What is the difference between OpenAI and Vast.ai?

OpenAI 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: OpenAI 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 OpenAI 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 33 different GPU models across both OpenAI and Vast.ai, with 0 models available from both providers.

OpenAI vs Vast.ai GPU Cloud Pricing 2026

GPU Pricing Comparison

Total GPUs: 33Both available: 0OpenAI: 0Vast.ai: 33

Showing 15 of 33 GPUs

Last updated: 5/14/2026, 5:00:53 AM

GPU Model ↑	OpenAI Price	Vast.ai Price	Price Diff ↕	Sources
A10 24GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.15/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
A10 24GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.15/hour Updated: 5/8/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
A100 PCIE 40GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.48/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
A100 PCIE 40GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.48/hour Updated: 5/12/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
A100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.47/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
A100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.47/hour Updated: 5/11/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
A40 48GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.29/hr★ Best 2x GPU	—	Vast.ai
A40 48GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.29/hour 2x GPU configuration Updated: 5/13/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
L4 24GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.13/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
L4 24GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.13/hour Updated: 4/28/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
L40 40GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.58/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
L40 40GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.58/hour Updated: 5/13/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
L40S 48GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.56/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
L40S 48GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.56/hour Updated: 5/13/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
RTX 3070 8GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.05/hr★ Best 4x GPU	—	Vast.ai
RTX 3070 8GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.05/hour 4x GPU configuration Updated: 5/9/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
RTX 3070 Ti 8GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.06/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
RTX 3070 Ti 8GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.06/hour Updated: 4/30/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
RTX 3080 10GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.07/hr★ Best 4x GPU	—	Vast.ai
RTX 3080 10GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.07/hour 4x GPU configuration Updated: 5/12/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
RTX 3080 Ti 12GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.11/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
RTX 3080 Ti 12GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.11/hour Updated: 5/14/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
RTX 3090 24GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.13/hr★ Best 2x GPU	—	Vast.ai
RTX 3090 24GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.13/hour 2x GPU configuration Updated: 5/14/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
RTX 3090 Ti 24GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.24/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
RTX 3090 Ti 24GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.24/hour Updated: 5/14/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
RTX 4000 Ada 20GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.14/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
RTX 4000 Ada 20GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.14/hour Updated: 5/11/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
RTX 4060 8GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.07/hr★ Best 2x GPU	—	Vast.ai
RTX 4060 8GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.07/hour 2x GPU configuration Updated: 5/8/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai

A10 24GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.15/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
A10 24GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.15/hour Updated: 5/8/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
A100 PCIE 40GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.48/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
A100 PCIE 40GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.48/hour Updated: 5/12/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
A100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.47/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
A100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.47/hour Updated: 5/11/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
A40 48GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.29/hr★ Best 2x GPU	—	Vast.ai
A40 48GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.29/hour 2x GPU configuration Updated: 5/13/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
L4 24GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.13/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
L4 24GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.13/hour Updated: 4/28/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
L40 40GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.58/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
L40 40GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.58/hour Updated: 5/13/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
L40S 48GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.56/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
L40S 48GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.56/hour Updated: 5/13/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
RTX 3070 8GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.05/hr★ Best 4x GPU	—	Vast.ai
RTX 3070 8GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.05/hour 4x GPU configuration Updated: 5/9/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
RTX 3070 Ti 8GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.06/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
RTX 3070 Ti 8GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.06/hour Updated: 4/30/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
RTX 3080 10GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.07/hr★ Best 4x GPU	—	Vast.ai
RTX 3080 10GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.07/hour 4x GPU configuration Updated: 5/12/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
RTX 3080 Ti 12GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.11/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
RTX 3080 Ti 12GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.11/hour Updated: 5/14/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
RTX 3090 24GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.13/hr★ Best 2x GPU	—	Vast.ai
RTX 3090 24GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.13/hour 2x GPU configuration Updated: 5/14/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
RTX 3090 Ti 24GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.24/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
RTX 3090 Ti 24GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.24/hour Updated: 5/14/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
RTX 4000 Ada 20GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.14/hr★ Best	—	Vast.ai
RTX 4000 Ada 20GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.14/hour Updated: 5/11/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai
RTX 4060 8GB VRAM • Vast.ai	Not Available	$0.07/hr★ Best 2x GPU	—	Vast.ai
RTX 4060 8GB VRAM • Not Available Vast.ai $0.07/hour 2x GPU configuration Updated: 5/8/2026 ★Best Price Vast.ai

Features Comparison

OpenAI

GPT Model Family
Access to GPT-4o, GPT-4o mini, and other frontier language models
Reasoning Models
o1 and o3 series models with advanced reasoning capabilities for complex problems
Multimodal Capabilities
Process text, images, audio, and video inputs with unified models
Function Calling
Structured outputs and tool use for building agents and workflows
Assistants API
Build AI assistants with code interpreter, file search, and custom tools
Fine-Tuning
Customize models on your own data for specialized use cases

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
Flexible Infrastructure
Scale from $5 to 20,000 GPUs across 40+ data centers without contracts or minimums

Pros & Cons

OpenAI

Advantages

Industry-leading model performance and accuracy
Extensive training data providing unmatched breadth across languages and domains
Developer-friendly SDKs for Python, JavaScript, and other languages
Comprehensive documentation and large community

Considerations

Higher cost compared to open-source alternatives
Token usage can scale quickly with conversation threads
Data privacy concerns for sensitive applications

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

OpenAI

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

OpenAI

Pay-per-token

Charged based on tokens processed for both input and output

Batch API

50% discount for asynchronous batch processing

Prompt Caching

Discounts for recently seen input tokens

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.

Getting Started

OpenAI

Get Started

1
Create an account
Sign up at platform.openai.com
2
Generate API key
Create an API key in the dashboard and store it securely
3
Install SDK
Install the OpenAI SDK for Python, JavaScript, or your preferred language
4
Make your first call
Use the SDK to call OpenAI models for text generation or other tasks

Vast.ai

Get Started

1
Add Credit
Start with as little as $5. No contracts, no minimums.
2
Search GPUs
Filter by model, VRAM, price, and availability across the platform
3
Deploy
Launch instances in seconds. Scale up or down anytime.

Support & Global Availability

OpenAI

Global Regions

Global availability with data residency options in US, Europe, UK, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, India, Australia, and UAE

Support

Documentation, Help Center, Developer Forum, email support, and enterprise support plans with dedicated account managers

Vast.ai

Global Regions

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

Support

24/7 expert support, comprehensive documentation, Discord community, CLI and SDK tools