What Does GPU Cloud Compute Actually Cost in 2026?
The GPU cloud market has split into two tiers: hyperscaler on-demand pricing at $1.50 to $5.00 per GPU-hour, and independent providers at $0.15 to $0.50 per GPU-hour. The gap is not just about discounts — it reflects fundamentally different infrastructure models.
BHK Cloud offers NVIDIA RTX 3090 GPUs at $0.15 per hour. At that price, a full month of continuous single-GPU compute costs $108. The same GPU on AWS (g4dn.xlarge with T4, roughly comparable) costs $526 per month. The 5x difference stacks up fast when you scale to multi-GPU training runs.
How Do GPU Cloud Prices Compare Across Providers?
| Provider | GPU | $/hour | VRAM | Monthly (24/7) | Storage Included |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BHK Cloud | RTX 3090 | $0.15 | 24 GB | $108 | Yes ($2.49/TB) |
| Vast.ai | RTX 3090 | $0.20–0.40 | 24 GB | $144–288 | Separate |
| RunPod | RTX 3090 | $0.29 | 24 GB | $209 | Separate |
| Lambda Labs | A100 (40 GB) | $1.10 | 40 GB | $792 | Included |
| AWS (g4dn.xlarge) | T4 | $0.526 | 16 GB | $379 | $23/TB (S3) |
| AWS (p3.2xlarge) | V100 | $3.06 | 16 GB | $2,203 | $23/TB (S3) |
| GCP (a2-highgpu-1g) | A100 | $3.67 | 40 GB | $2,642 | $20/TB (GCS) |
| Azure (NC6s v3) | V100 | $3.06 | 16 GB | $2,203 | $20.80/TB (Blob) |
The pricing gap between BHK Cloud and hyperscalers is not a comparison of equivalent products — it reflects the difference between bare-metal infrastructure pricing and cloud platform margins. BHK Cloud owns and operates its hardware. Hyperscalers add a platform tax, a managed service layer, and a profit margin that multiplies the base hardware cost by 10-20x.
Why Is GPU Cloud Pricing So Different Between Providers?
Three factors explain the 20x pricing spread:
- Infrastructure ownership. BHK Cloud and other independent providers run on owned or colocated hardware. Hyperscalers build data centers, develop proprietary networking, and amortize those costs across all services. The GPU instance price includes a share of the data center mortgage.
- Managed services overhead. AWS/GCP/Azure bundle GPU instances with their ecosystems — IAM, VPC, CloudWatch, load balancers, managed Kubernetes. These services have real engineering costs that factor into instance pricing, even if you never use them.
- GPU generation and availability. RTX 3090 cards are consumer-grade GPUs available at scale. A100 and H100 are enterprise data center GPUs with supply constraints and NVIDIA's enterprise markup. The raw hardware cost difference between an RTX 3090 ($1,500) and an H100 ($30,000) is 20x, and cloud pricing reflects that gap.
What Hidden Costs Should You Watch For in GPU Cloud Pricing?
The headline per-hour GPU price is only part of the story. Five hidden costs inflate cloud GPU bills:
- Storage costs. Hyperscalers charge $20-23/TB for block storage. A 500 GB training dataset costs $10-11.50/month just to keep at rest. BHK Cloud: $1.25/month.
- Data egress. Moving data out of AWS costs $0.09/GB. A 100 GB model checkpoint costs $9 to download. Repeat for each experiment.
- Idle instance charges. Forgetting to terminate a GPU instance costs $0.50-5.00 per hour. Over a weekend, that is $36-360.
- Minimum commitments. Reserved instances and savings plans require 1-3 year commitments. If your workload changes, you are locked in.
- Support tiers. Production support on AWS starts at $100/month or 10% of monthly spend, whichever is higher.
How to Calculate Your Real GPU Cloud Cost
For an accurate comparison, use this formula:
Total monthly cost = (GPU hours × hourly rate) + (storage TB × storage rate) + (egress GB × egress rate) + (API operations × op rate)
A realistic workload for a small AI team: 1 GPU running 200 hours/month, 10 TB storage, 5 TB monthly egress.
| Provider | GPU (200h) | Storage (10 TB) | Egress (5 TB) | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BHK Cloud | $30.00 | $24.90 | $0.00 | $54.90 |
| Vast.ai | $60.00 | $50.00 | $0.00 | $110.00 |
| RunPod | $58.00 | $50.00 | $0.00 | $108.00 |
| AWS (T4) | $105.20 | $230.00 | $460.00 | $795.20 |
| GCP (A100) | $734.00 | $200.00 | $600.00 | $1,534.00 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is $0.15/hr really the full price for GPU compute?
Yes. BHK Cloud charges $0.15 per GPU-hour with no minimums, no commitments, and no hidden fees. The price includes the GPU instance, networking, and basic support. Storage is billed separately at $2.49/TB/month with no egress charges.
What GPU models are available at BHK Cloud?
BHK Cloud currently offers NVIDIA RTX 3090 GPUs with 24 GB VRAM. These are well-suited for fine-tuning, inference, and small-to-medium training jobs. Additional GPU models are planned based on demand.
How does GPU pricing compare to on-premise hardware?
An RTX 3090 costs approximately $1,500 to purchase. At $0.15/hour, 10,000 hours (about 14 months of 24/7 use) equals the purchase price. For teams that need burst capacity or want to avoid upfront capital expenditure, cloud pricing is more flexible. See our GPU Cloud vs On-Premise TCO analysis for a detailed breakdown.
Do you offer reserved or spot instances?
BHK Cloud does not currently offer reserved pricing tiers. The $0.15/hr rate applies to all instances, all the time. No spot instance interruptions, no bidding. We believe predictable pricing is better for engineering teams than a maze of discount tiers.