What is the difference between Lium.io and Salad Cloud?

Lium.io 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: Lium.io 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 Lium.io 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 50 different GPU models across both Lium.io and Salad Cloud, with 0 models available from both providers.

Lium.io vs Salad Cloud

Compare GPU pricing between Lium.io and Salad Cloud. Find the best rates for AI training, inference, and ML workloads.

Lium.io

Provider 1

GPUs Available

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Salad Cloud

Provider 2

GPUs Available

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Comparison Overview

Total GPU Models

Lium.io GPUs

Salad Cloud GPUs

Direct Comparisons

Average Price Difference: $0.18/hour between comparable GPUs

GPU Pricing Comparison

Total GPUs: 50Both available: 6Lium.io: 19Salad Cloud: 37

Showing 15 of 50 GPUs

Last updated: 10/30/2026, 12:51:18 PM

GPU Model ↑	Lium.io Price	Salad Cloud Price	Price Diff ↕	Sources
B200 180GB VRAM • Lium.io	$5.90/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Lium Public Nodes Feed
B200 180GB VRAM • Lium.io $5.90/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Lium Public Nodes Feed
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: 10/30/2026 ★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: 10/30/2026 ★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: 10/30/2026 ★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: 10/30/2026 ★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: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Salad API
H100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Lium.io	$1.79/hr★ Best 2x GPU	Not Available	—	Lium Public Nodes Feed
H100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Lium.io $1.79/hour 2x GPU configuration Updated: 10/29/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Lium Public Nodes Feed
H200 141GB VRAM • Lium.io	$2.25/hr★ Best 8x GPU	Not Available	—	Lium Public Nodes Feed
H200 141GB VRAM • Lium.io $2.25/hour 8x GPU configuration Updated: 10/29/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Lium Public Nodes Feed
H200 NVL 141GB VRAM • Lium.io	$3.50/hr★ Best 8x GPU	Not Available	—	Lium Public Nodes Feed
H200 NVL 141GB VRAM • Lium.io $3.50/hour 8x GPU configuration Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Lium Public Nodes Feed
HGX B300 288GB VRAM • Lium.io	$4.00/hr★ Best 8x GPU	Not Available	—	Lium Public Nodes Feed
HGX B300 288GB VRAM • Lium.io $4.00/hour 8x GPU configuration Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Lium Public Nodes Feed
L40 40GB VRAM • Lium.io	$0.33/hr★ Best 2x GPU	Not Available	—	Lium Public Nodes Feed
L40 40GB VRAM • Lium.io $0.33/hour 2x GPU configuration Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Lium Public Nodes Feed
L40S 48GB VRAM • Lium.io	$0.38/hr★ Best 2x GPU	Not Available	—	Lium Public Nodes Feed
L40S 48GB VRAM • Lium.io $0.38/hour 2x GPU configuration Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Lium Public Nodes Feed
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: 10/30/2026 ★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: 10/30/2026 ★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: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Salad API

B200 180GB VRAM • Lium.io	$5.90/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Lium Public Nodes Feed
B200 180GB VRAM • Lium.io $5.90/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Lium Public Nodes Feed
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: 10/30/2026 ★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: 10/30/2026 ★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: 10/30/2026 ★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: 10/30/2026 ★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: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Salad API
H100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Lium.io	$1.79/hr★ Best 2x GPU	Not Available	—	Lium Public Nodes Feed
H100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Lium.io $1.79/hour 2x GPU configuration Updated: 10/29/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Lium Public Nodes Feed
H200 141GB VRAM • Lium.io	$2.25/hr★ Best 8x GPU	Not Available	—	Lium Public Nodes Feed
H200 141GB VRAM • Lium.io $2.25/hour 8x GPU configuration Updated: 10/29/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Lium Public Nodes Feed
H200 NVL 141GB VRAM • Lium.io	$3.50/hr★ Best 8x GPU	Not Available	—	Lium Public Nodes Feed
H200 NVL 141GB VRAM • Lium.io $3.50/hour 8x GPU configuration Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Lium Public Nodes Feed
HGX B300 288GB VRAM • Lium.io	$4.00/hr★ Best 8x GPU	Not Available	—	Lium Public Nodes Feed
HGX B300 288GB VRAM • Lium.io $4.00/hour 8x GPU configuration Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Lium Public Nodes Feed
L40 40GB VRAM • Lium.io	$0.33/hr★ Best 2x GPU	Not Available	—	Lium Public Nodes Feed
L40 40GB VRAM • Lium.io $0.33/hour 2x GPU configuration Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Lium Public Nodes Feed
L40S 48GB VRAM • Lium.io	$0.38/hr★ Best 2x GPU	Not Available	—	Lium Public Nodes Feed
L40S 48GB VRAM • Lium.io $0.38/hour 2x GPU configuration Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Lium Public Nodes Feed
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: 10/30/2026 ★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: 10/30/2026 ★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: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Salad API

Features Comparison

Lium.io

Diverse GPU Options
Offers a variety of NVIDIA GPUs including B300, B200, H100, and RTX 4090.
Secure and Spot Tiers
Every node is listed as Secure or Spot; Spot nodes are cheaper but may be interrupted without compensation.
Global Availability
Data centers in multiple countries including the US, Europe, and Australia.
Verified Machines
Lium checks every machine's GPUs and scores their performance before it is rented.
GPU Splitting
Nodes can be split so several renters each rent a whole number of a node's GPUs.
CLI, SDK and REST API
Headless CLI and Python SDK with JSON output, a REST API with scoped API keys and per-key USD budgets, and rent-by-spec under a price ceiling.

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

Lium.io

Advantages

Per-second billing with no minimum rental and no commitment
Public machine-readable pricing for every model and every rentable node
Documented CLI, Python SDK and REST API
Multiple global locations for deployment

Considerations

Marketplace capacity: available GPUs and prices vary by provider and change continuously
Spot nodes may be interrupted without compensation
Prepaid balance required; pods stop when the balance runs out

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

Lium.io

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

Lium.io

Pay-as-you-go

Billed per second at the listed hourly rate from a prepaid balance, with no minimum rental and no commitment.

Secure Tier

The default tier; providers are penalized if a rental is interrupted.

Spot Tier

Cheaper nodes that may be interrupted without compensation.

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

Lium.io

Get Started

1
Sign Up
Create an account on lium.io and add an SSH key.
2
Top Up Balance
Add funds to your prepaid balance.
3
Choose a Node
Pick a GPU node by model, count, location and tier (Secure or Spot).
4
Deploy a Pod
Select a template and deploy, from the dashboard, the CLI, or the API.
5
Connect and Stop
Connect over SSH; billing stops when the pod is deleted.

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

Lium.io

Global Regions

Available in Australia, United States, various European countries

Support

Email support@lium.io, or open a private ticket in #tickets on the official Lium Discord server (discord.gg/lium). Documentation at docs.lium.io, with a machine-readable index at docs.lium.io/llms.txt.

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.