What is the difference between Microsoft Azure and Salad Cloud?

Microsoft Azure and Salad Cloud are both cloud GPU providers offering different pricing models, features, and GPU availability. Use our comparison tool to see real-time pricing and feature differences.

Which is cheaper: Microsoft Azure or Salad Cloud?

Pricing varies by GPU model and usage requirements. Check our real-time comparison table to find the best deals for your specific needs.

Can I switch between Microsoft Azure and Salad Cloud?

Yes, both providers offer flexible cloud GPU services. However, consider factors like data transfer costs, setup time, and specific features when switching between providers.

How many GPU models are available for comparison?

We track pricing for 45 different GPU models across both Microsoft Azure and Salad Cloud, with 0 models available from both providers.

Microsoft Azure vs Salad Cloud

Compare GPU and LLM inference API pricing between Microsoft Azure and Salad Cloud. Find the best rates for AI training, inference, and ML workloads.

Microsoft Azure

Provider 1

GPUs Available

Visit Website

Salad Cloud

Provider 2

GPUs Available

Visit Website

Comparison Overview

Total GPU Models

Microsoft Azure GPUs

Salad Cloud GPUs

Direct Comparisons

GPU Pricing Comparison

Total GPUs: 45Both available: 0Microsoft Azure: 8Salad Cloud: 37

Showing 15 of 45 GPUs

Last updated: 10/28/2026, 2:06:41 AM

GPU Model ↑	Microsoft Azure Price	Salad Cloud Price	Price Diff ↕	Sources
A100 PCIe 80GB 80GB VRAM • Microsoft Azure	$3.67/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Azure Retail Prices API
A100 PCIe 80GB 80GB VRAM • Microsoft Azure $3.67/hour Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Azure Retail Prices API
A100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Microsoft Azure	$4.10/hr★ Best 8x GPU	Not Available	—	Azure Retail Prices API
A100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Microsoft Azure $4.10/hour 8x GPU configuration Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Azure Retail Prices API
A100 SXM 40GB 40GB VRAM • Microsoft Azure	$3.40/hr★ Best 8x GPU	Not Available	—	Azure Retail Prices API
A100 SXM 40GB 40GB VRAM • Microsoft Azure $3.40/hour 8x GPU configuration Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Azure Retail Prices API
GTX 1050 Ti 4GB VRAM • Salad Cloud	Not Available	$0.01/hr★ Best	—	Salad API
GTX 1050 Ti 4GB VRAM • Not Available Salad Cloud $0.01/hour Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Salad API
GTX 1060 6GB VRAM • Salad Cloud	Not Available	$0.02/hr★ Best	—	Salad API
GTX 1060 6GB VRAM • Not Available Salad Cloud $0.02/hour Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Salad API
GTX 1650 4GB VRAM • Salad Cloud	Not Available	$0.01/hr★ Best	—	Salad API
GTX 1650 4GB VRAM • Not Available Salad Cloud $0.01/hour Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Salad API
GTX 1660 6GB VRAM • Salad Cloud	Not Available	$0.02/hr★ Best	—	Salad API
GTX 1660 6GB VRAM • Not Available Salad Cloud $0.02/hour Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Salad API
GTX 1660 SUPER 6GB VRAM • Salad Cloud	Not Available	$0.02/hr★ Best	—	Salad API
GTX 1660 SUPER 6GB VRAM • Not Available Salad Cloud $0.02/hour Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Salad API
H100 NVL 94GB VRAM • Microsoft Azure	$6.98/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Azure Retail Prices API
H100 NVL 94GB VRAM • Microsoft Azure $6.98/hour Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Azure Retail Prices API
H100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Microsoft Azure	$11.06/hr★ Best 8x GPU	Not Available	—	Azure Retail Prices API
H100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Microsoft Azure $11.06/hour 8x GPU configuration Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Azure Retail Prices API
H200 141GB VRAM • Microsoft Azure	$10.60/hr★ Best 8x GPU	Not Available	—	Azure Retail Prices API
H200 141GB VRAM • Microsoft Azure $10.60/hour 8x GPU configuration Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Azure Retail Prices API
MI300X 192GB VRAM • Microsoft Azure	$6.00/hr★ Best 8x GPU	Not Available	—	Azure Retail Prices API
MI300X 192GB VRAM • Microsoft Azure $6.00/hour 8x GPU configuration Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Azure Retail Prices API
RTX 2060 6GB VRAM • Salad Cloud	Not Available	$0.02/hr★ Best	—	Salad API
RTX 2060 6GB VRAM • Not Available Salad Cloud $0.02/hour Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Salad API
RTX 2070 8GB VRAM • Salad Cloud	Not Available	$0.02/hr★ Best	—	Salad API
RTX 2070 8GB VRAM • Not Available Salad Cloud $0.02/hour Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Salad API
RTX 2080 8GB VRAM • Salad Cloud	Not Available	$0.05/hr★ Best	—	Salad API
RTX 2080 8GB VRAM • Not Available Salad Cloud $0.05/hour Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Salad API

A100 PCIe 80GB 80GB VRAM • Microsoft Azure	$3.67/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Azure Retail Prices API
A100 PCIe 80GB 80GB VRAM • Microsoft Azure $3.67/hour Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Azure Retail Prices API
A100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Microsoft Azure	$4.10/hr★ Best 8x GPU	Not Available	—	Azure Retail Prices API
A100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Microsoft Azure $4.10/hour 8x GPU configuration Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Azure Retail Prices API
A100 SXM 40GB 40GB VRAM • Microsoft Azure	$3.40/hr★ Best 8x GPU	Not Available	—	Azure Retail Prices API
A100 SXM 40GB 40GB VRAM • Microsoft Azure $3.40/hour 8x GPU configuration Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Azure Retail Prices API
GTX 1050 Ti 4GB VRAM • Salad Cloud	Not Available	$0.01/hr★ Best	—	Salad API
GTX 1050 Ti 4GB VRAM • Not Available Salad Cloud $0.01/hour Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Salad API
GTX 1060 6GB VRAM • Salad Cloud	Not Available	$0.02/hr★ Best	—	Salad API
GTX 1060 6GB VRAM • Not Available Salad Cloud $0.02/hour Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Salad API
GTX 1650 4GB VRAM • Salad Cloud	Not Available	$0.01/hr★ Best	—	Salad API
GTX 1650 4GB VRAM • Not Available Salad Cloud $0.01/hour Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Salad API
GTX 1660 6GB VRAM • Salad Cloud	Not Available	$0.02/hr★ Best	—	Salad API
GTX 1660 6GB VRAM • Not Available Salad Cloud $0.02/hour Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Salad API
GTX 1660 SUPER 6GB VRAM • Salad Cloud	Not Available	$0.02/hr★ Best	—	Salad API
GTX 1660 SUPER 6GB VRAM • Not Available Salad Cloud $0.02/hour Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Salad API
H100 NVL 94GB VRAM • Microsoft Azure	$6.98/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Azure Retail Prices API
H100 NVL 94GB VRAM • Microsoft Azure $6.98/hour Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Azure Retail Prices API
H100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Microsoft Azure	$11.06/hr★ Best 8x GPU	Not Available	—	Azure Retail Prices API
H100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Microsoft Azure $11.06/hour 8x GPU configuration Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Azure Retail Prices API
H200 141GB VRAM • Microsoft Azure	$10.60/hr★ Best 8x GPU	Not Available	—	Azure Retail Prices API
H200 141GB VRAM • Microsoft Azure $10.60/hour 8x GPU configuration Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Azure Retail Prices API
MI300X 192GB VRAM • Microsoft Azure	$6.00/hr★ Best 8x GPU	Not Available	—	Azure Retail Prices API
MI300X 192GB VRAM • Microsoft Azure $6.00/hour 8x GPU configuration Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Azure Retail Prices API
RTX 2060 6GB VRAM • Salad Cloud	Not Available	$0.02/hr★ Best	—	Salad API
RTX 2060 6GB VRAM • Not Available Salad Cloud $0.02/hour Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Salad API
RTX 2070 8GB VRAM • Salad Cloud	Not Available	$0.02/hr★ Best	—	Salad API
RTX 2070 8GB VRAM • Not Available Salad Cloud $0.02/hour Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Salad API
RTX 2080 8GB VRAM • Salad Cloud	Not Available	$0.05/hr★ Best	—	Salad API
RTX 2080 8GB VRAM • Not Available Salad Cloud $0.05/hour Updated: 10/27/2026 ★Best Price Salad API

LLM API Pricing Comparison

Total models: 28Both available: 0Microsoft Azure: 28Salad Cloud: 0

Showing 15 of 28 models

Prices per 1M tokens · Last updated: 10/28/2026, 2:06:39 AM

Model ↑	Microsoft Azure	Salad Cloud	Input Diff ↕
GPT-4.1 OpenAI	$2.00 in $8.00 out	Not available	—
GPT-4.1 mini OpenAI	$0.400 in $1.60 out	Not available	—
GPT-4.1 nano OpenAI	$0.100 in $0.400 out	Not available	—
GPT-4o OpenAI	$2.50 in $10.00 out	Not available	—
GPT-5 OpenAI	$1.00 in $10.00 out	Not available	—
GPT-5 Codex OpenAI	$1.25 in $10.00 out	Not available	—
GPT-5 mini OpenAI	$0.250 in $2.00 out	Not available	—
GPT-5 Nano OpenAI	$0.050 in $0.400 out	Not available	—
GPT-5 Pro OpenAI	$15.00 in $120.00 out	Not available	—
GPT-5.1 OpenAI	$1.25 in $10.00 out	Not available	—
GPT-5.1 Codex OpenAI	$1.25 in $10.00 out	Not available	—
GPT-5.1 Codex mini OpenAI	$0.250 in $2.00 out	Not available	—
GPT-5.2 OpenAI	$1.75 in $14.00 out	Not available	—
GPT-5.2 Codex OpenAI	$1.75 in $14.00 out	Not available	—
GPT-5.3 Codex OpenAI	$1.75 in $14.00 out	Not available	—

Features Comparison

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Foundry
Unified AI platform with a catalog of models, agents, and tools for building and governing AI applications
Enterprise Integration
Seamless integration with Microsoft ecosystem and enterprise tools
Hybrid Capabilities
Strong hybrid and multi-cloud support with Azure Arc
Advanced Security
Security features and compliance certifications
Global Scale
Extensive worldwide network of data centers and edge locations

Salad Cloud

Community Cloud
On-demand pool of idle consumer GPUs with nodes in 190+ countries, deployed onto through Salad Container Engine.
Salad Container Engine
Managed orchestration that schedules Docker containers onto nodes it does not control, isolates them behind a hypervisor, streams logs, and reallocates work when a node disappears.
Priority Tiers
High, Medium, Low, and Lowest tiers price the same GPU class differently so a workload can trade preemption risk for cost; High is never preempted by other workloads.
Salad Dedicated
Reserved bare metal and virtual machines on contract, starting with RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell, quoted per allocation and term.
Private Cloud
Salad's orchestration stack licensed per deployment on hardware you already own, pooling idle workstation and server GPUs into a private OpenAI-compatible token service.
Managed APIs and Tooling
AI Gateway (an OpenAI-compatible endpoint for open-weight models, in closed beta), Transcription API, Recipes deployment templates, S4 temporary storage, Gateway Service residential IPs, and a Virtual Kubelet for Kubernetes.

Pros & Cons

Microsoft Azure

Advantages

Strong enterprise integration and support
Comprehensive AI and machine learning services
Advanced security and compliance features
Extensive hybrid cloud capabilities

Considerations

Complex pricing and billing structure
Can be expensive for certain workloads
Steeper learning curve for new users

Salad Cloud

Advantages

Aggregating idle consumer hardware gives some of the lowest published per-GPU-hour rates available
Per-second billing with no contracts or minimums; allocation, image download, and cold start are not billed
vCPU and RAM are included with every GPU class at no additional charge
Four priority tiers make interruptibility an explicit, priced choice per container group

Considerations

On-demand catalog is consumer RTX GPUs only — data center accelerators are not offered outside the contracted Dedicated product
Published GPU classes top out at 32 GB of VRAM, limiting the size of a model that fits on a single GPU
Nodes are individually owned machines that can disconnect at any time, so workloads must be stateless or retryable

Compute Services

Microsoft Azure

Azure Virtual Machines

GPU-enabled VMs for various workloads

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Managed Kubernetes service with GPU support

Integrated GPU node pools
Automated scaling and updates

Azure Machine Learning

End-to-end ML platform with GPU acceleration

Automated ML capabilities
Integrated MLOps

Salad Cloud

Salad Container Engine on Community Cloud

On-demand container orchestration across the distributed pool of idle consumer GPUs, with more than 40 GPU classes selectable by priority tier.

Salad Dedicated

Reserved bare metal and virtual machines on contract, separate from the on-demand community pool.

CPU-only container groups

Container groups with no GPU attached, billed per vCPU-hour and per GB of RAM per hour, running at the Lowest priority tier.

Pricing Options

Microsoft Azure

Pay as you go

Pay for compute capacity by the second, with no long-term commitments or upfront payments

Reserved VM Instances

Significant cost reduction versus pay-as-you-go rates in exchange for a one-year or three-year term; suited to stable, predictable workloads

Spot VMs

Unused Azure compute capacity at deep discounts for interruptible workloads

Azure Hybrid Benefit

Cost savings for existing Windows Server and SQL Server licenses

Azure savings plan for compute

Save money across select compute services globally by committing to spend a fixed hourly amount for 1 or 3 years

Salad Cloud

Per-second on-demand billing

Published per-GPU-hour rates billed by the second for the time each replica spends running; allocation, image download, and cold start are not charged, and vCPU and RAM are included.

Priority tiers

High, Medium, Low, and Lowest tiers price each GPU class differently - lower tiers cost less and are more interruptible, with Lowest intended for retryable batch work.

CPU-only container groups

Billed per vCPU-hour plus per GB of RAM per hour for container groups that need no GPU.

Volume discounts

Large deployments, long-running jobs, and committed spend are priced below list by sales.

Salad Dedicated contracts

Reserved bare metal and virtual machines quoted separately per allocation and term.

Private Cloud licensing

Licensed per deployment to run the orchestration stack on hardware you already own.

Getting Started

Microsoft Azure

Get Started

1
Create an Azure account
Sign up for Azure and get started with free credits
2
Set up your environment
Configure your subscription, resource groups, and access controls
3
Choose compute services
Select from VMs, containers, or serverless based on your needs
4
Deploy resources
Launch your first GPU-enabled instance or AI service

Salad Cloud

Get Started

1
Create a SaladCloud account
Sign up at portal.salad.com to reach the dashboard, API keys, and deployment tools.
2
Pick a GPU class and priority tier
Compare published per-GPU-hour rates and live availability on the pricing page, then choose the tier that matches how interruptible the workload is.
3
Deploy a container group
Supply a Docker image, CPU/memory/GPU resources, and a replica count through the portal or the public API; Recipes provide ready-made templates for popular open models.
4
Monitor and scale
Track replicas in the portal and adjust GPU class, priority, or replica count; the container engine reallocates work as nodes join and leave the network.
5
Talk to sales for reserved or volume capacity
Large deployments, committed spend, and Salad Dedicated allocations are quoted directly rather than bought self-service.

Support & Global Availability

Microsoft Azure

Global Regions

60+ regions worldwide with multiple availability zones

Support

Basic, Developer, Standard, and Professional Direct support plans with 24/7 options. Extensive documentation and community resources.

Salad Cloud

Global Regions

Nodes in 190+ countries across the distributed network; capacity is chosen by GPU class and priority tier rather than by selectable region, and availability varies by class.

Support

Documentation at docs.salad.com, a developer hub and Recipes library, status page at cloud-status.salad.com, Trust Center, Discord and GitHub communities, and direct engineering and sales contact for volume and enterprise deployments.