

GPU specialist against peer marketplace, priced against each other on the 3 GPUs both of them rent. Published per-GPU on-demand rates as each provider last stated them, with what their own pages say about billing, commitment and egress beside the numbers.
Vast.ai is cheaper on 3 of the 3 cards both of them rent, by a median of 11%.
These are not the same product. A GPU specialist and a peer marketplace differ in who your counterparty is, which is why the rates below can be far apart without either being wrong. The prices are comparable; what stands behind them is not.
The 3 cards both of them rent, cheapest published per-GPU on-demand rate each. Dearest first.
| GPU | packet.ai | Vast.ai | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA B200 SXM6 180GB | $6.99/hr | $6.25/hr | 11% cheaper on Vast.ai |
| NVIDIA L40S 48GB | $0.92/hr | $0.47/hr | 48% cheaper on Vast.ai |
| NVIDIA RTX 4090 24GB | $0.39/hr | $0.37/hr | 4% cheaper on Vast.ai |
Per GPU per hour, on-demand list prices as each provider last published them. Rates exclude tax and vary by region; a cheaper rate is not the same machine, the same network or the same support.
| packet.ai | Vast.ai | |
|---|---|---|
| Billing granularityOn short jobs this outweighs the rate: an hour minimum on a 90-second run costs more than a 30% dearer per-second rate. | Hourly, per-second metered | Per second |
| Minimum commitment | None on hourly | $5 minimum to start |
| Payment model | Prepaid wallet · subscription · invoice | Prepaid credits; optional auto top-up |
| Free credits | $10 + 10k tokens | not stated |
| Egress | Free | Priced per byte by each host |
| Uptime SLA | 99% monthly (Dedicated) | not stated |
| Regions | California, Virginia, Texas, Oregon, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Paris, London, Dublin | 40+ data centres worldwide |
Vast.ai is cheaper on 3 of the 3 cards both of them rent, by a median of 11%.
NVIDIA B200 SXM6 180GB, NVIDIA L40S 48GB, NVIDIA RTX 4090 24GB — 3 in total, on published per-GPU on-demand rates.
Of the cards both rent, packet.ai starts at $0.39 per GPU-hour and Vast.ai at $0.37.
No. packet.ai is a GPU specialist — an operator whose whole business is renting these cards. Vast.ai is a peer marketplace — a stranger whose machine the platform vets to some degree. Reliability, bandwidth and how long the machine stays online vary by host, not just by price. The rates are comparable; what stands behind them is not.