COMPARE / L40 VS L40S
L40 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 L40
$0.190/hr
SpotGPUs · median $0.86 · 14 providers
CHEAPEST L40S
$0.250/hr
SpotGPUs · median $1.39 · 48 providers
CHEAPER RIGHT NOW
L40
live panel, 2026-09-27
| L40 | L40S | |
|---|---|---|
| MAKER | NVIDIA | NVIDIA |
| ARCHITECTURE | Ada Lovelace | Ada Lovelace |
| LAUNCHED | 2022 | 2023 |
| MEMORY | 48 GB GDDR6 ECC | 48 GB GDDR6 ECC |
| MEMORY BANDWIDTH | 864 GB/s | 864 GB/s |
| TENSOR COMPUTE | 181 TFLOPS FP16 tensor dense (362 sparse) | 362 TFLOPS FP16/BF16 tensor dense (733 sparse); 733 TFLOPS FP8 dense |
| POWER DRAW | 300 W | 350 W |
| INTERCONNECT | PCIe 4.0 x16 | PCIe 4.0 x16 (no NVLink) |
HOW TO CHOOSE
L40 vs L40S
Same memory, double the tensor throughput on the S. AI workloads belong on the L40S; the L40 earns its place on graphics.
L40S vs L40
Same card with graphics-first tuning: the L40S trades some RT/raster throughput for roughly double the tensor compute. For AI work, always the L40S; for rendering, the L40.
Workload fit
L40: rendering and visualization, light inference. L40S: llm inference up to ~34b, fine-tuning 7b-13b, image and video generation.
L40 VS L40S - FAQ
Which is cheaper to rent, L40 or L40S?
By today's published on-demand rates: L40 starts at $0.190/GPU/hr (median $0.86, 14 providers) and L40S starts at $0.250/GPU/hr (median $1.39, 48 providers). The cheapest live listing is the L40 at SpotGPUs. Figures recompute from the panel on every refresh.
L40 or L40S - which should I rent?
L40: The L40 is the graphics-first sibling of the L40S: same 48 GB of GDDR6, full Ada RT cores, half the tensor throughput. 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 L40 and L40S?
14 providers publish L40 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: L40 · L40S · all comparisons