AWS vs Vast.ai

AWS offers a much broader suite of cloud services but at a significantly higher price point for comparable GPU instances.

What's good about...

Amazon Web Services logo AWS

  • Extensive range of managed services, from serverless to databases to queues to video streaming
  • Generous free tier and savings plan available to lock-in discounts
  • 30+ datacenter locations around the world

Vast.ai logo Vast.ai

  • Large pool of over 20,000 GPUs
  • Over 68 GPU types across 40+ data centers
  • Enterprise-grade security with SOC2 certification
  • Pre-built templates including PyTorch, CUDA, and TensorFlow

Price comparison

How do AWS's prices compare against Vast.ai?

VM Small

Closest config to 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM.
Amazon Web Services AWS
$7.49 / mo 2 vCPU, 1 GiB RAM (t3.micro)
Vast.ai Vast.ai
--

VM Medium

Closest config to 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM.
Amazon Web Services AWS
$119.80 / mo 4 vCPU, 16 GiB RAM (t3.xlarge)
Vast.ai Vast.ai
--

VM Large

Closest config to 8 vCPU, 16 GB RAM (dedicated preferred).
Amazon Web Services AWS
$248.20 / mo 8 vCPU, 16 GiB RAM (c5.2xlarge)
Vast.ai Vast.ai
--

Block Storage

Closest config to 100+ GB SSD, 3,000+ IOPS, 100+ MB/s throughput, no snapshots.
Amazon Web Services AWS
$8.00 / mo 100 GB
Vast.ai Vast.ai
--

Object Storage

Closest config to 1 TB stored, 100 GB in / 250 GB out, 1M GET, 100k PUT/POST.
Amazon Web Services AWS
$24.63 / mo 1 TB
Vast.ai Vast.ai
--

Load Balancer

Closest config to TCP, 1 node (1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM), 200+ Mbps, 1,000 conn/sec, 1 TB processed/mo.
Amazon Web Services AWS
$22.57 / mo Network Load Balancer
Vast.ai Vast.ai
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Managed PostgreSQL

Closest config to 1 node, 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 50+ GB storage, 10 GB read / 5 GB write per month.
Amazon Web Services AWS
$57.59 / mo 2 vCPU, 4 GiB RAM, 50 GB storage (db.t3.medium)
Vast.ai Vast.ai
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Managed Redis®*

Closest config to 1 node, 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, 10 req/s, 1 KB avg request size.
Amazon Web Services AWS
$24.82 / mo 1 vCPU, 1.55 GiB RAM (cache.t2.small)
Vast.ai Vast.ai
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Serverless 25M Executions

Closest config to 25M invocations, 150ms execution time, 512 MB memory.
Amazon Web Services AWS
$36.26 / mo 25M invocations, 512 MB RAM, 150 ms duration
Vast.ai Vast.ai
--

Free egress allowance

Amazon Web Services AWS
100 GB / mo
Vast.ai Vast.ai
--

1 TB of egress beyond allowance

Amazon Web Services AWS
$90.00 $0.09 / GB (North America)
Vast.ai Vast.ai
--

Vast.ai logo Vast.ai Pricing Details

Vast.ai operates as a global marketplace where pricing is billed per second and broken into three components:

  1. Active rental cost for the GPU, charged only when an instance is running.

  2. Storage cost for allocated disk space, which applies as long as the instance exists (even when stopped).

  3. Bandwidth costs for data transfer.

GPU Fleet Overview

Starting Price

Amazon Web Services AWS
$0.19/hr
Vast.ai Vast.ai
$0.02/hr

Billing Options

Amazon Web Services AWS
On-DemandReserved (12mo)Reserved (36mo)
Vast.ai Vast.ai
On-DemandSpotReserved (6mo)

Heads up: We do our best to keep these 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 with the provider before provisioning.

Which services do they offer

Company details

Website
Vast.ai Vast.ai
vast.ai
Headquarters
Amazon Web Services AWS
United States of America
Vast.ai Vast.ai
United States of America
Founded
Amazon Web Services AWS
2006
Vast.ai Vast.ai
2018
Data Center Locations
Amazon Web Services AWS
31
Vast.ai Vast.ai
--
Example Customers
Amazon Web Services AWS
Vanguard, Disney, Samsung, Zocdoc, GoPro
Vast.ai Vast.ai
IBM, Brave, Speechify, Cognition, Bosch

Alternatives to consider

Compare AWS and Vast.ai against other cloud providers.

View all comparisons

Our data for AWS was last updated on June 7, 2026, and for Vast.ai on June 7, 2026.