--- title: "L40S vs A100 PCIE: Specs & Price per Hour (2026) | LowCostGPU" description: "L40S vs A100 PCIE: 48 vs 80 GB VRAM, 362 vs 312 FP16 TFLOPS, $0.448 vs $0.388/hr on LowCostGPU. Specs side by side, live rental prices, which to rent." url: https://lowcostgpu.com/compare/l40s-vs-a100-pcie last_modified: 2026-10-20T10:29:15+00:00 prices_as_of: 2026-10-19 site: LowCostGPU (lowcostgpu.com) --- Compare · prices checked 2026-10-19 # L40S vs A100 PCIE: specs, price per hour, which to rent NVIDIA L40S (48 GB, **$0.448** /hr) against NVIDIA A100 PCIE (80 GB, **$0.388** /hr): public specs side by side, live fixed prices from our sheet, what fits in each card's VRAM, and a verdict written for real workloads — both are rentable right now. - [NVIDIA L40S Ada Lovelace · 48 GB GDDR6 · 362 FP16 TFLOPS · $0.448/hr on-demand · $0.224/hr interruptible · 64 online](https://lowcostgpu.com/gpu/l40s) - [NVIDIA A100 PCIE Ampere · 80 GB HBM2e · 312 FP16 TFLOPS · $0.388/hr on-demand · $0.194/hr interruptible · 102 online](https://lowcostgpu.com/gpu/a100-pcie) ## L40S vs A100 PCIE specifications Public NVIDIA figures (dense, non-sparsity). The last column is L40S relative to A100 PCIE. | Spec | L40S | A100 PCIE | Difference | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Architecture | Ada Lovelace (2023) | Ampere (2021) | — | | VRAM | 48 GB GDDR6 | 80 GB HBM2e | −40% | | Memory bandwidth | 864 GB/s | 1,935 GB/s | −55% | | FP16 tensor (dense) | 362 TFLOPS | 312 TFLOPS | +16% | | FP32 | 91.6 TFLOPS | 19.5 TFLOPS | +370% | | CUDA cores | 18,176 | 6,912 | +163% | | TDP | 350 W | 300 W | +17% | | PCIe · NVLink | Gen 4.0 · no NVLink | Gen 4.0 · no NVLink | — | | PowerScore (RTX 3090 = 100) | 255 | 220 | +16% | | Max GPUs per machine | 8× | 8× | — | ## L40S vs A100 PCIE price per hour Fixed rates from our sheet — every on-demand price is the marketplace median × 0.70, rounded down. Monthly = 730 hours. | Rate | L40S | A100 PCIE | Cheaper | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | On-demand, per GPU-hour | $0.448 | $0.388 | A100 PCIE (−13%) | | Interruptible, per GPU-hour | $0.224 | $0.194 | A100 PCIE | | Reserved (3 mo), per GPU-hour | $0.291 | $0.252 | A100 PCIE | | On-demand, per month | $327 | $283 | A100 PCIE | | Market median (reference) | $0.64 | $0.56 | — | | $ per 1,000 FP16 TFLOP-hours | $1.24 | $1.24 | L40S (better value) | | $ per GB of VRAM per hour | $0.0093 | $0.0049 | A100 PCIE (better value) | Try a full month with storage and bandwidth in the [GPU cost calculator](https://lowcostgpu.com/calculator). ## What fits in VRAM: 48 GB vs 80 GB | Workload | L40S | A100 PCIE | | --- | --- | --- | | Largest LLM in FP16, one card | ~14B | ~32B | | Largest LLM at 4-bit, one card | ~72B | ~123B | | Flux dev (FP8, ~17 GB) | fits | fits | | Wan 2.x 14B video (offloaded) | yes | yes | | 70B 4-bit LLM on one card | yes | yes | Rules of thumb: ~2.4 GB per billion parameters in FP16 all-in, ~0.62 GB in 4-bit. Full tables in the [VRAM guide](https://lowcostgpu.com/guides/llm-vram-requirements). ## Verdict: which should you rent? The L40S (48 GB GDDR6, Ada, FP8) is faster for FP16/FP8 inference and image generation; the A100 PCIe (80 GB HBM2e) has more memory, more bandwidth and FP64. Pick the L40S for diffusion and ≤32B serving, the A100 for 70B models and training. - **Cheaper per hour:** A100 PCIE ($0.388 vs $0.448, −13%). - **More VRAM:** A100 PCIE (80 GB vs 48 GB). - **More FP16 throughput:** L40S (about 1.2×). - **Best value per TFLOP-hour:** L40S. - **Best value per GB of VRAM:** A100 PCIE. - **Multi-GPU:** L40S over PCIe · A100 PCIE over PCIe. ## Related comparisons [All comparisons](https://lowcostgpu.com/compare) - [H100 PCIE vs A100 PCIE $1.811 vs $0.388 per hour](https://lowcostgpu.com/compare/h100-pcie-vs-a100-pcie) - [A100 SXM4 vs A100 PCIE $0.468 vs $0.388 per hour](https://lowcostgpu.com/compare/a100-sxm4-vs-a100-pcie) - [RTX 4090 vs A100 PCIE $0.354 vs $0.388 per hour](https://lowcostgpu.com/compare/rtx-4090-vs-a100-pcie) - [RTX 4090 vs L40S $0.354 vs $0.448 per hour](https://lowcostgpu.com/compare/rtx-4090-vs-l40s) - [L40S vs H100 PCIE $0.448 vs $1.811 per hour](https://lowcostgpu.com/compare/l40s-vs-h100-pcie) - [RTX 5090 vs L40S $0.481 vs $0.448 per hour](https://lowcostgpu.com/compare/rtx-5090-vs-l40s) ## L40S vs A100 PCIE: FAQ Deeper reading: [H100 vs H200 vs B200](https://lowcostgpu.com/guides/h100-vs-h200-vs-b200), [RTX 4090 vs RTX 5090](https://lowcostgpu.com/guides/rtx-4090-vs-rtx-5090), [how cloud GPU pricing works](https://lowcostgpu.com/guides/cloud-gpu-pricing-explained). **Is the L40S faster than the A100 PCIE?** On dense FP16 tensor throughput the L40S leads by about 1.2× (362 vs 312 TFLOPS). Memory bandwidth matters as much for inference: L40S 864 GB/s vs A100 PCIE 1,935 GB/s. **Which is cheaper to rent, the L40S or the A100 PCIE?** The A100 PCIE: $0.388/hr on-demand versus $0.448/hr — 13% less. Interruptible rates are $0.224 (L40S) and $0.194 (A100 PCIE). Per TFLOP-hour the better value is the L40S. **Which has more VRAM and what does that change?** The A100 PCIE has 80 GB versus 48 GB. In LLM terms that is roughly a 32B FP16 model (or ~123B in 4-bit) on one card against 14B FP16 (~72B 4-bit). If the model does not fit, speed is irrelevant. **Can I rent both on LowCostGPU right now?** Yes — 64 × L40S and 102 × A100 PCIE are online as this page renders, deployable in about 30 seconds, billed per second, paid in crypto with no KYC. --- *About LowCostGPU:* LowCostGPU (lowcostgpu.com) is a cloud GPU rental service offering 83 NVIDIA GPU models — from the Tesla P4 at $0.019/hr to the B300 — at fixed prices set at least 30% below the public GPU marketplace median and re-checked weekly (H100 SXM: $1.680/hr on-demand). Billing is per second with no minimums; payment is crypto only (USDT, BTC, XMR, ETH, SOL, LTC, TRX) with no KYC. Instances run in Tier-III datacenters across 32 regions with a 99.9% uptime SLA and deploy in about 30 seconds from the web console (cloud.lowcostgpu.com) or the REST API. Source: https://lowcostgpu.com/compare/l40s-vs-a100-pcie · Site index for AI assistants: https://lowcostgpu.com/llms.txt · Full content: https://lowcostgpu.com/llms-full.txt