COMPARE / A100 80GB SXM VS L40S
A100 80GB SXM vs L40S
Specs from the chip makers' datasheets; prices from the live Compute Cafe panel, refreshed hourly. Every rate is an on-demand published price with a source receipt.
CHEAPEST A100 80GB SXM
$0.290/hr
SpotGPUs · median $5.12 · 7 providers
CHEAPEST L40S
$0.250/hr
SpotGPUs · median $1.39 · 48 providers
CHEAPER RIGHT NOW
L40S
live panel, 2026-09-27
| A100 80GB SXM | L40S | |
|---|---|---|
| MAKER | NVIDIA | NVIDIA |
| ARCHITECTURE | Ampere | Ada Lovelace |
| LAUNCHED | 2020 | 2023 |
| MEMORY | 80 GB HBM2e | 48 GB GDDR6 ECC |
| MEMORY BANDWIDTH | 2.0 TB/s | 864 GB/s |
| TENSOR COMPUTE | 312 TFLOPS FP16/BF16 tensor dense (624 sparse) | 362 TFLOPS FP16/BF16 tensor dense (733 sparse); 733 TFLOPS FP8 dense |
| POWER DRAW | 400 W | 350 W |
| INTERCONNECT | NVLink 3.0 600 GB/s | PCIe 4.0 x16 (no NVLink) |
HOW TO CHOOSE
A100 80GB SXM vs L40S
The L40S is cheaper per hour and faster at FP16 on paper, but 48 GB of GDDR6 and no NVLink cap it at smaller models. For anything 70B-class, the A100's HBM and interconnect win.
Workload fit
A100 80GB SXM: fine-tuning up to 70b, multi-gpu training, large-model inference. L40S: llm inference up to ~34b, fine-tuning 7b-13b, image and video generation.
A100 80GB SXM VS L40S - FAQ
Which is cheaper to rent, A100 80GB SXM or L40S?
By today's published on-demand rates: A100 80GB SXM starts at $0.290/GPU/hr (median $5.12, 7 providers) and L40S starts at $0.250/GPU/hr (median $1.39, 48 providers). The cheapest live listing is the L40S at SpotGPUs. Figures recompute from the panel on every refresh.
A100 80GB SXM or L40S - which should I rent?
A100 80GB SXM: The A100 80GB was the standard large-model training chip of 2021-2023 and still anchors an enormous installed base. L40S: The L40S is the workhorse of the inference-and-fine-tuning middle: Ada tensor cores with FP8, 48 GB of memory, and a price well below the H100 line. The side-by-side spec table and live price rows above give the full picture.
Where can I rent A100 80GB SXM and L40S?
7 providers publish A100 80GB SXM rates and 48 publish L40S rates on Compute Cafe. Every row links to the provider's own published price - committed-use and reserved rates are excluded.
Full pricing: A100 80GB SXM · L40S · all comparisons