# Replicate vs RunPod

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/replicate-vs-runpod/

Every value below is read from Replicate's and RunPod's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | Replicate | RunPod |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Pricing model | Two meters, chosen by the model rather than by you. Public models bill per run — per output image, per thousand tokens, per second of video. Private models you deploy yourself run on dedicated hardware and bill for THE TIME THEY SPEND SETTING UP, THE TIME THEY SPEND IDLE and the time they spend active. Fast-booting fine-tunes are the exception and bill active time only. | Prepaid credit balance drawn down by usage: all compute and storage billed per second, with no data transfer fees and no monthly plan tiers. |
| H100 SXM, per GPU-hour | $5.49 per hour for a single Nvidia H100 with 80GB of GPU RAM, published as $0.001525 per second — the rate the per-second meter actually charges. | $3.49 per hour for H100 SXM 80GB, single card. The PCIe variant is $2.89 and H100 NVL is $3.19. |
| Cheapest GPU, per hour | $0.81 per hour for an Nvidia T4 with 16GB, the cheapest GPU on the hardware list. A CPU-only instance is cheaper still at $0.09 an hour. | $0.27 per hour for an RTX A5000 with 24GB. RTX 3090 is $0.50, RTX 4090 $0.74, L40S $1.09. |
| Largest GPU offered | 160GB on the 2x Nvidia A100 (80GB) instance, the largest GPU RAM figure the hardware table states. Larger multi-GPU A100, H100 and H200 configurations are listed but carry no stated GPU RAM and are sold only with committed spend contracts. | 288GB per GPU on B300; B200 at 180GB is $6.79 an hour and H200 at 141GB is $4.59. |
| Billing granularity | Per second. Every hardware row publishes a per-second rate alongside the hourly one, and the per-second figure is the meter. | Per second, with per-hour rates shown for comparison. Clusters can be started with no commitment and scaled to 64 GPUs. |

## Where they differ

### Pricing model

- Replicate: Two meters, chosen by the model rather than by you. Public models bill per run — per output image, per thousand tokens, per second of video. Private models you deploy yourself run on dedicated hardware and bill for THE TIME THEY SPEND SETTING UP, THE TIME THEY SPEND IDLE and the time they spend active. Fast-booting fine-tunes are the exception and bill active time only. ([source](https://replicate.com/pricing))
- RunPod: Prepaid credit balance drawn down by usage: all compute and storage billed per second, with no data transfer fees and no monthly plan tiers. ([source](https://docs.runpod.io/accounts-billing/billing))

### H100 SXM, per GPU-hour

- Replicate: $5.49 per hour for a single Nvidia H100 with 80GB of GPU RAM, published as $0.001525 per second — the rate the per-second meter actually charges. ([source](https://replicate.com/pricing))
- RunPod: $3.49 per hour for H100 SXM 80GB, single card. The PCIe variant is $2.89 and H100 NVL is $3.19. ([source](https://www.runpod.io/pricing))

### Cheapest GPU, per hour

- Replicate: $0.81 per hour for an Nvidia T4 with 16GB, the cheapest GPU on the hardware list. A CPU-only instance is cheaper still at $0.09 an hour. ([source](https://replicate.com/pricing))
- RunPod: $0.27 per hour for an RTX A5000 with 24GB. RTX 3090 is $0.50, RTX 4090 $0.74, L40S $1.09. ([source](https://www.runpod.io/pricing))

### Largest GPU offered

- Replicate: 160GB on the 2x Nvidia A100 (80GB) instance, the largest GPU RAM figure the hardware table states. Larger multi-GPU A100, H100 and H200 configurations are listed but carry no stated GPU RAM and are sold only with committed spend contracts. ([source](https://replicate.com/pricing))
- RunPod: 288GB per GPU on B300; B200 at 180GB is $6.79 an hour and H200 at 141GB is $4.59. ([source](https://www.runpod.io/pricing))

### Billing granularity

- Replicate: Per second. Every hardware row publishes a per-second rate alongside the hourly one, and the per-second figure is the meter. ([source](https://replicate.com/pricing))
- RunPod: Per second, with per-hour rates shown for comparison. Clusters can be started with no commitment and scaled to 64 GPUs. ([source](https://www.runpod.io/pricing))

## Which should you choose?

Pick Replicate if Running someone else's open model without packaging anything. Thousands of public models bill per run — per output image, per thousand tokens, per second of video — so a workload that fires occasionally pays only for the firing, with no instance to keep warm.

Pick RunPod if Short experiments and bursty inference — per-second billing and a $0.27 entry card mean an idle hour costs nothing and a small job is genuinely small.

Consider something else: Replicate — You are deploying your own model and it will sit idle. Private models bill the time they spend setting up and waiting as well as working; only fast-booting fine-tunes escape that. The H100 hour is $5.49, against $3.95 on Modal and $3.49 on RunPod.

Consider something else: RunPod — The catalogue mixes community and secure capacity, so the cheapest quoted rate is not always the tier a production workload should sit on.

## Documented by only one

- Entry paid plan: RunPod: No plan tiers: a new account can start with as little as $10 in prepaid credits, and deploying a Pod requires at least one hour of credits for the chosen configuration.
- Scales to zero: Replicate: Not supported — Private models bill idle time; fast-booting fine-tunes do not
- Autoscaling: Replicate: Supported — Scales up and down automatically with traffic
- Regions: RunPod: 31 regions across the US, Europe, Asia and Australia for on-demand GPU instances.
- Uptime SLA: RunPod: SLA-backed uptime is offered on reserved clusters, which are sold by contract. No percentage is published on the pricing page, and on-demand pods carry no stated commitment.
- Storage price: RunPod: Persistent storage from $0.05 per GB per month, in standard and high-performance tiers.
- Reserved pricing: RunPod: Savings plans: a 3-month or 6-month upfront prepaid commitment discounts GPU compute costs; storage stays at standard rates and plans are non-refundable.
- Support on entry paid plan: Replicate: Nothing named on the standard product. A dedicated account manager, priority support, higher GPU limits and performance SLAs are all listed under Enterprise and volume discounts, reached by contacting Replicate rather than by picking a plan.
- SOC 2: RunPod: SOC 2 Type II and SOC 3 examinations completed; reports are listed in the Runpod Trust Center and some require approved access before download.
- ISO 27001: RunPod: ISMS certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2022 by Sensiba LLP; certificate RUN-ISMS-20260827 valid 27 August 2026 through 26 August 2029. Scope limited to the ISMS supporting Runpod's services and platform, not individual products.
- HIPAA: RunPod: Maintains a HIPAA program; HIPAA sits among the Trust Center compliance resources, some of which require approved access before download.
- GDPR / data residency: RunPod: Stated fully GDPR compliant for data processed in European data center regions, with documented EU procedures for collection, storage, processing and deletion.
- PCI DSS: RunPod: Claimed for Secure Cloud's vetted infrastructure partners, who meet enterprise standards including SOC 2, ISO 27001 and PCI DSS certifications. Stated of the data-centre partners behind Secure Cloud, not of Runpod Inc. itself.
- Encryption at rest: RunPod: Optional per-Pod volume encryption: the volume disk is encrypted at rest on the host machine, but container disk and network volumes cannot be encrypted.
- Customer-managed keys: RunPod: Not supported: Runpod stores the volume encryption key, which cannot be retrieved, and the docs state bring your own key is not supported.
- Role-based access control: RunPod: Four team roles — Basic, Billing, Dev and Admin — each with set permissions; Admin has unrestricted access to members, settings, billing and resources.
- Private networking / VPC: RunPod: Global networking gives each Pod a private IP reachable only by other Pods in the same account; NVIDIA GPU Pods only, in 17 data centers.
- Dedicated infrastructure: RunPod: Reserved Clusters: dedicated GPU clusters with guaranteed availability, custom configurations and SLA-backed uptime for enterprises scaling to 10,000+ GPUs.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Should I choose Replicate or RunPod?**

Pick Replicate if Running someone else's open model without packaging anything. Thousands of public models bill per run — per output image, per thousand tokens, per second of video — so a workload that fires occasionally pays only for the firing, with no instance to keep warm.
Pick RunPod if Short experiments and bursty inference — per-second billing and a $0.27 entry card mean an idle hour costs nothing and a small job is genuinely small.