Provider Overview
Strengths & Best For
Salad leverages a distributed network of consumer GPUs — including RTX 4090 and RTX 3090 — to deliver some of the lowest AI inference prices on the market, making it ideal for batch image generation, LLM inference, and cost-sensitive AI workloads. The marketplace model enables per-use billing with no minimum commitment, dramatically undercutting traditional on-demand GPU cloud pricing for fault-tolerant jobs. Best suited for workloads that can tolerate variable hardware rather than requiring guaranteed uptime.
- Extremely low prices
- Consumer GPU network
- Batch inference focus
- Pay-per-use
Vast.ai is a peer-to-peer GPU marketplace listing 10,000+ GPUs — including H100, A100, and RTX 4090 — from hosts worldwide, consistently offering some of the lowest spot GPU rental prices available anywhere. Both on-demand and bid-based spot pricing are available, enabling researchers and developers to run LLM fine-tuning, image generation, and batch AI workloads at a fraction of traditional cloud costs. The largest and most price-competitive GPU marketplace for budget-conscious AI teams.
- Lowest spot prices
- Wide GPU variety
- Bid-based pricing
- Large host network
Live GPU Pricing
Region Coverage
Popular Comparisons
Salad — marketplace provider
Salad leverages a distributed network of consumer GPUs — including RTX 4090 and RTX 3090 — to deliver some of the lowest AI inference prices on the market, making it ideal for batch image generation, LLM inference, and cost-sensitive AI workloads. The marketplace model enables per-use billing with no minimum commitment, dramatically undercutting traditional on-demand GPU cloud pricing for fault-tolerant jobs. Best suited for workloads that can tolerate variable hardware rather than requiring guaranteed uptime.
Vast.ai — marketplace provider
Vast.ai is a peer-to-peer GPU marketplace listing 10,000+ GPUs — including H100, A100, and RTX 4090 — from hosts worldwide, consistently offering some of the lowest spot GPU rental prices available anywhere. Both on-demand and bid-based spot pricing are available, enabling researchers and developers to run LLM fine-tuning, image generation, and batch AI workloads at a fraction of traditional cloud costs. The largest and most price-competitive GPU marketplace for budget-conscious AI teams.
Billing model comparison
Salad uses a Per-use (serverless) billing model with a minimum commitment of None. Vast.ai uses On-demand, Spot (bid-based) billing with a None minimum. Both providers offer flexible billing options — compare the live pricing table above to find the best rate for your specific GPU model and workload duration.
Which workloads each provider suits best
Salad is best suited for: Budget inference workloads, Image generation pipelines, Cost-sensitive batch jobs. Its key strengths are extremely low prices, consumer gpu network, batch inference focus. Vast.ai is best suited for: Budget-conscious developers, Spot-tolerant batch jobs, Researchers needing cheap GPUs. Its key strengths are lowest spot prices, wide gpu variety, bid-based pricing. Marketplace providers aggregate GPU supply from multiple sources, often offering the lowest spot rates but with more variable availability and less predictable performance compared to dedicated providers.
Support tiers and region coverage
Salad offers Community → Pro support across 2 regions (US, EU). Vast.ai offers Community → Pro support across 4 regions (US, EU, APAC and 1 more). Vast.ai's broader region footprint gives it an advantage for latency-sensitive workloads or teams with data residency requirements in specific geographies.
Provider background: Salad vs Vast.ai
Salad was founded in 2020 and is headquartered in Boston, MA. Vast.ai was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in San Francisco, CA. Vast.ai has 3 years more operational history than Salad, which may matter for teams evaluating provider stability and long-term contract risk. Use the live pricing table above to compare current on-demand and spot rates for specific GPU models, and the region map to verify coverage in your target geography.