Beam logo Runpod logo

Beam vs Runpod

Beam covers serverless, on-demand machines and reserved clusters, while Runpod spans a wider GPU catalog that includes community-hosted capacity.

Jump to: What's good Pricing GPUs Services Company details Alternatives

What's good about...

Beam logo Beam

  • Pay-per-millisecond billing, only while code is running
  • Sub-second cold starts from memory snapshots
  • No egress or bandwidth fees on any plan
  • Runs in your own AWS, GCP or Azure account
  • Recurring monthly credit on every plan

Runpod logo 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
  • Multi-node Clusters scale to thousands of GPUs
  • Built-in deployments, autoscaling & monitoring

Price comparison

How do Beam's prices compare against Runpod?

VM Small

Closest config to 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM.
Beam Beam
--
Runpod Runpod
$43.20 / mo 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM (Compute-Optimized)

VM Medium

Closest config to 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM.
Beam Beam
--
Runpod Runpod
$86.40 / mo 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM (Compute-Optimized)

VM Large

Closest config to 8 vCPU, 16 GB RAM (dedicated preferred).
Beam Beam
--
Runpod Runpod
$172.80 / mo 8 vCPU, 16 GB RAM (Compute-Optimized)

Block Storage

Closest config to 100+ GB SSD, 3,000+ IOPS, 100+ MB/s throughput, no snapshots.
Beam Beam
$2.10 / mo 100 GB beyond free allowance · First 1 TB included
Runpod Runpod
$10.00 / mo 100 GB

Free egress allowance

Beam Beam
Free and unlimited
Runpod Runpod
Free and unlimited

1 TB of egress beyond allowance

Beam Beam
--
Runpod Runpod
Free and unlimited

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.

Beam Beam
Runpod Runpod
H100 $1.74 $2.59 B200 $3.93 $6.79 H200 $1.99 $3.59 RTX 5090 $0.68 $0.69

Billing Options

Beam Beam
On-DemandCustom
Runpod 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.

Beam offers 10 GPU models, while Runpod offers 35.

Beam Beam
H100(2) A100(1) H200(2) RTX PRO 6000(1) L40S(1) B200(2) B300(1) RTX A6000(1) RTX 5090(1) RTX 4090(1)
Runpod Runpod
H100(12) A100(11) H200(7) RTX PRO 6000(4) L40S(6) B200(3) B300(3) V100(3) RTX A6000(3) RTX 5090(6)
View all 35 GPUs →

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 Beam and Runpod offer:

Service Beam Runpod
Block Storage
GPU-powered Servers
Managed Containers
Python Notebooks
Serverless Cron Jobs
Serverless Functions
Virtual Private Server (VPS)

Company details

Website
Beam Beam
www.beam.cloud
Runpod Runpod
www.runpod.io
Headquarters
Beam Beam
United States of America
Runpod Runpod
United States of America
Founded
Beam Beam
2021
Runpod Runpod
2022
Data Center Locations
Beam Beam
--
Runpod Runpod
32
Example Customers
Beam Beam
Coke, Ogilvy, EdgeImpulse, Magellan AI, Geospy, Frase
Runpod Runpod
Zillow, CivitAI, Wix, OpenAI, Perplexity, Cursor

Alternatives to consider

Compare Beam and Runpod against other cloud providers.

View all comparisons

Our data for Beam was last updated on Aug. 25, 2026, and for Runpod on Aug. 25, 2026.