Paperspace (Gradient) vs AWS EC2
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Paperspace (Gradient) and AWS EC2.
Quick Verdict
3.4/5
Paperspace (Gradient)
0 reviews
3.9/5
AWS EC2
0 reviews
AWS EC2 is rated higher (3.9 vs 3.4). M4000 GPU machines from $0.45/hour 124 Availability Zones in 39 geographic regions
Paperspace (Gradient) ML platform and GPU cloud by DigitalOcean |  AWS EC2 The original cloud — 750+ instance types | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.4 (0 reviews) | 3.9 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | freemium | usage-based (per-second On-Demand, Spot, Savings Plans; free tier credits for new accounts) |
| Starting price | Free tier available✓ | From $0.0042/mo |
| Best for | Individuals, students and existing users wanting managed GPU notebooks and cheap older-generation GPU machines without building infrastructure. | Teams with AWS expertise needing the broadest instance selection, global regions, GPU/bare metal options, and commitment-based discounts for steady production workloads |
| Specifications (entry plan) | ||
| CPU cores | — | — |
| RAM | — | 0.5 GB |
| Storage | — | — |
| Bandwidth | — | — |
| SLA uptime | — | 99.99% |
| Data-center count | 3 | — |
| €/GB RAM/mo | — | €0.01 |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ✓ | |
| DDoS protection | ✓ | |
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ||
| Free tier | ||
| Data-center locations | ||
| Regions | — | 39 AWS regions / 124 AZs plus Local Zones and Wavelength |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tierhourly billinggpu availableus datacenterapi access | free tierhourly billingipv6ddos protectionbackups includedmanaged optionbare metalgpu availables3 compatibleeu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenterapi accessterraform providerkubernetes support |
| Visit Paperspace (Gradient) → | Visit AWS EC2 → | |
Paperspace (Gradient)
Pros
- + Cheap GPU access on older cards: M4000 at $0.45/hour, P4000 at $0.51/hour
- + Free tier plus $8/month Pro plan makes managed GPU notebooks accessible
- + Machines include persistent storage and free unlimited bandwidth
- + Notebook-to-deployment ML workflow (notebooks, workflows, deployments) in one product
- + Amsterdam region gives EU machine placement
Cons
- - Being sunset into DigitalOcean's platform — standalone roadmap and APIs already replaced
- - ML platform (Notebooks/Deployments/Workflows) runs in NY2 only; no APAC presence
- - Newest GPUs (A100/H100/RTX5000) are NY2-only; rate cards have changed recently
- - Team tiers cap at 2-5 members; storage overages at $0.29/GB
AWS EC2
Pros
- + Widest hardware catalog in the market — 1,000+ instance types including Arm, bare metal and GPU families
- + Per-second billing with real cost levers: Spot up to 90% off, Savings Plans up to 72% off
- + 99.99% region-level SLA across 124 AZs in 39 regions with explicit service credits
- + Mature ecosystem: AMIs, Marketplace, Terraform, Systems Manager, and deep service integration
Cons
- - Total cost is a system of meters — EBS, snapshots, elastic IPv4, data transfer and add-ons dwarf the instance price
- - Requires real AWS expertise: VPC design, security groups, IAM and patching are all self-managed
- - Single-instance SLA is only 99.5%; the 99.99% commitment requires multi-AZ architecture
- - Data transfer out is expensive enough to shape architecture decisions
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