The instinct after a GPU session is to power the machine off and assume the meter follows. On Paperspace it doesn't. DigitalOcean's own Paperspace docs say it directly: "when a Paperspace machine is powered off, attached storage, public IP addresses, and other add-ons continue to be billed on an hourly basis until you destroy those resources" (DigitalOcean, Paperspace Machine Storage). Powering off stops the GPU charge. It doesn't stop the rest. I build the infrastructure layer under rented GPU boxes, and this is one of the cleaner examples of a provider being explicit about a cost model that most people still get wrong on instinct.
TL;DR: Powering off a Paperspace machine keeps you paying, hourly, for its storage, its public IP, and any attached add-ons — only destroying the machine (and its storage) stops all of it. Paperspace's persistent storage comes in two tiers: Block Storage, roughly $0.018–$0.043/GB/month depending on size, and Shared Drives, roughly $0.029–$0.097/GB/month. Both keep billing as long as they exist, powered on or off.
What actually stops the meter
Paperspace machines ship with persistent storage by design — DigitalOcean's docs describe them as "Linux and Windows virtual machines with persistent storage, GPU options, and free unlimited bandwidth" (DigitalOcean, Paperspace Machines). That persistence is the whole point of the product, and it's also the reason powering off isn't the cost-saving move it looks like. The storage is doing its job — sitting there, intact — and a disk sitting there intact is a disk you're still renting.
The only way to stop paying for storage, a public IP, or an add-on is to destroy the resource itself, not just the machine's power state. That's a meaningfully different mental model from a provider where "stop" and "delete" are close to the same button.
What persistent storage costs
Paperspace prices two tiers of persistent storage, both billed hourly:
| Tier | Rate range | Approx. per GB/month |
|---|---|---|
| Block Storage | $0.0074/hr (50 GB) to $0.1786/hr (2 TB) | ~$0.018–$0.043 |
| Shared Drives | $0.0238/hr (250 GB) to $0.7738/hr (8 TB) | ~$0.029–$0.097 |
Both are drawn from Paperspace's own pricing documentation (DigitalOcean, Paperspace Pricing). The per-GB figures above are our own conversion from the published hourly tier rates at a 730-hour month, not numbers Paperspace publishes directly — check the live pricing page for the current hourly rate on the tier you're actually using before budgeting against it, since tier pricing is exactly the kind of number vendors move quietly.
Shared Drives cost meaningfully more per GB than Block Storage at every comparable tier size. That's consistent with what the name implies — a drive built to be attached across multiple machines carries a different cost structure than a single machine's block volume — but it means picking the wrong tier for a single-machine workload is a real markup, not a rounding error.
The pattern this fits
This isn't a Paperspace-specific quirk so much as the general rule for any network-attached persistent storage: it exists independently of the compute it's attached to, so the compute's power state doesn't govern its bill. RunPod's network volumes work the same way — storage charges continue while a pod is stopped. Lambda's filesystems bill independently of the instance if you delete the instance but not the filesystem. Paperspace is just unusually direct about stating it as a rule up front, in the same sentence as the IP address and add-ons, rather than leaving it as something you discover from an invoice.
The practical upshot is the same across all of them: "powered off" is not "not billing," and the only reliable way to actually stop paying is to destroy the storage resource, which also means you've decided you don't need what's on it anymore — or you've moved it somewhere else first.
Where that leaves you
If your GPU work is genuinely done and you don't need the environment again, destroying the machine and its storage is the correct move, and Paperspace's model is honest about what that costs versus what merely powering off saves. If you're pausing between sessions and plan to come back, you're paying the storage rate either way, which is a reasonable trade for not rebuilding an environment from scratch — as long as you're paying it on purpose rather than by accident because "powered off" sounded like "not billing."
The harder case is the one storage tiers don't solve at all: you want to come back to the exact environment, but on a different, cheaper, or more available GPU — possibly on a different provider entirely, since Paperspace's persistent storage, like every other vendor's, doesn't leave the platform it was created on. Pausing a box and resuming it elsewhere is built for exactly that gap — it snapshots the whole environment, not just an attached disk, and restores it on whichever provider has the GPU you actually want next. That's workspace backups on Aquanode, and our guide to keeping a persistent GPU environment portable across providers covers the general version of the problem. If you're comparing costs before deciding, the live marketplace and pricing pages give the fastest read.
FAQ
Does powering off a Paperspace machine stop billing? It stops the compute (GPU) charge, but not storage, public IP addresses, or other attached add-ons — those bill hourly until you destroy the underlying resources, per Paperspace's own docs.
What's the difference between Block Storage and Shared Drives on Paperspace? Both are persistent storage tiers billed hourly. Shared Drives, built to attach across multiple machines, cost more per GB at comparable sizes than Block Storage, which is scoped to a single machine.
How do I actually stop paying for a Paperspace machine's storage? Destroy the machine and its attached storage resources. Powering off alone leaves storage, IP, and add-on billing running.
Is Paperspace persistent storage portable to another provider? No. Like any provider's attached storage, it exists inside that platform. Moving to a different provider means copying the data out, or capturing the whole environment as a portable snapshot rather than relying on the storage attachment.
About the author
I'm Ansh Saxena. I work on the infrastructure layer under rented GPU boxes, mostly on the problem of making an environment portable enough that a provider's storage pricing tiers stop being the thing deciding where you can afford to compute next.
Sources
- DigitalOcean, Paperspace Pricing. Storage, public IP, and add-ons continue billing hourly while a machine is powered off, until the resources are destroyed; Block Storage and Shared Drives hourly tier rates.
- DigitalOcean, Paperspace Machines. Machines described as persistent-storage virtual machines with GPU options and free unlimited bandwidth.
