Vast.ai vs Lambda
OCT 2026 auditA comparison of Vast.ai and Lambda built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.
The short answer
Choose Vast.ai if…
Price-sensitive training and batch inference that can tolerate a marketplace — the median H100 SXM rate sits below what every managed cloud here lists for the same card, and interruptible capacity goes lower still.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Choose Lambda if…
Renting exactly the instance shape you need — Lambda publishes 1x, 2x, 4x and 8x plans for the same card, so a single H100 is a real product rather than a fraction of a node.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Consider something else if…
- Vast.ai: There is no single price to plan against: rates move with supply, the host is not Vast itself, and an interruptible instance can be reclaimed mid-run.
- Lambda: You want the cheapest single H100: its H100 SXM is $4.29 per GPU-hour single-card, more than Hyperstack ($3.20) and RunPod ($3.99) charge for the same card, though under Crusoe and Nebius at $4.50, and reserved capacity is quoted through sales rather than published.
Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: Lambda alternatives
17 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.
Pick the criteria you care about. The chart counts how many of them lean toward each provider — the same read as scanning the bars below, just totalled for the ones you chose.
Vast.ai 0
Lambda 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | Vast.ai | Lambda |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Entry paid plan | $5 minimum deposit to add account credit before renting a GPU — there are no plan tiers, only prepaid credit drawn down by usage. | Pay-as-you-go per GPU-hour rather than a monthly plan: the cheapest self-serve instance is a 1x Quadro RTX 6000 at $0.69 per GPU-hour plus sales tax. |
| Pricing model | A marketplace rather than a cloud: prices are set by supply and demand across more than 40 data centers, in on-demand, interruptible and reserved tiers. | On-Demand instances are priced by hourly usage and billed in one-minute increments; 1-Click Clusters per GPU per hour billed weekly; filesystems per GiB used per month. |
| Infrastructure | ||
| Regions | On-demand instances span 40+ data centers with 20,000+ GPUs listed across the marketplace. Marketplace of third-party hosts; no named region list is published, offers are filtered by country code. | 14 On-Demand Cloud regions: nine in the USA plus Tokyo, Osaka, India, Germany and Israel. Not every instance type is available in every region. |
| GPU | ||
| H100 SXM, per GPU-hour | Median $2.40 per hour for H100 SXM 80GB, with a floor of $1.73 from the cheapest host. Vast is a marketplace — the floor is one host's offer at one moment and the median is what the market is actually charging, so both move without anyone announcing anything. This figure is a snapshot, not a rate card. | $4.29 per GPU-hour for H100 SXM 80GB on a single-GPU instance, falling to $3.99 on an 8-GPU node. The PCIe variant is $3.29. |
| Cheapest GPU, per hour | $0.03 per hour, the floor from the cheapest host, shared by 4 cards: GTX TITAN X 12GB (median $0.04), RTX A2000 6GB (median $0.06), RTX 3060 12GB (median $0.07) and Tesla P100 16GB (median $0.09). The lowest median on the page is $0.04, for the GTX TITAN X. | $0.69 per GPU-hour for a Quadro RTX 6000 with 24GB; the V100 is $0.79 and the A6000 $1.09. |
| Largest GPU offered | 288GB per GPU on B300 Blackwell Ultra, from $9.93 an hour with a median of $9.93. B200 at 192GB is from $6.25 with a median of $9.13. | 180GB per GPU on B200 SXM6, from $6.69 per GPU-hour on an 8-GPU node to $6.99 on a single GPU. |
| Billing granularity | Per-second billing on GPU rentals: charged down to the second, with no minimum hours and no rounding up. | By the minute. |
| Reserved pricing | Up to 50% off by pre-paying for GPU time, the discount scaling with commitment length over 1, 3 or 6 month pre-paid periods. | Reserved capacity is quote-only. Committed 1-Click Clusters list $6.16-$5.54 per H100 GPU-hour and $9.86-$8.87 per B200 GPU-hour for 2 weeks-1 year, 16 to 256 GPUs. |
| Compliance | ||
| SOC 2 | SOC 2 Type 2 certification completed, audited by an independent third party against AICPA Trust Services Criteria; report available under a signed NDA. | SOC 2 Type II attestation, listed under the security and compliance pillar of Lambda's trust framework. |
| ISO 27001 | Listed only among certifications Secure Cloud datacenter partners may hold; encouraged and strengthens a partner's application but not strictly required. Appears under Secure Cloud datacenter partner requirements, not under Vast.ai's own Certifications & Standards. | ISO 27001 certified, alongside ISO 27017, 27701 and 22301. |
| HIPAA | HIPAA-covered workloads are supported on the Secure Cloud tier; Business Associate Agreements are available for qualifying customers. | Platform Guidelines, binding with the Cloud Terms of Service, prohibit submitting personal health information to the Services. Contractual prohibition on PHI, not a statement about a HIPAA audit or BAA. |
| GDPR / data residency | Standard DPA bars storing or transferring Personal Data outside the EEA absent an adequacy decision unless appropriate guarantees apply; SCCs incorporated. Covers Personal Data under the DPA; no EU-only workload region is offered as a product option. | Processes European personal data under the GDPR and relies primarily on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses for EEA, UK and Swiss transfers. |
| PCI DSS | Named only in the list of certifications Secure Cloud datacenter partners may hold, alongside HIPAA and HITRUST. Partner-held certification, not a platform certification claim. | Platform Guidelines, binding with the Cloud Terms of Service, prohibit submitting payment card or financial account information to the Services. Contractual prohibition on cardholder data, not a statement about a PCI DSS assessment. |
| Encryption at rest | The security FAQ puts this on the customer: for maximum security it advises encrypting sensitive data at rest and encrypting data before uploading. | All data on the 1-Click Cluster persistent file storage system is encrypted at rest using industry standard algorithms and parameters. |
| Role-based access control | Team roles assign permissions and access levels per member: Owner, Manager and Member defaults, plus custom roles built from read/write permission groups. | Two account-level roles, Admin and Member; both have full access to resources, while only admins invite users, change billing and manage workspaces. |
| Private networking / VPC | Overlay networks give instances on the same physical cluster a private virtual LAN separate from the host network and other tenants; Docker templates only. | 1-Click Cluster compute nodes sit on a dedicated network segment with no inbound firewall connectivity, on a logically isolated Ethernet fabric. |
| Dedicated infrastructure | The Clusters product provides dedicated environments scaling from tens to hundreds of GPUs or CPUs, with custom networking and storage configurations. | 1-Click Cluster compute nodes run on single-tenant hardware with GPUs, storage, memory and NICs unshared; management head nodes are multi-tenant. |
Where they differ.
Entry paid plan
- Vast.ai
- $5 minimum deposit to add account credit before renting a GPU — there are no plan tiers, only prepaid credit drawn down by usage.
- Lambda
- Pay-as-you-go per GPU-hour rather than a monthly plan: the cheapest self-serve instance is a 1x Quadro RTX 6000 at $0.69 per GPU-hour plus sales tax.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Sign up and rent your first GPU - Vast.ai Documentation: Affordable GPU Cloud Marketplace ↗
“The minimum deposit amount on Vast.ai is $5.”
Read 2026-10-17 · official docs · Report a correction
- GPU cloud pricing: rent NVIDIA H100, H200, and B200 | Lambda ↗
“Instances pricing Deploy NVIDIA B200, H100, A100, or GH200 instances in minutes with self-serve, first-come access. [...] NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 24 GB 14 46 GiB 512 GiB SSD $0.69 [...] * plus applicable sales tax/VAT/GST”
Read 2026-10-17 · official pricing · Report a correction
Pricing model
- Vast.ai
- A marketplace rather than a cloud: prices are set by supply and demand across more than 40 data centers, in on-demand, interruptible and reserved tiers.
- Lambda
- On-Demand instances are priced by hourly usage and billed in one-minute increments; 1-Click Clusters per GPU per hour billed weekly; filesystems per GiB used per month.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- GPU Pricing — Live Platform Rates | Vast.ai ↗
“GPU Pricing - Live Platform Rates Prices set by supply and demand across 40+ data centers. On-demand, interruptible, or reserved - find the right GPU at the right price.”
Read 2026-10-17 · official pricing · Report a correction
- Billing overview - Lambda Docs ↗
“ODC prices instances by hourly usage and bills in one-minute increments. [...] 1CCs are priced per GPU per hour and billed in weekly increments according to the terms of your reservation. [...] Filesystems are billed per GiB used per month in one-hour increments.”
Read 2026-10-17 · official docs · Report a correction
Regions
- Vast.ai
- On-demand instances span 40+ data centers with 20,000+ GPUs listed across the marketplace. Marketplace of third-party hosts; no named region list is published, offers are filtered by country code.
- Lambda
- 14 On-Demand Cloud regions: nine in the USA plus Tokyo, Osaka, India, Germany and Israel. Not every instance type is available in every region.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Rent GPUs | Vast.ai ↗
“On-demand instances across 40+ data centers and 20,000+ GPUs”
Read 2026-10-17 · official site · Report a correction
- Overview - Lambda Docs ↗
“Lambda resources are hosted in multiple locations worldwide. Not every instance type will be available in every region. [...] asia-northeast-1 Tokyo, Japan asia-northeast-2 Osaka, Japan asia-south-1 India europe-central-1 Germany me-west-1 Israel [...] us-east-1 Virginia, USA us-east-2 Washington DC, USA us-midwest-1 Illinois, USA us-south-1 Texas, USA us-south-2 North Texas, USA us-south-3 Central Texas, USA us-west-1 California, USA us-west-2 Arizona, USA us-west-3 Utah, USA”
Read 2026-10-17 · official docs · Report a correction
H100 SXM, per GPU-hour
- Vast.ai
- Median $2.40 per hour for H100 SXM 80GB, with a floor of $1.73 from the cheapest host. Vast is a marketplace — the floor is one host's offer at one moment and the median is what the market is actually charging, so both move without anyone announcing anything. This figure is a snapshot, not a rate card.
- Lambda
- $4.29 per GPU-hour for H100 SXM 80GB on a single-GPU instance, falling to $3.99 on an 8-GPU node. The PCIe variant is $3.29.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- GPU Pricing - Live Platform Rates | Vast.ai ↗
“H100 SXM Hopper 80GB VRAM from $1.73 /hr median $2.40/hr”
Read 2026-10-17 · official pricing · Report a correction
- GPU Cloud — Lambda ↗
“NVIDIA H100 SXM 80 GB 26 225 GiB 2.75 TiB SSD $4.29 NVIDIA H100 PCIe 80 GB 26 225 GiB 1 TiB SSD $3.29 [...] Launch GPU instance 8x 4x 2x 1x Plan VRAM/GPU vCPUs RAM STORAGE PRICE/GPU/HR* NVIDIA B200 SXM6 180 GB 208 2900 GiB 22 TiB SSD $6.69 NVIDIA H100 SXM 80 GB 208 1800 GiB 22 TiB SSD $3.99”
Read 2026-10-17 · official pricing · Report a correction
Cheapest GPU, per hour
- Vast.ai
- $0.03 per hour, the floor from the cheapest host, shared by 4 cards: GTX TITAN X 12GB (median $0.04), RTX A2000 6GB (median $0.06), RTX 3060 12GB (median $0.07) and Tesla P100 16GB (median $0.09). The lowest median on the page is $0.04, for the GTX TITAN X.
- Lambda
- $0.69 per GPU-hour for a Quadro RTX 6000 with 24GB; the V100 is $0.79 and the A6000 $1.09.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- GPU Pricing - Live Platform Rates | Vast.ai ↗
“GTX TITAN X Maxwell 12GB VRAM from $0.03 /hr median $0.04/hr [...] RTX A2000 Ampere 6GB VRAM from $0.03 /hr median $0.06/hr [...] RTX 3060 Ampere 12GB VRAM from $0.03 /hr median $0.07/hr [...] Tesla P100 Pascal 16GB VRAM from $0.03 /hr median $0.09/hr”
Read 2026-10-17 · official pricing · Report a correction
- GPU Cloud — Lambda ↗
“NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 24 GB 14 46 GiB 512 GiB SSD $0.69 [...] NVIDIA Tesla V100 16 GB 88 448 GiB 5.8 TiB SSD $0.79 [...] NVIDIA A6000 48 GB 14 100 GiB 512 GiB SSD $1.09”
Read 2026-10-17 · official pricing · Report a correction
Largest GPU offered
288GB per GPU on B300 Blackwell Ultra, from $9.93 an hour with a median of $9.93. B200 at 192GB is from $6.25 with a median of $9.13.
180GB per GPU on B200 SXM6, from $6.69 per GPU-hour on an 8-GPU node to $6.99 on a single GPU.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- GPU Pricing - Live Platform Rates | Vast.ai ↗
“B300 Blackwell Ultra 288GB VRAM from $9.93 /hr median $9.93/hr [...] B200 Blackwell 192GB VRAM from $6.25 /hr median $9.13/hr”
Read 2026-10-17 · official pricing · Report a correction
- GPU Cloud — Lambda ↗
“NVIDIA B200 SXM6 180 GB 208 2900 GiB 22 TiB SSD $6.69 [...] NVIDIA B200 SXM6 180 GB 26 360 GiB 2.75 TiB SSD $6.99”
Read 2026-10-17 · official pricing · Report a correction
Billing granularity
- Vast.ai
- Per-second billing on GPU rentals: charged down to the second, with no minimum hours and no rounding up.
- Lambda
- By the minute.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- GPU Pricing — Live Platform Rates | Vast.ai ↗
“Pay only for what you use, down to the second. No minimum hours, no rounding up, no surprise charges.”
Read 2026-10-17 · official pricing · Report a correction
- GPU Cloud — Lambda ↗
“Pay by the minute Transparent pricing with no egress fees.”
Read 2026-10-17 · official pricing · Report a correction
Reserved pricing
- Vast.ai
- Up to 50% off by pre-paying for GPU time, the discount scaling with commitment length over 1, 3 or 6 month pre-paid periods.
- Lambda
- Reserved capacity is quote-only. Committed 1-Click Clusters list $6.16-$5.54 per H100 GPU-hour and $9.86-$8.87 per B200 GPU-hour for 2 weeks-1 year, 16 to 256 GPUs.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Reserved Instances - Vast.ai Documentation: Affordable GPU Cloud Marketplace ↗
“Reserved instances allow you to get significant discounts (up to 50%) by pre-paying for GPU time [...] Discounts up to 50% based on commitment length [...] available pre-paid periods (e.g., 1 month, 3 months, 6 months)”
Read 2026-10-17 · official docs · Report a correction
- GPU cloud pricing: rent NVIDIA H100, H200, and B200 | Lambda ↗
“Contact us for reserved capacity at our lowest prices. [...] NVIDIA HGX B200 2 weeks – 1 year 16 $9.86 Talk to our team NVIDIA HGX B200 2 weeks – 1 year 64 $9.36 Talk to our team NVIDIA HGX B200 2 weeks – 1 year 256+ $8.87 Talk to our team NVIDIA HGX B200 1 year+ 16+ — Talk to our team [...] NVIDIA H100 2 weeks – 1 year 16 $6.16 Talk to our team NVIDIA H100 2 weeks – 1 year 64 $5.85 Talk to our team NVIDIA H100 2 weeks – 1 year 256 $5.54 Talk to our team NVIDIA H100 1 year+ 16+ — Talk to our team”
Read 2026-10-17 · official pricing · Report a correction
SOC 2
- Vast.ai
- SOC 2 Type 2 certification completed, audited by an independent third party against AICPA Trust Services Criteria; report available under a signed NDA.
- Lambda
- SOC 2 Type II attestation, listed under the security and compliance pillar of Lambda's trust framework.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Compliance | Vast.ai ↗
“Vast.ai has completed SOC 2 Type 2 certification. This audit, conducted by an independent third party, verified that our security, availability, and confidentiality controls meet AICPA Trust Services Criteria over a sustained observation period. The SOC 2 Type 2 report is available under a signed NDA”
Read 2026-10-17 · official site · Report a correction
- Trust | Lambda ↗
“SOC 2 Type II attestation. ISO 27001, 27017, 27701, and 22301 certified. Strict access controls, MFA, continuous monitoring.”
Read 2026-10-17 · official site · Report a correction
ISO 27001
- Vast.ai
- Listed only among certifications Secure Cloud datacenter partners may hold; encouraged and strengthens a partner's application but not strictly required. Appears under Secure Cloud datacenter partner requirements, not under Vast.ai's own Certifications & Standards.
- Lambda
- ISO 27001 certified, alongside ISO 27017, 27701 and 22301.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Compliance | Vast.ai ↗
“Certifications held by datacenter partners may include: [...] ISO 27001, ISO 20000-1, ISO 22301, ISO 14001 [...] Security certifications such as ISO 27001 or SOC 2 are encouraged and strengthen a partner's application, but are not strictly required for certification.”
Read 2026-10-17 · official site · Report a correction
- Trust | Lambda ↗
“ISO 27001, 27017, 27701, and 22301 certified. Strict access controls, MFA, continuous monitoring. Customer-governed access (revoke Lambda credentials anytime).”
Read 2026-10-17 · official site · Report a correction
HIPAA
- Vast.ai
- HIPAA-covered workloads are supported on the Secure Cloud tier; Business Associate Agreements are available for qualifying customers.
- Lambda
- Platform Guidelines, binding with the Cloud Terms of Service, prohibit submitting personal health information to the Services. Contractual prohibition on PHI, not a statement about a HIPAA audit or BAA.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Compliance | Vast.ai ↗
“Vast.ai supports HIPAA-covered workloads on our Secure Cloud tier. Technical safeguards — including data isolation, access controls, and audit logging — align with HIPAA requirements. Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) are available for qualifying customers.”
Read 2026-10-17 · official site · Report a correction
- Terms of Service | Lambda ↗
“These Platform Guidelines are intended to be read together with Lambda's Cloud Terms of Service [...] (x) submit any sensitive personal data or information to the Services (including government issued identification numbers, financial account information, payment card information, and personal health information) to the Services”
Read 2026-10-17 · official site · Report a correction
GDPR / data residency
- Vast.ai
- Standard DPA bars storing or transferring Personal Data outside the EEA absent an adequacy decision unless appropriate guarantees apply; SCCs incorporated. Covers Personal Data under the DPA; no EU-only workload region is offered as a product option.
- Lambda
- Processes European personal data under the GDPR and relies primarily on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses for EEA, UK and Swiss transfers.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Data Processing Agreement | Vast.ai ↗
“Processor shall not export, transfer, store, remotely access Personal Data, or permit any of the latter in/from a country which is not part of the European Economic Area and does not benefit from an adequacy recognition decision of the European Commission pursuant to Article 45 of the GDPR [...] the Parties hereby agree to and incorporate the Standard Contractual Clauses into this Agreement”
Read 2026-10-17 · official site · Report a correction
- Privacy Policy | Lambda ↗
“We rely primarily on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses to facilitate the international and onward transfer of personal information collected in the European Economic Area ("EEA"), the United Kingdom and Switzerland [...] Pursuant to the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, the UK General Data Protection Regulation (collectively, the "GDPR")”
Read 2026-10-17 · official site · Report a correction
PCI DSS
- Vast.ai
- Named only in the list of certifications Secure Cloud datacenter partners may hold, alongside HIPAA and HITRUST. Partner-held certification, not a platform certification claim.
- Lambda
- Platform Guidelines, binding with the Cloud Terms of Service, prohibit submitting payment card or financial account information to the Services. Contractual prohibition on cardholder data, not a statement about a PCI DSS assessment.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Compliance | Vast.ai ↗
“Certifications held by datacenter partners may include: [...] HIPAA, HITRUST, PCI DSS”
Read 2026-10-17 · official site · Report a correction
- Terms of Service | Lambda ↗
“These Platform Guidelines are intended to be read together with Lambda's Cloud Terms of Service [...] (x) submit any sensitive personal data or information to the Services (including government issued identification numbers, financial account information, payment card information, and personal health information) to the Services”
Read 2026-10-17 · official site · Report a correction
Encryption at rest
- Vast.ai
- The security FAQ puts this on the customer: for maximum security it advises encrypting sensitive data at rest and encrypting data before uploading.
- Lambda
- All data on the 1-Click Cluster persistent file storage system is encrypted at rest using industry standard algorithms and parameters.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Security FAQ - Vast.ai Documentation: Affordable GPU Cloud Marketplace ↗
“For maximum security: [...] Encrypt sensitive data at rest [...] Security checklist for sensitive workloads [...] Encrypt data before uploading”
Read 2026-10-17 · official docs · Report a correction
- Security posture - Lambda Docs ↗
“All 1CC compute and management nodes have pre-configured access to a customer-specific portion of a multi-tenant persistent file storage system. The storage system is on an isolated network accessible only to management and compute nodes. All data on the storage system is encrypted at rest using industry standard algorithms and parameters.”
Read 2026-10-17 · official docs · Report a correction
Role-based access control
- Vast.ai
- Team roles assign permissions and access levels per member: Owner, Manager and Member defaults, plus custom roles built from read/write permission groups.
- Lambda
- Two account-level roles, Admin and Member; both have full access to resources, while only admins invite users, change billing and manage workspaces.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Teams Roles - Vast.ai Documentation: Affordable GPU Cloud Marketplace ↗
“Team roles in Vast.ai's platform are designed to streamline collaboration and enhance security by assigning specific permissions and access levels to different members of a team. [...] Custom roles allow team managers to create roles with custom, tailored permissions via permission groups.”
Read 2026-10-17 · official docs · Report a correction
- Access and security overview - Lambda Docs ↗
“When you invite new members to your Lambda Cloud account, you assign them one of two roles: Admin or Member . Both roles have full access to your Lambda resources. [...] Admins can also: Invite new users to the account or remove users from the account Modify billing information Update account details, such as the account name Manage workspaces and their memberships”
Read 2026-10-17 · official docs · Report a correction
Private networking / VPC
- Vast.ai
- Overlay networks give instances on the same physical cluster a private virtual LAN separate from the host network and other tenants; Docker templates only.
- Lambda
- 1-Click Cluster compute nodes sit on a dedicated network segment with no inbound firewall connectivity, on a logically isolated Ethernet fabric.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Multi-Node training using Torch + NCCL - Vast.ai Documentation: Affordable GPU Cloud Marketplace ↗
“allowing client instances on different machines on the same physical LAN to share a private, virtual LAN separate from both the host network and the networks of other clients' instances [...] Private networking currently only available on Docker-based templates; not available for VM-based templates”
Read 2026-10-17 · official docs · Report a correction
- Security posture - Lambda Docs ↗
“Compute nodes live on a dedicated network segment with no inbound connectivity from the firewall. [...] 1CC compute and management nodes share a logically isolated Ethernet switching fabric.”
Read 2026-10-17 · official docs · Report a correction
Dedicated infrastructure
- Vast.ai
- The Clusters product provides dedicated environments scaling from tens to hundreds of GPUs or CPUs, with custom networking and storage configurations.
- Lambda
- 1-Click Cluster compute nodes run on single-tenant hardware with GPUs, storage, memory and NICs unshared; management head nodes are multi-tenant.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- GPU Clusters | Vast.ai ↗
“Our dedicated environments ensure reliable throughput and flexible resource allocations [...] Seamlessly scale from tens to hundreds of GPUs or CPUs [...] Get exactly the CPU/GPU mix you need, plus custom networking and storage configurations”
Read 2026-10-17 · official site · Report a correction
- Security posture - Lambda Docs ↗
“1CC compute nodes run on single-tenant hardware with tenant isolation enforced using logical network segmentation. Underlying hardware resources, including GPUs, local storage, memory, and network interfaces, aren't shared with or accessible by any other customers. [...] 1CC management nodes run on multi-tenant hardware with tenant isolation enforced using hardware virtualization.”
Read 2026-10-17 · official docs · Report a correction
When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.
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 — except where we say we read the other provider's own page on a given date and it does not state it. Those rows lean, and the provider can correct them with a link.
Questions this comparison answers.
Entry paid plan: Vast.ai or Lambda?
Vast.ai: $5 minimum deposit to add account credit before renting a GPU — there are no plan tiers, only prepaid credit drawn down by usage.
Lambda: Pay-as-you-go per GPU-hour rather than a monthly plan: the cheapest self-serve instance is a 1x Quadro RTX 6000 at $0.69 per GPU-hour plus sales tax.
Should I choose Vast.ai or Lambda?
Pick Vast.ai if Price-sensitive training and batch inference that can tolerate a marketplace — the median H100 SXM rate sits below what every managed cloud here lists for the same card, and interruptible capacity goes lower still.
Pick Lambda if Renting exactly the instance shape you need — Lambda publishes 1x, 2x, 4x and 8x plans for the same card, so a single H100 is a real product rather than a fraction of a node.
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