What is the difference between Beam and UpCloud?

Beam and UpCloud 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: Beam or UpCloud?

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 Beam and UpCloud?

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 8 different GPU models across both Beam and UpCloud, with 0 models available from both providers.

Beam vs UpCloud

Compare GPU pricing between Beam and UpCloud. Find the best rates for AI training, inference, and ML workloads.

Beam

Provider 1

GPUs Available

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UpCloud

Provider 2

GPUs Available

Visit Website

Comparison Overview

Total GPU Models

Beam GPUs

UpCloud GPUs

Direct Comparisons

Average Price Difference: $1.50/hour between comparable GPUs

GPU Pricing Comparison

Total GPUs: 8Both available: 1Beam: 3UpCloud: 6

Showing 8 of 8 GPUs

Last updated: 10/5/2026, 9:58:47 PM

GPU Model ↑	Beam Price	UpCloud Price	Price Diff ↕	Sources
B200 180GB VRAM • UpCloud	Not Available	$3.79/hr★ Best	—	UpCloud
B200 180GB VRAM • Not Available UpCloud $3.79/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price UpCloud
H100 SXM 80GB VRAM • BeamUpCloud	$3.50/hr	$2.00/hr★ Best	↑+$1.50(+75.1%)	Beam UpCloud
H100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Beam $3.50/hour Updated: 10/1/2026 UpCloud $2.00/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price Price Difference:↑+$1.50(+75.1%) Beam UpCloud
HGX B300 288GB VRAM • UpCloud	Not Available	$5.61/hr★ Best	—	UpCloud
HGX B300 288GB VRAM • Not Available UpCloud $5.61/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price UpCloud
L4 24GB VRAM • UpCloud	Not Available	$0.64/hr★ Best	—	UpCloud
L4 24GB VRAM • Not Available UpCloud $0.64/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price UpCloud
L40S 48GB VRAM • UpCloud	Not Available	$0.93/hr★ Best	—	UpCloud
L40S 48GB VRAM • Not Available UpCloud $0.93/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price UpCloud
RTX 4090 24GB VRAM • Beam	$0.69/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Beam
RTX 4090 24GB VRAM • Beam $0.69/hour Updated: 10/1/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Beam
RTX 5090 32GB VRAM • Beam	$1.09/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Beam
RTX 5090 32GB VRAM • Beam $1.09/hour Updated: 10/1/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Beam
RTX PRO 6000 96GB VRAM • UpCloud	Not Available	$0.98/hr★ Best	—	UpCloud
RTX PRO 6000 96GB VRAM • Not Available UpCloud $0.98/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price UpCloud

B200 180GB VRAM • UpCloud	Not Available	$3.79/hr★ Best	—	UpCloud
B200 180GB VRAM • Not Available UpCloud $3.79/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price UpCloud
H100 SXM 80GB VRAM • BeamUpCloud	$3.50/hr	$2.00/hr★ Best	↑+$1.50(+75.1%)	Beam UpCloud
H100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Beam $3.50/hour Updated: 10/1/2026 UpCloud $2.00/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price Price Difference:↑+$1.50(+75.1%) Beam UpCloud
HGX B300 288GB VRAM • UpCloud	Not Available	$5.61/hr★ Best	—	UpCloud
HGX B300 288GB VRAM • Not Available UpCloud $5.61/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price UpCloud
L4 24GB VRAM • UpCloud	Not Available	$0.64/hr★ Best	—	UpCloud
L4 24GB VRAM • Not Available UpCloud $0.64/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price UpCloud
L40S 48GB VRAM • UpCloud	Not Available	$0.93/hr★ Best	—	UpCloud
L40S 48GB VRAM • Not Available UpCloud $0.93/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price UpCloud
RTX 4090 24GB VRAM • Beam	$0.69/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Beam
RTX 4090 24GB VRAM • Beam $0.69/hour Updated: 10/1/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Beam
RTX 5090 32GB VRAM • Beam	$1.09/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Beam
RTX 5090 32GB VRAM • Beam $1.09/hour Updated: 10/1/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Beam
RTX PRO 6000 96GB VRAM • UpCloud	Not Available	$0.98/hr★ Best	—	UpCloud
RTX PRO 6000 96GB VRAM • Not Available UpCloud $0.98/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price UpCloud

Features Comparison

Beam

Pay-per-millisecond Billing
Only charged when your code runs, no charges for cold starts or server spin-up
Sub-second Cold Starts
Memory snapshots and GPU checkpoint restore bring containers back in seconds, which Beam reports as up to 35x faster than a traditional cold boot
Secure Sandbox Environments
Run untrusted code safely in isolated environments for AI agents and code interpreters
Stateful, Persistent Runtimes
Pause and resume sessions while maintaining filesystem, memory, and running processes
Elastic GPU Scaling
Scale to zero when idle, burst to thousands of containers in seconds
Custom Docker Images
Bring your own Docker images for full environment control, including running the Docker daemon inside containers

UpCloud

Dedicated GPUs
No shared hardware — each GPU is always dedicated to a single server with full performance isolation
100% Renewable Energy
Helsinki data center powered entirely by renewable energy with up to 90% waste heat recovery for district heating
European Data Sovereignty
GDPR-compliant, ISO 27001-certified infrastructure in Finland; UpCloud is also a CISPE member
Zero-Cost Data Transfer
No egress fees — outbound data transfer is included at no extra cost on all plans, subject to a Fair Transfer Policy
Usage-Based Billing
Pay only for active compute time with hourly billing, no rigid contracts or long-term commitments required
99.999% Uptime SLA
Published uptime commitment covering GPU Servers, Premium and Cloud Native servers, and managed databases; entry-level Starter cloud servers carry a 99.99% SLA

Pros & Cons

Beam

Advantages

Pay-per-millisecond billing with no charges for cold starts
Ultrafast boot times with sub-second cold starts via memory snapshots
GPU selection spanning RTX 4090 through B200, plus InfiniBand cluster nodes
On-demand machines priced flat per machine, including vCPU, RAM, and NVMe storage

Considerations

Serverless GPUs other than the RTX 4090 require a committed-spend agreement
GPU container concurrency is capped on the lower plan tiers
Multi-node InfiniBand clusters are sales-only with no published pricing

UpCloud

Advantages

100% renewable energy with waste heat recovery — strong sustainability credentials
Zero-cost egress eliminates surprise data transfer bills
GDPR-compliant EU data sovereignty in Finland
Dedicated GPUs with no shared hardware

Considerations

GPU servers concentrated in Helsinki, Finland — limited multi-region GPU presence despite a 15-data-center platform footprint
Smaller GPU selection than major hyperscalers and dedicated GPU clouds

Compute Services

Beam

Inference Endpoints

Deploy high-performance inference endpoints with custom models

Custom model hosting on GPU or CPU
Pre-loading models for fast response times

Sandboxes

Secure code execution environments for AI agents

Run untrusted LLM-generated code safely
Snapshot and restore complete system state

Task Queues

Run large-scale workloads with distributed processing

Audio processing pipelines
Data processing at scale

UpCloud

GPU Servers

On-demand and spot NVIDIA L4, L40S, H100, and B200 GPU instances with dedicated hardware and AMD EPYC processors

Private Cloud GPUs

Dedicated private cloud infrastructure with NVIDIA L4, L40S, and H200 NVL GPUs

Pricing Options

Beam

Pay-per-millisecond

Serverless GPU, CPU, and sandbox usage billed by the millisecond with no minimum charges

Committed Spend

Serverless access to GPUs beyond the RTX 4090 is arranged through a committed-spend agreement

On-Demand Machines

Flat hourly price per machine that already includes the vCPU, RAM, and NVMe storage

Reserved Clusters

Multi-node InfiniBand clusters reserved monthly or yearly, quoted through sales

Bring Your Own Cloud

Per-vCPU and per-GB management fee on top of compute billed directly by your own cloud provider

Storage

Persistent volumes and snapshots included up to a capacity threshold, then billed per GB per month

Monthly Plans

Developer plan free with usage, Team plan with a monthly base fee plus usage, and a contact-sales Growth tier

Free Monthly Credits

All plans include monthly free credits that refresh each month

Volume Discounts

Discounts available for high monthly usage, arranged through sales

UpCloud

On-Demand GPU Servers

Hourly billing for L4, L40S, H100, and B200 GPU instances with no upfront commitment — pay only for active compute time

Spot GPU Servers

Discounted spot pricing for GPU Servers, offering lower hourly rates for interruptible workloads

Private Cloud GPUs

Fixed monthly pricing for dedicated private cloud GPU infrastructure with L4, L40S, and H200 NVL

Getting Started

Beam

Get Started

1
Create an account
Sign up on the Beam platform to receive monthly free credits
2
Set up Python environment
Create a virtual environment and install the Beam SDK
3
Authenticate with API token
Configure your API token to connect to Beam
4
Deploy your first app
Run a function locally, then deploy it as a web endpoint with the Beam CLI

UpCloud

Get Started

1
Create an UpCloud account
Sign up at upcloud.com and complete account verification; a 30-day free trial with starting credits is available
2
Select a GPU server plan
Choose from NVIDIA L4, L40S, H100, or B200 GPU configurations with varying vCPU and RAM options
3
Deploy with AI/ML template
Use pre-configured GPU Ubuntu templates to get started quickly with CUDA and ML frameworks
4
Attach storage
Add block storage devices (1 GB–4 TB each) from any storage tier for your operating system and data

Support & Global Availability

Beam

Global Regions

30+ regions spanning the US, EU, Asia-Pacific, and Canada, with workloads routed across clouds and regions in real time

Support

Documentation, public Slack community, and a status page; live chat support on paid plans and a private Slack channel on the top tier

UpCloud

Global Regions

15 data centers across 12 countries spanning Northern Europe, Central Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific; GPU Servers are concentrated in Helsinki, Finland (Telia Helsinki Data Center)

Support

In-house technical support available 24/7 via live chat and email, plus documentation, tutorials, an API reference at developers.upcloud.com, and a public status page