COMPARE / L40S VS RTX 4090
L40S vs RTX 4090
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 L40S
$0.250/hr
SpotGPUs · median $1.39 · 48 providers
CHEAPEST RTX 4090
$0.090/hr
SpotGPUs · median $0.48 · 38 providers
CHEAPER RIGHT NOW
RTX 4090
live panel, 2026-09-27
| L40S | RTX 4090 | |
|---|---|---|
| MAKER | NVIDIA | NVIDIA |
| ARCHITECTURE | Ada Lovelace | Ada Lovelace |
| LAUNCHED | 2023 | 2022 |
| MEMORY | 48 GB GDDR6 ECC | 24 GB GDDR6X |
| MEMORY BANDWIDTH | 864 GB/s | 1.0 TB/s |
| TENSOR COMPUTE | 362 TFLOPS FP16/BF16 tensor dense (733 sparse); 733 TFLOPS FP8 dense | 330 TFLOPS FP16 tensor dense (660 sparse); FP8 supported |
| POWER DRAW | 350 W | 450 W |
| INTERCONNECT | PCIe 4.0 x16 (no NVLink) | PCIe 4.0 x16 |
HOW TO CHOOSE
RTX 4090 vs L40S
Similar tensor throughput; L40S adds 48 GB ECC, datacenter drivers and support - at 2-4x the hourly rate. If 24 GB fits your job, the 4090 is the value pick.
Workload fit
L40S: llm inference up to ~34b, fine-tuning 7b-13b, image and video generation. RTX 4090: small-model inference, fine-tuning 7b-13b, image generation.
L40S VS RTX 4090 - FAQ
Which is cheaper to rent, L40S or RTX 4090?
By today's published on-demand rates: L40S starts at $0.250/GPU/hr (median $1.39, 48 providers) and RTX 4090 starts at $0.090/GPU/hr (median $0.48, 38 providers). The cheapest live listing is the RTX 4090 at SpotGPUs. Figures recompute from the panel on every refresh.
L40S or RTX 4090 - which should I rent?
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. RTX 4090: The RTX 4090 is the consumer card that built the budget GPU-cloud market: L40S-class FP16 throughput at a fraction of the price, limited by 24 GB of memory, no ECC, and no datacenter software features. The side-by-side spec table and live price rows above give the full picture.
Where can I rent L40S and RTX 4090?
48 providers publish L40S rates and 38 publish RTX 4090 rates on Compute Cafe. Every row links to the provider's own published price - committed-use and reserved rates are excluded.
Full pricing: L40S · RTX 4090 · all comparisons