What is the difference between Beam and Vast.ai?

Beam and Vast.ai 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 Vast.ai?

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 Vast.ai?

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 58 different GPU models across both Beam and Vast.ai, with 0 models available from both providers.

Beam vs Vast.ai

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

Beam

Provider 1

GPUs Available

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Vast.ai

Provider 2

GPUs Available

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Comparison Overview

Total GPU Models

Beam GPUs

Vast.ai GPUs

Direct Comparisons

Average Price Difference: $0.45/hour between comparable GPUs

GPU Pricing Comparison

Total GPUs: 58Both available: 2Beam: 3Vast.ai: 57

Showing 15 of 58 GPUs

Last updated: 9/25/2026, 12:31:02 AM

GPU Model ↑	Beam Price	Vast.ai Price	Price Diff ↕	Sources
A100 PCIE 40GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.40/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
A100 PCIE 40GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.40/hour Updated: 9/23/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
A100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.53/hr★ Best 4x GPU	—	Vast.ai
A100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.53/hour 4x GPU configuration Updated: 9/24/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
A16 64GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.11/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
A16 64GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.11/hour Updated: 9/23/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
A40 48GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.79/hr★ Best 4x GPU	—	Vast.ai
A40 48GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.79/hour 4x GPU configuration Updated: 9/24/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
B200 180GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$6.25/hr★ Best 2x GPU	—	Vast.ai
B200 180GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $6.25/hour 2x GPU configuration Updated: 9/23/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
GTX 1070 8GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.05/hr★ Best 4x GPU	—	Vast.ai
GTX 1070 8GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.05/hour 4x GPU configuration Updated: 9/23/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
GTX 1070 Ti 8GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.06/hr★ Best 4x GPU	—	Vast.ai
GTX 1070 Ti 8GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.06/hour 4x GPU configuration Updated: 9/24/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
GTX 1080 8GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.05/hr★ Best 2x GPU	—	Vast.ai
GTX 1080 8GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.05/hour 2x GPU configuration Updated: 9/23/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
GTX 1080 Ti 11GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.06/hr★ Best 4x GPU	—	Vast.ai
GTX 1080 Ti 11GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.06/hour 4x GPU configuration Updated: 9/24/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
GTX 1650 4GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.05/hr★ Best 2x GPU	—	Vast.ai
GTX 1650 4GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.05/hour 2x GPU configuration Updated: 9/23/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
GTX 1660 6GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.07/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
GTX 1660 6GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.07/hour Updated: 9/23/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
GTX 1660 SUPER 6GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.04/hr★ Best 8x GPU	—	Vast.ai
GTX 1660 SUPER 6GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.04/hour 8x GPU configuration Updated: 9/24/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
GTX Titan X 12GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.05/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
GTX Titan X 12GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.05/hour Updated: 9/24/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
H100 NVL 94GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$3.04/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
H100 NVL 94GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $3.04/hour Updated: 9/24/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
H100 PCIe 80GB VRAM • Beam	$3.50/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Beam
H100 PCIe 80GB VRAM • Beam $3.50/hour Updated: 9/22/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Beam

A100 PCIE 40GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.40/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
A100 PCIE 40GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.40/hour Updated: 9/23/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
A100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.53/hr★ Best 4x GPU	—	Vast.ai
A100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.53/hour 4x GPU configuration Updated: 9/24/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
A16 64GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.11/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
A16 64GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.11/hour Updated: 9/23/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
A40 48GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.79/hr★ Best 4x GPU	—	Vast.ai
A40 48GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.79/hour 4x GPU configuration Updated: 9/24/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
B200 180GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$6.25/hr★ Best 2x GPU	—	Vast.ai
B200 180GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $6.25/hour 2x GPU configuration Updated: 9/23/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
GTX 1070 8GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.05/hr★ Best 4x GPU	—	Vast.ai
GTX 1070 8GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.05/hour 4x GPU configuration Updated: 9/23/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
GTX 1070 Ti 8GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.06/hr★ Best 4x GPU	—	Vast.ai
GTX 1070 Ti 8GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.06/hour 4x GPU configuration Updated: 9/24/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
GTX 1080 8GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.05/hr★ Best 2x GPU	—	Vast.ai
GTX 1080 8GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.05/hour 2x GPU configuration Updated: 9/23/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
GTX 1080 Ti 11GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.06/hr★ Best 4x GPU	—	Vast.ai
GTX 1080 Ti 11GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.06/hour 4x GPU configuration Updated: 9/24/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
GTX 1650 4GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.05/hr★ Best 2x GPU	—	Vast.ai
GTX 1650 4GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.05/hour 2x GPU configuration Updated: 9/23/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
GTX 1660 6GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.07/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
GTX 1660 6GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.07/hour Updated: 9/23/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
GTX 1660 SUPER 6GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.04/hr★ Best 8x GPU	—	Vast.ai
GTX 1660 SUPER 6GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.04/hour 8x GPU configuration Updated: 9/24/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
GTX Titan X 12GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.05/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
GTX Titan X 12GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.05/hour Updated: 9/24/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
H100 NVL 94GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$3.04/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
H100 NVL 94GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $3.04/hour Updated: 9/24/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
H100 PCIe 80GB VRAM • Beam	$3.50/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Beam
H100 PCIe 80GB VRAM • Beam $3.50/hour Updated: 9/22/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Beam

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

Vast.ai

Real-Time GPU Pricing
Prices set by supply and demand across the platform with no list prices or hidden fees
Three Deployment Options
GPU Cloud for full control, Serverless for zero-ops inference, Clusters for large-scale training
Developer-Focused Tools
CLI, Python SDK, and REST API for programmatic GPU provisioning, installed together via a single package
Agent-Ready Provisioning
API-native workflow intended for AI agents to search, procure, and release compute autonomously
Model Library and Templates
Prebuilt templates for popular open-source models, plus custom templates any GPU can run with one click
Flexible Infrastructure
Scale from $5 to 20,000 GPUs across 40+ data centers without contracts or minimums

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

Vast.ai

Advantages

Significant cost savings with supply-demand pricing
Flexible pricing with on-demand, interruptible, and reserved options
Real-time transparent pricing with no hidden fees
Docker ecosystem for quick software deployment

Considerations

Primarily focused on Linux-based Docker instances
Performance may vary across different community providers
Learning curve for users unfamiliar with marketplace-based pricing

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

Vast.ai

GPU Cloud

On-demand instances across 40+ data centers and 20,000+ GPUs

Serverless

Deploy models as endpoints with autoscaling to zero

Clusters

Dedicated multi-node GPU clusters with InfiniBand networking

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

Vast.ai

On-Demand

Guaranteed uptime with per-second billing. Best for production workloads.

Interruptible

50%+ cheaper preemptible instances. Best for fault-tolerant batch training.

Reserved

Up to 50% off with 1, 3, or 6 month commitments. Guaranteed capacity with volume discounts.

Serverless

Endpoint rates billed only for compute time, with no charge while workers are scaled to zero.

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

Vast.ai

Get Started

1
Add credit and get your API key
Start with as little as $5 and grab an API key from the console. No contracts, no sales calls.
2
Search GPUs
Filter by model, VRAM, price, and availability via the console or API
3
Deploy
Launch instances in seconds. Scale up or down programmatically.

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

Vast.ai

Global Regions

40+ data centers with global coverage including community and enterprise providers

Support

24/7 support chat in the console, email support at contact@vast.ai, Discord community, and documentation covering the CLI, SDK, and REST API