TensorDock vs Vast.ai
A detailed comparison to help you choose between TensorDock and Vast.ai.
Quick Verdict
3.8/5
TensorDock
0 reviews
3.7/5
Vast.ai
0 reviews
TensorDock is rated higher (3.8 vs 3.7). TensorDock is a GPU compute marketplace with per-second billing — H100 SXM5 from $2.80/hour and A100 from $1.50/hour (A100 PCIe 80GB) on its published rate card. 100+ locations in 20+ countries, on-demand provisioning. P2P GPU marketplace connecting researchers and developers with spare compute capacity. Offers rented GPUs at lower rates than centralized cloud providers, ideal for ML training, rendering, and batch processing.
TensorDock Affordable GPU cloud compute without long-term contracts | Vast.ai Rent GPUs from individuals for 2-10x cheaper compute | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.8 (0 reviews)✓ | 3.7 (0 reviews) |
| Pricing model | usage-based | usage-based |
| Starting price | From $0.1/mo | From $0.03/mo✓ |
| Best for | Cost-conscious ML engineers, researchers and studios running training with checkpointing, batch inference or rendering, especially where consumer GPUs like the RTX 4090 fit the workload | ML researchers, rendering studios, and budget-conscious teams running checkpointable training, fine-tune, and batch workloads who are willing to vet hosts themselves |
| Specifications (entry plan) | ||
| CPU cores | 2 vCPU | — |
| RAM | 4 GB | — |
| Storage | 20 GB | — |
| Bandwidth | — | — |
| SLA uptime | 99.99% | — |
| Data-center count | 100 | — |
| €/vCPU/mo | €0.05 | — |
| €/GB RAM/mo | €0.03 | — |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ||
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ||
| Free tier | ||
| Data-center locations | ||
| Regions | 100+ marketplace locations in over 20 countries (US, EU, Asia-Pacific); tier 3/4 data centers plus community hosts | Global — distributed hosts |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | hourly billinggpu availableeu datacenterus datacenter | hourly billinggpu availableeu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenter |
| Visit TensorDock → | Visit Vast.ai → | |
TensorDock
Pros
- + Among the lowest published GPU rates anywhere: RTX 4090 at $0.35/hr, H100 SXM5 at $2.85/hr typical
- + A la carte, per-second billing for vCPU, RAM and NVMe — pay only for the configuration you need
- + Breadth: 45 GPU models across 100+ locations in 20+ countries, with an API for automation
- + Published rate card and transparent explanation of why the same GPU has multiple prices
- + Host vetting, host SSH access revoked, and a 99.99% uptime standard for listed hosts
Cons
- - Marketplace variance: host redundancy and quality differ, with cheaper listings often least redundant
- - Email-only support with multi-hour response windows; no contractual SLA with credits
- - Prepaid balance model deletes servers when the balance reaches zero
- - Published rate card is stamped July 2024 and carries a no-guarantee disclaimer
- - Fewer managed niceties (templates, serverless) than RunPod, Lambda or hyperscalers
Vast.ai
Pros
- + Cheapest public GPU-hour rates anywhere; per-second billing with no minimum charge
- + Always-on capacity across 81 GPU types and hosts in 52 countries — no 'capacity coming soon'
- + Interruptible bidding and reserved discounts give real pricing levers per workload
- + Dense, useful search filters: reliability score, DLPerf, network speed, host tier
- + SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA attestations at the platform level, per third-party comparisons
Cons
- - No SLA, no owned datacenters, and no recourse when an independent host disappears
- - Host variance is real: measured ±11.7% throughput spread on identical H100 SXM specs
- - Storage bills continue on stopped instances; bandwidth is host-set and can be expensive
- - Interruptible preemption risk demands checkpointing discipline
- - Verification and reliability-score formulas are only partially disclosed
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