Vast.ai vs PowerGPU at a glance
Vast.ai
GPU marketplace: independent hosts, DLPerf scores, verified-datacenter tier
PowerGPU
Fixed prices at market median × 0.70, crypto only, verified datacenters
| Vast.ai | PowerGPU | |
|---|---|---|
| Billing | Per second, no minimum hours; $5 minimum account deposit | Per second, no minimum, price locked at deploy |
| Payment | Card (Stripe) or crypto, passed through BitPay / Crypto.com | Crypto only — USDT (TRC-20/ERC-20), BTC, XMR, LTC, ETH, TRX, SOL |
| Identity | Email + payment method to rent; hosts pursuing "verified" status must register a business | Email + password. No KYC, no card, no stored IP addresses |
| Free credit | None published | None — every hour is ≥30% under the market median instead |
| Cheaper tier | Interruptible bids (30-50%+ below on-demand) and 1/3/6-month reserved contracts | Interruptible flat −50% (no auction) · reserved −35% (3+ months) |
| Regions | Hosts across dozens of countries (US, EU, APAC and more); filter by location, no fixed list | 32 regions on 5 continents, verified datacenters only |
| Minimums | $5 account minimum; no minimum rental duration | None — 1× to 8× GPUs at the same per-GPU price |
| Storage | Host-set, typically $0.10-0.15/GB/month, billed continuously even when stopped | $0.08/GB/month NVMe, volumes survive instances |
| Egress | Host-set, per byte (commonly quoted per TB); not centrally itemised | $0.01/GB in and out, every region |
| Access | SSH, Jupyter, Docker templates, vast CLI, REST API | Containers or full KVM VMs, SSH, Jupyter, REST API, CLI, Python SDK |
Vast.ai column: as published on vast.ai on 2026-09-04. Details change — verify before you decide.
Vast.ai vs PowerGPU prices, GPU by GPU
Public on-demand list prices per GPU-hour on Vast.ai's pricing page (2026-09-04) against PowerGPU's fixed rates today — every PowerGPU price is the public marketplace median × 0.70, rounded down, re-checked weekly.
| GPU | Vast.ai list | PowerGPU on-demand | PowerGPU interruptible | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| H100 SXM verified datacenter host, on-demand (unverified hosts run lower) | $2.21 | $1.428 | $0.714 | −35% on PowerGPU |
| H100 PCIE verified datacenter host, on-demand, from; unverified hosts reported from $0.90 | $1.50 | $1.867 | $0.933 | +24% on PowerGPU |
| H200 on-demand marketplace median; verified-host listings from ~$3.70 | $3.82 | $2.791 | $1.395 | −27% on PowerGPU |
| B200 on-demand marketplace median, Jul 2026; interruptible from $5.94 | $6.80 | $5.425 | $2.712 | −20% on PowerGPU |
| A100 SXM4 80 GB, verified datacenter host, on-demand | $1.32 | $0.560 | $0.280 | −58% on PowerGPU |
| RTX 5090 cheapest verified in-stock on-demand, Sep 2 2026; broader range from $0.29 | $0.33 | $0.439 | $0.219 | +33% on PowerGPU |
| RTX 4090 verified datacenter host, on-demand; unverified/community from ~$0.29 | $0.39 | $0.327 | $0.163 | −16% on PowerGPU |
| RTX A6000 verified datacenter host, on-demand | $0.41 | $0.281 | $0.140 | −31% on PowerGPU |
| RTX 3090 on-demand, broad marketplace median (not verified-only) | $0.22 | $0.108 | $0.054 | −51% on PowerGPU |
| L40S on-demand, broad marketplace median (not verified-only) | $0.48 | $0.514 | $0.257 | +7% on PowerGPU |
Configurations differ (node sizes, tiers, regions); the note beside each card says which Vast.ai price is quoted. Negative differences mean Vast.ai is cheaper on that card.
When to stay with Vast.ai
- The absolute floor price on consumer cards: unverified and community hosts routinely list the RTX 3090, 4090 and 5090 under PowerGPU's on-demand rate, and interruptible bids go lower still, if host-by-host variance is an acceptable trade-off.
- DLPerf and per-host reliability scores let you shop performance and risk directly, and 68+ GPU types — down to old Pascal and Turing cards — cover configurations no fixed-catalogue cloud stocks.
- 1, 3 and 6-month reserved contracts negotiated directly with a specific host, if locking in one known machine matters more than a uniform fleet.
Why teams switch to PowerGPU
- Every PowerGPU instance already clears Vast's own bar for a verified-datacenter host — Tier-III facility, audited uptime — at one fixed price, with no DLPerf shopping or reliability-score checking needed.
- On flagship datacenter cards the fixed price (market median × 0.70) is usually at or below Vast's own verified-host rate: Vast lists the H100 SXM at $2.21/hr and the A100 80 GB at $1.32/hr on verified hosts (checked 2026-09-04); unverified prices below that carry the interruption and data-loss risk Vast's own documentation warns about.
- Storage that is not exposed to a host-set rate billing continuously while stopped: a flat $0.08/GB/month here, the same price on every machine.
- More coins, no processor pass-through: USDT (TRC-20/ERC-20), BTC, XMR, LTC, ETH, TRX and SOL directly, no KYC step — Vast's crypto option runs through BitPay or Crypto.com, which apply their own verification.
Switching from Vast.ai: what maps to what
| On Vast.ai | On PowerGPU |
|---|---|
| Community / unverified host listing | Instance on a verified Tier-III datacenter — the same bar as Vast's own verified badge, on every machine |
| Datacenter-verified host | Instance — verified is the only tier, at one fixed price |
| Interruptible bid | Interruptible instance, flat −50% |
| Reserved host (1/3/6-month) | Reserved instance, −35% from 3 months |
| DLPerf / reliability score | Uniform hardware baseline, 99.9% SLA on every machine |
| vast CLI / API | powergpu CLI / REST API |
pip install powergpu
export POWERGPU_API_KEY=pg_live_… # console → API keys
powergpu launch --gpu h100-sxm --template pytorch --disk 100 --volume data:/data
# ✓ instance i-52ab77c1 running (24.1s) · $1.428/hr · per second
powergpu stop i-52ab77c1 # billing ends this secondData moves the boring way: rsync or rclone from your Vast.ai machine to a PowerGPU volume, which then mounts on every future instance in seconds. Templates for PyTorch, vLLM, ComfyUI and Ollama are official images; anything else runs from its OCI reference.
A real month, costed
| Scenario | Vast.ai | PowerGPU |
|---|---|---|
| 1× H100 SXM, 730 hours on-demand | $1,613 | $1,042 |
| 1× H100 SXM, 8 h/day × 20 days | $354 | $228 |
| Same 160 hours, PowerGPU interruptible | — | $114 |
| 500 GB of storage, one month | Host-set, typically $0.10-0.15/GB/month, billed continuously even when stopped | $40 |
Run your own schedule through the cost calculator — it adds storage and bandwidth and compares against the marketplace median.
Vast.ai alternative: FAQ
Is PowerGPU cheaper than Vast.ai?
It depends which part of Vast's market you compare against. On verified-datacenter-host pricing, generally yes: Vast lists the H100 SXM at $2.21/hr and the A100 80 GB at $1.32/hr on verified hosts (checked 2026-09-04), while PowerGPU fixes both at the public market median × 0.70. On consumer cards, Vast's cheapest unverified and interruptible listings can undercut PowerGPU — the RTX 4090 has been seen from about $0.29/hr on unverified hosts versus $0.39/hr on Vast's own verified hosts (checked 2026-09-04) — in exchange for the host-by-host reliability risk PowerGPU does not carry.
What is DLPerf, and do I need to check it on PowerGPU?
DLPerf is Vast's synthetic deep-learning benchmark score, used to compare real throughput across hosts running the same GPU model, since cooling and power delivery vary machine to machine on a marketplace. PowerGPU does not publish an equivalent score because every machine sits in the same class of verified Tier-III facility — the variance DLPerf exists to catch is the thing being removed.
Can I still bid for the absolute cheapest GPU-hour like on Vast?
No — PowerGPU publishes one price per GPU and a flat −50% interruptible tier instead of a bidding system. That is a deliberate trade: no auction to watch, but no path to Vast's occasional rock-bottom unverified listing either.
Does PowerGPU accept the same payment methods as Vast.ai?
Both take crypto, differently: Vast routes it through BitPay or Crypto.com on top of card-first billing; PowerGPU is crypto-only — USDT (TRC-20/ERC-20), BTC, XMR, LTC, ETH, TRX and SOL directly, with no card and no KYC at any step.
Try the switch for the price of a coffee
Top up $40 in USDT or Monero, deploy the same image you run on Vast.ai, and benchmark it. No card, no KYC, per-second billing — stop it the minute you are done.
Vast.ai and its logo are trademarks of their owner, used here only to identify the compared service; PowerGPU is not affiliated with Vast.ai. NVIDIA GPU names are trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation.
