Can I get cheaper GPUs than AWS for training?

Yes — often much cheaper than AWS, depending on your needs.

Common cheaper options

1) Other cloud GPU providers

These can be significantly cheaper than AWS for training workloads:

• RunPod
• Lambda
• Paperspace
• Vast.ai
• CoreWeave
• Crusoe
• Fluidstack

Prices vary a lot by GPU type and availability, but many offer lower hourly rates than AWS, especially for:

• A100 / H100
• L40S
• 4090 / consumer GPUs
• spot/preemptible instances

2) Marketplace / rent-from-owners options

• Vast.ai is often one of the cheapest, because it aggregates spare capacity from many hosts.
• Great if you care about cost more than enterprise guarantees.

3) Buy your own GPUs

If you train often, buying hardware can be cheaper over time:

• RTX 4090 / 5090-class consumer GPUs often have the best $/performance
• Best if you have steady utilization and can handle ops, cooling, power, and maintenance

4) Use spot / preemptible instances

On AWS and elsewhere, spot can cut costs a lot:

• Often 50–90% cheaper
• Good for training if your jobs can checkpoint and resume

Important tradeoffs

Cheaper GPU options may come with:

• less reliable uptime
• weaker networking / storage
• slower provisioning
• less mature enterprise support
• variable performance if on shared hardware

Rule of thumb

• Small experiments / prototyping: cheapest marketplace or consumer GPU clouds
• Long training runs: spot instances or dedicated cheaper clouds
• Heavy ongoing usage: consider buying GPUs
• Enterprise / compliance needs: AWS may still be worth the premium

If you want, I can help you compare AWS vs RunPod vs Lambda vs Vast.ai for a specific GPU like A100, H100, or 4090.