Cloud H100s Rent for $4 an Hour Now. Does Owning GPUs Still Pay?
Two years ago an H100 was almost impossible to rent. Now cloud H100s list near $4 per GPU-hour, and used hardware has fallen just as hard. So which is cheaper, renting or owning?
It comes down to utilization. A used 8-GPU H100 server can pay for itself in about 8 months at full load, but not for years if it sits at 30%. And resale value, which most comparisons skip, tilts the math toward ownership.
Cloud H100s now rent near $4/GPU-hour. The renting vs owning GPUs math comes down to utilization. Here's the break-even, with resale value c
