Paperspace (Gradient) vs Beam Cloud
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Paperspace (Gradient) and Beam Cloud.
Quick Verdict
3.4/5
Paperspace (Gradient)
0 reviews
3.6/5
Beam Cloud
0 reviews
Beam Cloud is rated higher (3.6 vs 3.4). M4000 GPU machines from $0.45/hour Beam Cloud provides serverless GPU and CPU compute for AI model serving and data pipelines. Scale to zero when not running. Python SDK for easy integration. Pay only for compute used.
Paperspace (Gradient) ML platform and GPU cloud by DigitalOcean | Beam Cloud Serverless GPU infrastructure with per-second billing and instant scaling | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.4 (0 reviews) | 3.6 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | freemium | freemium |
| Starting price | Free tier available | Free tier available |
| Best for | Individuals, students and existing users wanting managed GPU notebooks and cheap older-generation GPU machines without building infrastructure. | Teams shipping AI inference, agent sandboxes, and spiky GPU workloads who want per-second pricing and the option to self-host or run on their own cloud credits. |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ||
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ✓ | |
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ||
| Free tier | ||
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tierhourly billinggpu availableus datacenterapi access | free tiergpu availableus datacenterapi access |
| Visit Paperspace (Gradient) → | Visit Beam Cloud → | |
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
Beam Cloud
Pros
- + Aggressive GPU pricing: H100 PCIE from $1.83/hr on-demand, RTX 4090 serverless at $0.000192/sec
- + Free Developer tier with $30 compute credits every month and no mandatory production subscription
- + Open-source beta9 runtime (AGPL-3.0) with self-host and BYOC on AWS/GCP/Azure
- + Millisecond billing with scale-to-zero; sandboxes with GPU support and GPU checkpoint restore
- + Published per-second and per-hour rates with a transparent cost calculator
Cons
- - No published uptime SLA; young company with a small team behind it
- - Multiple billing units (per-second, per-hour, per-core-second, management fees) make comparison hard
- - Cold-start figures are vendor claims; uncached large images and weight downloads are slower
- - Managed fleet's regional footprint is not published; BYOC assumes you already run a cloud account
- - Container platform, not a VPS — no bare-metal root or kernel-level control on the serverless line
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