Microsoft Azure logo Vast.ai logo

Azure vs Vast.ai

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What's good about...

Microsoft Azure logo Azure

  • Integrations with the rest of Microsoft's products
  • Extensive range of managed services, from serverless to databases to queues to AI
  • Generous free tier, and compute savings plans available
  • 60+ 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 Azure's prices compare against Vast.ai?

VM Small

Closest config to 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM.
Microsoft Azure Azure
$6.13 / mo 2 vCPU, 1 GB RAM (B2pts v2)
Vast.ai Vast.ai
--

VM Medium

Closest config to 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM.
Microsoft Azure Azure
$86.87 / mo 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM (B4pls v2)
Vast.ai Vast.ai
--

VM Large

Closest config to 8 vCPU, 16 GB RAM (dedicated preferred).
Microsoft Azure Azure
$173.74 / mo 8 vCPU, 16 GB RAM (B8pls v2)
Vast.ai Vast.ai
--

Block Storage

Closest config to 100+ GB SSD, 3,000+ IOPS, 100+ MB/s throughput, no snapshots.
Microsoft Azure Azure
$8.10 / 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.
Microsoft Azure Azure
$21.50 / 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.
Microsoft Azure Azure
$23.25 / mo Standard
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.
Microsoft Azure Azure
$131.89 / mo 2 vCPU, 4 GiB RAM, 50 GB storage (Gen 5)
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.
Microsoft Azure Azure
$39.60 / mo 1 vCPU, 1 GiB RAM (Basic C1)
Vast.ai Vast.ai
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Serverless 25M Executions

Closest config to 25M invocations, 150ms execution time, 512 MB memory.
Microsoft Azure Azure
$29.80 / mo 25M invocations, 512 MB RAM, 150 ms duration
Vast.ai Vast.ai
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Free egress allowance

Microsoft Azure Azure
100 GB / mo
Vast.ai Vast.ai
--

1 TB of egress beyond allowance

Microsoft Azure Azure
$87.00 $0.087 / GB (Premium network 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

Microsoft Azure Azure
$0.09/hr
Vast.ai Vast.ai
$0.02/hr

Billing Options

Microsoft Azure Azure
On-DemandSpotReserved (12mo)Reserved (36mo)
Vast.ai Vast.ai
On-DemandSpotReserved (6mo)

Available Models

Azure offers 10 GPU models, while Vast.ai offers 53.

Microsoft Azure Azure
H100(14) A100(20) H200(2) RTX Pro 6000(40) V100(4) A10(24) T4(16) GB200(2) MI300X(2) M60(12)
Vast.ai Vast.ai
H100(29) A100(106) H200(66) B200(13) RTX Pro 6000(84) V100(10) RTX A6000(3) L4(12) RTX 4090(294) RTX 6000 Ada(22)
View all 53 GPUs

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

Here are some managed services that Azure and Vast.ai offer:

Service Azure Vast.ai
Analytics
App Testing
Block Storage
Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Container Registry
Crash Reporting
GPU-powered Servers
Load Balancer
Managed Containers
Managed Kubernetes
Managed MySQL
Managed PostgreSQL
Managed Redis®*
NoSQL Databases
Object Storage
Performance Monitoring
Push Notifications
Realtime Databases
Remote Config
Serverless Cron Jobs
Serverless Functions
Static Sites
User Authentication
Vector Databases
Virtual Private Server (VPS)

Company details

Website
Microsoft Azure Azure
azure.microsoft.com
Vast.ai Vast.ai
vast.ai
Headquarters
Microsoft Azure Azure
United States of America
Vast.ai Vast.ai
United States of America
Founded
Microsoft Azure Azure
2008
Vast.ai Vast.ai
2018
Data Center Locations
Microsoft Azure Azure
66
Vast.ai Vast.ai
--
Example Customers
Microsoft Azure Azure
General Motors, NHS, Fujitsu, NBA
Vast.ai Vast.ai
IBM, Brave, Speechify, Cognition, Bosch

Alternatives to consider

Compare Azure and Vast.ai against other cloud providers.

View all comparisons

Our data for Azure was last updated on June 5, 2026, and for Vast.ai on June 5, 2026.