One-Year Cost Projections
annual cost = price/hour × hours/day × 365. Three usage patterns, same GPU class (H100/H200), across providers.
This is a rental-spend model, not a complete total-cost-of-ownership calculation. It excludes persistent storage, data transfer, reserved-use discounts, local electricity and cooling, maintenance time, financing, resale value, downtime, and the cost of keeping spare capacity. It also does not make an H100 rental performance-equivalent to a cheaper local Mac or Ryzen system.
| Provider / GPU | 4h/day | 8h/day | 24/7 |
|---|---|---|---|
| OVH H100 80 GB | ≈€4,088 | ≈€8,176 | ≈€24,528 |
| GMI Cloud H100 80 GB | ≈$2,920 (≈€2,716) | ≈$5,840 (≈€5,431) | ≈$17,520 (≈€16,294) |
| GMI Cloud H200 | ≈$3,796 (≈€3,530) | ≈$7,592 (≈€7,061) | ≈$22,776 (≈€21,182) |
| Decentralized H100 (≈$3/h) | ≈$4,380 | ≈$8,760 | ≈$26,280 |
| Lambda H100 80 GB | ≈$6,263 (≈€5,825) | ≈$12,527 (≈€11,650) | ≈$37,580 (≈€34,955) |
| AWS H200 spot | ≈$4,925 (≈€4,580) | ≈$9,850 (≈€9,161) | ≈$29,547 (≈€27,479) |
| AWS H200 on-demand | ≈$11,552 (≈€10,743) | ≈$23,104 (≈€21,487) | ≈$69,309 (≈€64,457) |
| AWS H100 (≈$10/h estimate) | ≈$14,600 (≈€13,578) | ≈$29,200 (≈€27,156) | ≈$87,600 (≈€81,468) |
Hetzner's GEX131 (RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell 96 GB) doesn't fit this hourly-prorated format since it bills a flat €889/month regardless of hours used, but at 12 months of straight rental (€10,668/year) it is worth comparing directly against buying: see below.
Cross-referenced against the hardware table above:
At light usage (4h/day), OVH's H100 rental spend for one year (≈€4,088) lands near the purchase price of a Ryzen AI Halo or DGX Spark (≈€3,700-4,700). This is a cash-spend crossover, not a performance comparison. The H100, Ryzen, and DGX systems differ in memory, throughput, software support, and availability. Buying only becomes the lower-cost choice if the local machine can run the same workload at the required service level after power and operations are included.
Hetzner's 96 GB dedicated rental costs less for one year than buying the workstation card alone, but the hardware variants are not equivalent. A full year of GEX131 rental costs €10,668. Hetzner lists an RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Max-Q at up to 300 W, while the ≈€14,000 purchase comparison uses the Workstation Edition rated at 600 W. Both expose 96 GB, but the power envelope can affect sustained throughput. The card-only spend crosses €10,668 after about 15.7 months; comparing against the complete €16,000-18,000 workstation moves the nominal crossing to roughly 18-20 months before local electricity, maintenance, and resale value. The supported conclusion is narrower than "rent always beats buy": GEX131 is a strong one-year option when 96 GB of accelerator memory is sufficient, but benchmark the exact workload before treating it as performance-equivalent to the workstation card.
Spend comparison only. The rental uses the 300 W Max-Q variant; the purchase price uses the 600 W Workstation Edition. The graphic does not establish equivalent throughput.
GMI Cloud is the cheapest elastic (per-second, not dedicated) H100/H200 option found on this page, undercutting even OVHcloud. At 24/7, GMI's listed H100 price produces ≈€16,294/year, versus ≈€24,528/year from OVH's listed H100 price. The accelerator name matches, but host CPU, storage, networking, availability, and service terms may differ.
AWS on-demand list prices are not competitive in this snapshot for a single-GPU, workstation-shaped inference workload. Even at 4h/day, the estimated AWS H100 spend (≈€13,578/year) approaches the purchase price of one RTX PRO 6000 workstation. At 24/7, the estimate reaches ≈€81,468/year. Enterprise discounts, existing AWS commitments, regional availability, managed services, and network locality can change that decision; the table only supports a conclusion about the public prices and workload shape compared here.