What is the difference between Runpod and Salad Cloud?

Runpod 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: Runpod 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 Runpod 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 65 different GPU models across both Runpod and Salad Cloud, with 0 models available from both providers.

Runpod vs Salad Cloud

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

Runpod

Provider 1

GPUs Available

Visit Website

Salad Cloud

Provider 2

GPUs Available

Visit Website

Comparison Overview

Total GPU Models

Runpod GPUs

Salad Cloud GPUs

Direct Comparisons

Average Price Difference: $0.16/hour between comparable GPUs

GPU Pricing Comparison

Total GPUs: 65Both available: 11Runpod: 39Salad Cloud: 37

Showing 15 of 65 GPUs

Last updated: 10/29/2026, 10:44:24 PM

GPU Model ↑	Runpod Price	Salad Cloud Price	Price Diff ↕	Sources
A100 PCIe 80GB 80GB VRAM • Runpod	$1.19/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Runpod API
A100 PCIe 80GB 80GB VRAM • Runpod $1.19/hour Updated: 10/29/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Runpod API
A100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Runpod	$1.39/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Runpod API
A100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Runpod $1.39/hour Updated: 10/29/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Runpod API
A100 SXM 40GB 40GB VRAM • Runpod	$1.00/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Runpod API
A100 SXM 40GB 40GB VRAM • Runpod $1.00/hour Updated: 10/29/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Runpod API
A40 48GB VRAM • Runpod	$0.59/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Runpod API
A40 48GB VRAM • Runpod $0.59/hour Updated: 10/29/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Runpod API
B200 180GB VRAM • Runpod	$5.98/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Runpod API
B200 180GB VRAM • Runpod $5.98/hour Updated: 10/29/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Runpod 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: 10/29/2026 ★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: 10/29/2026 ★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: 10/29/2026 ★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: 10/29/2026 ★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: 10/29/2026 ★Best Price Salad API
H100 NVL 94GB VRAM • Runpod	$2.59/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Runpod API
H100 NVL 94GB VRAM • Runpod $2.59/hour Updated: 10/29/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Runpod API
H100 PCIe 80GB VRAM • Runpod	$1.99/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Runpod API
H100 PCIe 80GB VRAM • Runpod $1.99/hour Updated: 10/29/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Runpod API
H100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Runpod	$2.69/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Runpod API
H100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Runpod $2.69/hour Updated: 10/29/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Runpod API
H200 141GB VRAM • Runpod	$3.59/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Runpod API
H200 141GB VRAM • Runpod $3.59/hour Updated: 10/29/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Runpod API
H200 NVL 141GB VRAM • Runpod	$3.79/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Runpod API
H200 NVL 141GB VRAM • Runpod $3.79/hour Updated: 10/29/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Runpod API

A100 PCIe 80GB 80GB VRAM • Runpod	$1.19/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Runpod API
A100 PCIe 80GB 80GB VRAM • Runpod $1.19/hour Updated: 10/29/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Runpod API
A100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Runpod	$1.39/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Runpod API
A100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Runpod $1.39/hour Updated: 10/29/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Runpod API
A100 SXM 40GB 40GB VRAM • Runpod	$1.00/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Runpod API
A100 SXM 40GB 40GB VRAM • Runpod $1.00/hour Updated: 10/29/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Runpod API
A40 48GB VRAM • Runpod	$0.59/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Runpod API
A40 48GB VRAM • Runpod $0.59/hour Updated: 10/29/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Runpod API
B200 180GB VRAM • Runpod	$5.98/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Runpod API
B200 180GB VRAM • Runpod $5.98/hour Updated: 10/29/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Runpod 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: 10/29/2026 ★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: 10/29/2026 ★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: 10/29/2026 ★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: 10/29/2026 ★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: 10/29/2026 ★Best Price Salad API
H100 NVL 94GB VRAM • Runpod	$2.59/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Runpod API
H100 NVL 94GB VRAM • Runpod $2.59/hour Updated: 10/29/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Runpod API
H100 PCIe 80GB VRAM • Runpod	$1.99/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Runpod API
H100 PCIe 80GB VRAM • Runpod $1.99/hour Updated: 10/29/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Runpod API
H100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Runpod	$2.69/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Runpod API
H100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Runpod $2.69/hour Updated: 10/29/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Runpod API
H200 141GB VRAM • Runpod	$3.59/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Runpod API
H200 141GB VRAM • Runpod $3.59/hour Updated: 10/29/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Runpod API
H200 NVL 141GB VRAM • Runpod	$3.79/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Runpod API
H200 NVL 141GB VRAM • Runpod $3.79/hour Updated: 10/29/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Runpod API

LLM API Pricing Comparison

Total models: 3Both available: 0Runpod: 3Salad Cloud: 0

Showing 3 of 3 models

Prices per 1M tokens · Last updated: 10/29/2026, 10:44:24 PM

Model ↑	Runpod	Salad Cloud	Input Diff ↕
Kimi K2.6 Moonshot AI	$0.950 in $4.00 out	Not available	—
Kimi K2.7 Code Moonshot AI	$0.950 in $4.00 out	Not available	—
Kimi K3 Moonshot AI	$3.00 in $15.00 out	Not available	—

Features Comparison

Runpod

Secure Cloud GPUs
Access to a wide range of GPU types with enterprise-grade security
Pay-as-you-go
Only pay for the compute time you actually use
API Access
Programmatically manage your GPU instances via REST API
Fast cold-starts
Pods typically ready in 20-30 s
Hot-reload dev loop
SSH & VS Code tunnels built-in
Spot-to-on-demand fallback
Automatic migration on pre-empt

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

Runpod

Advantages

Competitive pricing with pay-per-second billing
Wide variety of GPU options
Simple and intuitive interface

Considerations

GPU availability can vary by region
Some features require technical knowledge

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

Runpod

Pods

On‑demand single‑node GPU instances in Secure Cloud (data‑center hosted) or lower‑cost Community Cloud, with flexible templates and storage.

Serverless

Pay‑per‑second endpoints with automatic scaling for production AI/ML applications.

Instant Clusters

Fully managed multi‑node GPU clusters with high‑speed networking between nodes.

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

Runpod

Secure Cloud

Pods hosted in vetted data centers; higher reliability tier

Community Cloud

Pods on vetted community hosts at lower rates than Secure Cloud

Spot

Interruptible capacity at reduced prices

Serverless

Pay-per-second billing for endpoint execution time, with automatic scaling and no charge when idle

Clusters

Per-hour or per-second billing for multi-node GPU clusters with no commitment, scaling up to 64 GPUs

Reserved Clusters

Discounted rates for 1, 3, 6, or 12+ month commitments on dedicated clusters with guaranteed availability and SLA-backed uptime; quoted by sales

Public Endpoints

Usage-based billing for pre-deployed model APIs, charged per request, per token, or per 1000 characters depending on the model

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

Runpod

Get Started

1
Create an account
Sign up for Runpod using your email or GitHub account
2
Add payment method
Add a credit card or cryptocurrency payment method
3
Launch your first pod
Select a template and GPU type to launch your first instance

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

Runpod

Global Regions

31 global regions worldwide

Support

Documentation site, support request form, public status page, and a community Discord

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.