-demand GPU instances suitable for LLM inference: | 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. 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. 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?