Thunder Compute
vs
Vast.ai
Thunder Compute rents virtualized instances at fixed rates billed per minute, while Vast.ai is a marketplace of independent hosts who set their own rates.
What's good about each
- Per-minute billing, nothing charged while an instance is stopped
- Per-second GPU sandboxes, each its own Firecracker microVM
- MCP server for Claude Code, Cursor and Codex
- 100 GB persistent disk per GPU, no egress fees
- Budget cards to Blackwell, including the RTX PRO 6000 and B200
- On-demand, interruptible and reserved rentals
- SOC 2 Type II certified, with vetted datacenter hosts in Secure Cloud
- REST API, CLI, Python SDK and coding agent plugins
Price comparison
Closest matching configuration on each side, monthly list price in USD.
| Service | Thunder Compute | Vast.ai | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Block storage | $21.90 /mo 100 GB beyond free allowance · First 100 GB per GPU included | -- Not listed | |
| Egress | Free and unlimited | -- Not listed |
Heads up: Figures take each provider's closest plan to a common setup, and vary by region and usage. Hover a service for the reference configuration. Verify before provisioning. More on how we price.
GPUs
Thunder Compute offers 4 GPU models. We don't currently list GPU prices for Vast.ai.
Services
Managed services each provider offers.
| Service | Thunder Compute | Vast.ai |
|---|---|---|
| Block Storage | ||
| GPU-powered Servers | ||
| Managed Containers |
Compliance
Frameworks each provider states on its own site, each linked to its source.
| Framework | Thunder Compute | Vast.ai |
|---|---|---|
| SOC 2 | -- | Type II, platform only |
| HIPAA | -- | Secure Cloud tier only |
| GDPR | Yes | Yes |
Heads up: Each entry links to the provider's own statement. An attestation can cover one tier, one region or the platform alone rather than every service. Verify the scope before you rely on it. A dash means we found nothing to link to, not that the provider lacks it.
Company details
| Fact | Thunder Compute | Vast.ai |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2024 | 2018 |
| Headquarters | USA | USA |
| Locations | -- | -- |
| Example customers | NYU Langone Health, MIT, ETH Zürich, UC Berkeley, Theseus, Conduit, InstaLILY | IBM, Brave, Speechify, Cognition, Bosch |
| Website | www.thundercompute.com | vast.ai |
Alternatives to consider
Compare Thunder Compute and Vast.ai against other cloud providers.
Our data for Thunder Compute was last updated on Oct. 26, 2026, and for Vast.ai on Oct. 15, 2026.