On 2026-09-22 nineteen clouds we read publish an on-demand rate for the NVIDIA H100 SXM. The cheapest is $1.79 per GPU-hour at Cudo Compute in its Kristiansand region; the dearest is $11.06 at Microsoft Azure in eastus. Same card, same unit, same day.
The median rate card — each provider counted once, at its own cheapest listed rate — is $3.85 per GPU-hour. The weekly Cloud GPU Price Index, which takes one quote per provider and region and only rates listed in US dollars, closed the week of September 21 at $3.92 per GPU-hour.
The two figures answer different questions and are not interchangeable. The median rate card is what the card costs across the providers we read on the day you look; the index is a weekly series with a fixed panel rule, so it can be compared with itself week after week. Where the two disagree, the panel is the reason, not the market.
The spread is the story, not the median
Between $1.79 and $11.06 the middle half of the index’s quotes sits between $3.12 and $6.00 per GPU-hour. Half of the week’s index quotes sit inside that band, and it is wide enough that the choice of provider matters more than the choice of week: for eight cards running a month, $1.79 × 8 × 730 hours is about $10,400, and $11.06 × 8 × 730 is about $64,600.
Cheap rates carry conditions the rate card does not print. Cudo’s $1.79 is a GPU-only rate — storage and networking are priced apart — and it is one region. Azure’s $11.06 buys a virtual machine with its CPUs, memory and support attached. Our tables label which is which, and the source link on every row goes to the page the rate was read from, where the conditions are stated.
Committing or going spot
Against the same provider’s own on-demand rate, spot capacity runs a median 50% lower across 41 rate pairs at 6 providers. That discount is the price of being interrupted: a spot machine can be reclaimed, and our risk tag reads high for exactly that reason. Commitments discount less on paper and bill whether the card is busy or idle.
How to check any number here
Every figure above is listed under this piece with the page it was read from and the time it was read. The index is reproducible from its own receipt: the quotes that entered the week of September 21, one CSV row each, and a command that turns the file back into the published value. Nothing in this piece is modelled, forecast or estimated.