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Replicate vs RunPod

SEPT 2026 audit

A comparison of Replicate and RunPod built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.

Updated 23 criteria comparedSources last checked

The short answer

Choose 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.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Choose 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.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Consider something else if…

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

5 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.

Visit Replicate documentationVisit RunPod documentation

No affiliate links, sponsored placements or paid rankings appear on this site. Ordering follows the sourced data and the stated criteria.

01.

At a glance.

CriterionReplicateRunPod
Pricing
Pricing modelTwo 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.
GPU
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 granularityPer 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.

Only criteria both providers publish appear here; a tinted cell marks a real difference. Criteria only one of them documents are listed below, and an absence there means we found no source — not that the feature is missing. How we source this.

The small bar above a value is inetGeek's own lean toward that side — computed from the same facts shown, never a number the provider published. See the picker below "The short answer" to weigh only the criteria you care about.

02.

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.
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.
Sources (2) →
  • Pricing – Replicate ↗

    “e they spend setting up; the time they spend idle, waiting for requests; and the time they spend active, processing your requests. If you ge”

    Read 2026-09-17 · official pricing

  • Billing overview - Runpod Documentation ↗

    “Runpod uses a credit-based billing system where you add funds to your account and charges are deducted as you use resources. All compute and storage charges are billed per second, with no fees for data transfer.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs

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.
RunPod
$3.49 per hour for H100 SXM 80GB, single card. The PCIe variant is $2.89 and H100 NVL is $3.19.
Sources (2) →
  • Pricing – Replicate ↗

    “GPU RAM 160GB RAM 288GB Nvidia H100 GPU gpu-h100 $ 0.001525 /sec $ 5.49 /hr GPU 1x CPU 13x GPU RAM 80GB RAM 144GB Nvidia L40S GPU gpu-l40s”

    Read 2026-09-17 · official pricing

  • Pricing — RunPod ↗

    “H100 SXM 80 GB VRAM 125 GB RAM 20 vCPUs $ 3.49 /hr [...] H100 PCIe 80 GB VRAM 188 GB RAM 16 vCPUs $ 2.89 /hr [...] H100 NVL 94 GB VRAM 94 GB RAM 16 vCPUs $ 3.19 /hr”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official 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.
RunPod
$0.27 per hour for an RTX A5000 with 24GB. RTX 3090 is $0.50, RTX 4090 $0.74, L40S $1.09.
Sources (2) →
  • Pricing – Replicate ↗

    “x GPU RAM 96GB RAM 144GB Nvidia T4 GPU gpu-t4 $ 0.000225 /sec $ 0.81 /hr GPU 1x CPU 4x GPU RAM 16GB RAM 16GB Additional hardware 4x Nvidia A”

    Read 2026-09-17 · official pricing

  • Pricing — RunPod ↗

    “RTX A5000 24 GB VRAM 25 GB RAM 9 vCPUs $ 0.27 /hr [...] RTX 3090 24 GB VRAM [...] $ 0.5 /hr [...] L40S 48 GB VRAM 94 GB RAM 16 vCPUs $ 1.09 /hr”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official 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.

RunPod

288GB per GPU on B300; B200 at 180GB is $6.79 an hour and H200 at 141GB is $4.59.

Sources (2) →
  • Pricing – Replicate ↗

    “x GPU RAM 80GB RAM 144GB 2x Nvidia A100 (80GB) GPU gpu-a100-large-2x $ 0.002800 /sec $ 10.08 /hr GPU 2x CPU 20x GPU RAM 160GB RAM 288GB Nvid”

    Read 2026-09-17 · official pricing

  • Pricing — RunPod ↗

    “B300 288 GB HBM3e 251 GB RAM 32 vCPUs [...] B200 180 GB VRAM 283 GB RAM 28 vCPUs $ 6.79 /hr [...] H200 141 GB VRAM 276 GB RAM 24 vCPUs $ 4.59 /hr”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official 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.
RunPod
Per second, with per-hour rates shown for comparison. Clusters can be started with no commitment and scaled to 64 GPUs.
Sources (2) →
  • Pricing – Replicate ↗

    “GPU RAM 160GB RAM 288GB Nvidia H100 GPU gpu-h100 $ 0.001525 /sec $ 5.49 /hr GPU 1x CPU 13x GPU RAM 80GB RAM 144GB Nvidia L40S GPU gpu-l40s”

    Read 2026-09-17 · official pricing

  • Pricing — RunPod ↗

    “Per hour Per second [...] GPU clusters in minutes with no commitments. Scale up to 64 GPUs, attach shared storage, and pay only for what you use”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing

When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.

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03.

Documented by only one.

These criteria are published by one provider and not the other. An absence here means we have not found a source, not that the feature is missing.

Entry paid planRunPod: 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 zeroReplicate: Not supported — Private models bill idle time; fast-booting fine-tunes do not
AutoscalingReplicate: Supported — Scales up and down automatically with traffic
RegionsRunPod: 31 regions across the US, Europe, Asia and Australia for on-demand GPU instances.
Uptime SLARunPod: 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 priceRunPod: Persistent storage from $0.05 per GB per month, in standard and high-performance tiers.
Reserved pricingRunPod: 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 planReplicate: 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 2RunPod: 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 27001RunPod: 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.
HIPAARunPod: Maintains a HIPAA program; HIPAA sits among the Trust Center compliance resources, some of which require approved access before download.
GDPR / data residencyRunPod: Stated fully GDPR compliant for data processed in European data center regions, with documented EU procedures for collection, storage, processing and deletion.
PCI DSSRunPod: 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 restRunPod: 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 keysRunPod: 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 controlRunPod: Four team roles — Basic, Billing, Dev and Admin — each with set permissions; Admin has unrestricted access to members, settings, billing and resources.
Private networking / VPCRunPod: 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 infrastructureRunPod: Reserved Clusters: dedicated GPU clusters with guaranteed availability, custom configurations and SLA-backed uptime for enterprises scaling to 10,000+ GPUs.
04.

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.

Provider pages

ReplicateA marketplace of open-source models billed by the second of hardware time, where deploying your own model means paying for the seconds it sits idle too.RunPodPer-GPU cloud billed by the second, with community and secure tiers and no minimum commitment.

Related comparisons

CoreWeave vs RunPodModal vs RunPodReplicate vs BasetenReplicate vs ModalRunPod vs BasetenRunPod vs HyperstackRunPod vs LambdaVast.ai vs RunPod

Every page here is sourced and dated.