Paperspace (Gradient) vs FluidStack
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Paperspace (Gradient) and FluidStack.
Quick Verdict
3.4/5
Paperspace (Gradient)
0 reviews
3.6/5
FluidStack
0 reviews
FluidStack is rated higher (3.6 vs 3.4). M4000 GPU machines from $0.45/hour FluidStack aggregates GPU capacity from multiple providers to offer H100, A100, and consumer GPU instances. Pay-as-you-go and reserved capacity. EU and US datacenters with competitive pricing.
Paperspace (Gradient) ML platform and GPU cloud by DigitalOcean | FluidStack Enterprise GPU cloud at competitive pricing | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.4 (0 reviews) | 3.6 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | freemium | usage-based |
| Starting price | Free tier available✓ | From $1.3/mo |
| Best for | Individuals, students and existing users wanting managed GPU notebooks and cheap older-generation GPU machines without building infrastructure. | AI labs and platform teams committing to 8-10k+ GPUs for training or heavy inference who want managed Slurm/Kubernetes, per-GPU-hour transparency, and a hands-on infrastructure partner |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ||
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ||
| Free tier | ✓ | |
| Data-center locations | ||
| Regions | — | Canada, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tierhourly billinggpu availableus datacenterapi access | hourly billinggpu availableeu datacenterus datacenter |
| Visit Paperspace (Gradient) → | Visit FluidStack → | |
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
FluidStack
Pros
- + Published per-GPU-hour rate card with no egress or ingress fees
- + Fully managed Slurm and Kubernetes on bare metal with 24/7 engineering support
- + Scales from 8 GPUs on-demand to 10k+ reserved — cluster sizes most clouds cannot match quickly
- + EU capacity in the Netherlands and Nordics for data-residency-sensitive training
- + Engineering response times measured in hours by SemiAnalysis during ClusterMAX testing
Cons
- - Aggregated third-party capacity means hardware and day-one polish vary by deployment
- - Contract-first commercial model — 8-GPU on-demand floor, 256-GPU reserved floor, no free tier
- - No public uptime SLA, datacenter list, or documentation library
- - Reactive software supply chain security — unpatched NVIDIA container toolkit found at cluster handover in evaluation
- - Track record is short relative to the scale of its recent customer commitments
Stay in the loop
Get weekly updates on the best new hosting and infrastructure providers, deals, and comparisons.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.