What's good about...
Alibaba Cloud
- Strong presence in Asia and over 3,000 points of presence (POPs) around the world
- Extensive range of managed services and server configurations
- Offers a solid range of GPU servers
Runpod
- Deploy affordable GPUs in under a minute
- Scale across 30+ regions worldwide
- SOC 2 Type II certified, 99.9% uptime SLA
- Flexible billing: pay by the second, no commitments
- Built-in deployments, autoscaling & monitoring
Price comparison
How do Alibaba Cloud's prices compare against Runpod?
VM Small
Closest config to 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM.
Alibaba Cloud
Runpod
VM Medium
Closest config to 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM.
Alibaba Cloud
Runpod
VM Large
Closest config to 8 vCPU, 16 GB RAM (dedicated preferred).
Alibaba Cloud
Runpod
Block Storage
Closest config to 100+ GB SSD, 3,000+ IOPS, 100+ MB/s throughput, no snapshots.
Alibaba Cloud
Runpod
Object Storage
Closest config to 1 TB stored, 100 GB in / 250 GB out, 1M GET, 100k PUT/POST.
Alibaba Cloud
Runpod
Load Balancer
Closest config to TCP, 1 node (1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM), 200+ Mbps, 1,000 conn/sec, 1 TB processed/mo.
Alibaba Cloud
Runpod
Managed PostgreSQL
Closest config to 1 node, 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 50+ GB storage, 10 GB read / 5 GB write per month.
Alibaba Cloud
Runpod
Managed Redis®*
Closest config to 1 node, 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, 10 req/s, 1 KB avg request size.
Alibaba Cloud
Runpod
Free egress allowance
Alibaba Cloud
Runpod
1 TB of egress beyond allowance
Alibaba Cloud
Runpod
GPU Fleet Overview
Same GPU, Both Providers
Cheapest rate per GPU per hour for the cards both providers sell, compared on a billing mode they both publish.On-demand price per GPU-hour.
Billing Options
Alibaba Cloud
On-DemandReserved (12mo)
Runpod
On-DemandReservation
Available Models
Ranked by how many providers list each card. The number beside a GPU is how many instance configurations this provider sells it in, not how many are in stock.Alibaba Cloud offers 4 GPU models, while Runpod offers 34.
Heads up: We do our best to keep these specs & prices accurate. However, cloud costs may fluctuate based on region, usage, and other factors not listed here. These are estimates based on common setups and are for informational purposes only. Always verify current rates & exact specs with the provider before provisioning.
Which services do they offer
Here are some managed services that Alibaba Cloud and Runpod offer:
Company details
|
Alibaba Cloud
|
Runpod
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Website | www.alibabacloud.com | www.runpod.io |
| Headquarters | Singapore | United States of America |
| Founded | 2009 | 2022 |
| Data Center Locations | 30 | 30 |
| Example Customers | Taobao, Henkel, Hang Seng Bank, Tiger Brokers | Zillow, CivitAI, Wix, OpenAI, Perplexity, Cursor |
Website
Alibaba Cloud
Runpod
Headquarters
Alibaba Cloud
Runpod
Founded
Alibaba Cloud
Runpod
Data Center Locations
Alibaba Cloud
Runpod
Example Customers
Alibaba Cloud
Runpod
Alternatives to consider
Compare Alibaba Cloud and Runpod against other cloud providers.
Our data for Alibaba Cloud was last updated on Aug. 23, 2026, and for Runpod on Aug. 23, 2026.