---
title: "L40S vs A100 PCIE: Specs & Price per Hour (2026) | PowerGPU"
description: "L40S vs A100 PCIE: 48 vs 80 GB VRAM, 362 vs 312 FP16 TFLOPS, $0.514 vs $0.374/hr on PowerGPU. Specs side by side, live rental prices, which to rent."
url: https://powergpu.ai/compare/l40s-vs-a100-pcie
last_modified: 2026-09-14T11:04:20+00:00
prices_as_of: 2026-09-14
site: PowerGPU (powergpu.ai)
---

Compare · prices checked 2026-09-14

# L40S vs A100 PCIE: specs, price per hour, which to rent

NVIDIA L40S (48 GB, **$0.514** /hr) against NVIDIA A100 PCIE (80 GB, **$0.374** /hr): public specs side by side, live fixed prices from our sheet, what fits in each card's VRAM, and a verdict written for real workloads — both are rentable right now.

- [NVIDIA L40S Ada Lovelace · 48 GB GDDR6 · 362 FP16 TFLOPS · $0.514/hr on-demand · $0.257/hr interruptible · 107 online](https://powergpu.ai/gpu/l40s)
- [NVIDIA A100 PCIE Ampere · 80 GB HBM2e · 312 FP16 TFLOPS · $0.374/hr on-demand · $0.187/hr interruptible · 46 online](https://powergpu.ai/gpu/a100-pcie)

## L40S vs A100 PCIE specifications

Public NVIDIA figures (dense, non-sparsity). The last column is L40S relative to A100 PCIE.

| Spec | L40S | A100 PCIE | Difference |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Architecture | Ada Lovelace (2023) | Ampere (2021) | — |
| VRAM | 48 GB GDDR6 | 80 GB HBM2e | −40% |
| Memory bandwidth | 864 GB/s | 1,935 GB/s | −55% |
| FP16 tensor (dense) | 362 TFLOPS | 312 TFLOPS | +16% |
| FP32 | 91.6 TFLOPS | 19.5 TFLOPS | +370% |
| CUDA cores | 18,176 | 6,912 | +163% |
| TDP | 350 W | 300 W | +17% |
| PCIe · NVLink | Gen 4.0 · no NVLink | Gen 4.0 · no NVLink | — |
| PowerScore (RTX 3090 = 100) | 255 | 220 | +16% |
| Max GPUs per machine | 8× | 8× | — |

## L40S vs A100 PCIE price per hour

Fixed rates from our sheet — every on-demand price is the marketplace median × 0.70, rounded down. Monthly = 730 hours.

| Rate | L40S | A100 PCIE | Cheaper |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| On-demand, per GPU-hour | $0.514 | $0.374 | A100 PCIE (−27%) |
| Interruptible, per GPU-hour | $0.257 | $0.187 | A100 PCIE |
| Reserved (3 mo), per GPU-hour | $0.334 | $0.243 | A100 PCIE |
| On-demand, per month | $375 | $273 | A100 PCIE |
| Market median (reference) | $0.74 | $0.54 | — |
| $ per 1,000 FP16 TFLOP-hours | $1.42 | $1.20 | A100 PCIE (better value) |
| $ per GB of VRAM per hour | $0.0107 | $0.0047 | A100 PCIE (better value) |

Try a full month with storage and bandwidth in the [GPU cost calculator](https://powergpu.ai/calculator).

## What fits in VRAM: 48 GB vs 80 GB

| Workload | L40S | A100 PCIE |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Largest LLM in FP16, one card | ~14B | ~32B |
| Largest LLM at 4-bit, one card | ~72B | ~123B |
| Flux dev (FP8, ~17 GB) | fits | fits |
| Wan 2.x 14B video (offloaded) | yes | yes |
| 70B 4-bit LLM on one card | yes | yes |

Rules of thumb: ~2.4 GB per billion parameters in FP16 all-in, ~0.62 GB in 4-bit. Full tables in the [VRAM guide](https://powergpu.ai/guides/llm-vram-requirements).

## Verdict: which should you rent?

The L40S (48 GB GDDR6, Ada, FP8) is faster for FP16/FP8 inference and image generation; the A100 PCIe (80 GB HBM2e) has more memory, more bandwidth and FP64. Pick the L40S for diffusion and ≤32B serving, the A100 for 70B models and training.

- **Cheaper per hour:** A100 PCIE ($0.374 vs $0.514, −27%).
- **More VRAM:** A100 PCIE (80 GB vs 48 GB).
- **More FP16 throughput:** L40S (about 1.2×).
- **Best value per TFLOP-hour:** A100 PCIE.
- **Best value per GB of VRAM:** A100 PCIE.
- **Multi-GPU:** L40S over PCIe · A100 PCIE over PCIe.

## Related comparisons

[All comparisons](https://powergpu.ai/compare)

- [H100 PCIE vs A100 PCIE $1.867 vs $0.374 per hour](https://powergpu.ai/compare/h100-pcie-vs-a100-pcie)
- [A100 SXM4 vs A100 PCIE $0.560 vs $0.374 per hour](https://powergpu.ai/compare/a100-sxm4-vs-a100-pcie)
- [RTX 4090 vs A100 PCIE $0.327 vs $0.374 per hour](https://powergpu.ai/compare/rtx-4090-vs-a100-pcie)
- [RTX 4090 vs L40S $0.327 vs $0.514 per hour](https://powergpu.ai/compare/rtx-4090-vs-l40s)
- [L40S vs H100 PCIE $0.514 vs $1.867 per hour](https://powergpu.ai/compare/l40s-vs-h100-pcie)
- [RTX 5090 vs L40S $0.439 vs $0.514 per hour](https://powergpu.ai/compare/rtx-5090-vs-l40s)

## L40S vs A100 PCIE: FAQ

Deeper reading: [H100 vs H200 vs B200](https://powergpu.ai/guides/h100-vs-h200-vs-b200), [RTX 4090 vs RTX 5090](https://powergpu.ai/guides/rtx-4090-vs-rtx-5090), [how cloud GPU pricing works](https://powergpu.ai/guides/cloud-gpu-pricing-explained).

**Is the L40S faster than the A100 PCIE?**

On dense FP16 tensor throughput the L40S leads by about 1.2× (362 vs 312 TFLOPS). Memory bandwidth matters as much for inference: L40S 864 GB/s vs A100 PCIE 1,935 GB/s.

**Which is cheaper to rent, the L40S or the A100 PCIE?**

The A100 PCIE: $0.374/hr on-demand versus $0.514/hr — 27% less. Interruptible rates are $0.257 (L40S) and $0.187 (A100 PCIE). Per TFLOP-hour the better value is the A100 PCIE.

**Which has more VRAM and what does that change?**

The A100 PCIE has 80 GB versus 48 GB. In LLM terms that is roughly a 32B FP16 model (or ~123B in 4-bit) on one card against 14B FP16 (~72B 4-bit). If the model does not fit, speed is irrelevant.

**Can I rent both on PowerGPU right now?**

Yes — 107 × L40S and 46 × A100 PCIE are online as this page renders, deployable in about 30 seconds, billed per second, paid in crypto with no KYC.

---

*About PowerGPU:* PowerGPU (powergpu.ai) is a cloud GPU rental service offering 80 NVIDIA GPU models — from the RTX A2000 at $0.024/hr to the B300 — at fixed prices set at least 30% below the public GPU marketplace median and re-checked weekly (H100 SXM: $1.428/hr on-demand). Billing is per second with no minimums; payment is crypto only (USDT, BTC, XMR, ETH, SOL, LTC, TRX) with no KYC. Instances run in Tier-III datacenters across 32 regions with a 99.9% uptime SLA and deploy in about 30 seconds from the web console (cloud.powergpu.ai) or the REST API.

Source: https://powergpu.ai/compare/l40s-vs-a100-pcie · Site index for AI assistants: https://powergpu.ai/llms.txt · Full content: https://powergpu.ai/llms-full.txt