A100 vs H100: Specs, VRAM & Price
Short answer: pick the H100 when you're serving or fine-tuning models with FP8/INT8 quantization, or you're bandwidth-bound on large-batch inference. Pick the A100 when your stack is BF16/FP32-only, FP8 buys you nothing, and the lower hourly rate matters more than raw throughput.
Both the A100 and the H100 ship with 80 GB of VRAM.
You can rent both by the hour, no purchase required. A100 from $1.10/GPU/hr; H100 from $2.19/GPU/hr. The A100 is 50% cheaper at the entry rate.
A100
Good for training and inference on models that don't need FP8 kernels
H100
Good for training and serving frontier-scale LLMs
Last updated: 2026-10-10 17:01:41 UTCRefreshes hourly
Specs side by side
| Spec | A100 | H100 |
|---|---|---|
| VRAM | 80 GB | 80 GB |
| Memory bandwidth | 2,039 GB/s | 3.35 TB/s |
| Architecture | Ampere | Hopper |
| Compute capability | 8.0 | 9.0 |
| Precisions in hardware | FP32, FP16, BF16, INT4 | FP32, FP16, BF16, FP8, INT4 |
| Peak FP16/BF16 tensor TFLOPS | 312 TFLOPS | 989 TFLOPS |
| Peak FP8 tensor TFLOPS | – | 1,979 TFLOPS |
| NVLink / multi-GPU interconnect | NVLink 3, 600 GB/s | NVLink 4, 900 GB/s bidirectional |
| Max board power (TDP) | 400W (SXM) | Up to 700W (configurable) |
| Form factor | SXM4 | SXM |
| Regions | 6 | 8 |
On-demand price
| Rate | A100 | H100 |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest per GPU/hr | $1.49/GPU/hr | $2.78/GPU/hr |
Which is better for AI: A100 or H100?
The H100 adds FP8 tensor cores with a Transformer Engine and 3.35 TB/s of HBM3 bandwidth against the A100's 2,039 GB/s of HBM2e (NVIDIA H100 and A100 datasheets, Aug 2026). A real capability gap for serving or fine-tuning modern LLMs, not just a clock-speed bump. Pick the H100 when you're serving or fine-tuning models with FP8/INT8 quantization, or you're bandwidth-bound on large-batch inference; pick the A100 when your stack is BF16/FP32-only, FP8 buys you nothing, and the lower hourly rate matters more than raw throughput. On price the A100 undercuts the H100 by 50% at the entry rate ($1.10 vs $2.19/GPU/hr). Worth weighing if the deciding factor above isn't a hard requirement for your job.
Decision criteria
| Compute precision | H100 has FP8 tensor cores (Transformer Engine); A100 tops out at BF16/TF32, with no FP8 support at all (NVIDIA datasheets). |
| Memory bandwidth | H100 SXM: 3.35 TB/s HBM3. A100 80GB SXM: 2,039 GB/s HBM2e (NVIDIA product pages, Aug 2026). |
| VRAM | 80 GB on the A100 vs 80 GB on the H100, live from current marketplace listings. |
| Availability | 6 region(s) list the A100 vs 8 for the H100 today. |
| Entry price | $1.10/GPU/hr (A100) vs $2.19/GPU/hr (H100), updated hourly. |
Pick the A100 when
- Your pipeline is BF16/TF32 training or inference with no FP8 kernel in the stack
- You want the lowest entry price for large-batch throughput
- You're running an established workflow already tuned for Ampere
Pick the H100 when
- You're serving quantized (FP8/INT8) LLMs in production
- You're bandwidth-bound on large-batch inference
- You're training a frontier-scale model and can absorb the higher hourly rate
Price-performance
At list rates, 1,000 GPU-hours costs $1,102 on the A100 against $2,189 on the H100. Neither NVIDIA nor Aquanode publishes a workload-normalized $/token or $/epoch figure for this pair, so $/GPU-hour below is the only apples-to-apples number. A faster card can still cost less per finished job even at a higher hourly rate.
A100 vs H100: common questions
Is the A100 or the H100 better for AI?
Short answer: pick the H100 when you're serving or fine-tuning models with FP8/INT8 quantization, or you're bandwidth-bound on large-batch inference. Pick the A100 when your stack is BF16/FP32-only, FP8 buys you nothing, and the lower hourly rate matters more than raw throughput.
Is the A100 or the H100 cheaper to rent?
On Aquanode's live marketplace the A100 starts at $1.10/GPU/hr (median $1.87/GPU/hr) and the H100 starts at $2.19/GPU/hr (median $4.39/GPU/hr). The A100 is the cheaper of the two at the entry rate, by 50%.
What is the difference between the A100 and the H100?
Both cards report 80 GB of VRAM; the A100 is an Ampere part and the H100 is Hopper (compute capability 8.0 vs 9.0); only the H100 supports FP8 compute. On price, the A100 lists from $1.10/GPU/hr and the H100 from $2.19/GPU/hr.
How widely available are the A100 and the H100?
The A100 is listed in 6 regions and the H100 in 8 regions right now.
How much does 1,000 GPU-hours cost on the A100 vs the H100?
At the lowest rates listed today, 1,000 GPU-hours costs $1,102 on the A100 and $2,189 on the H100, a difference of $1,087 for the same runtime. Rates are per GPU per hour and update hourly.
How much VRAM does the A100 have compared to the H100?
Both the A100 and the H100 ship with 80 GB of VRAM.
Is the H100 worth the extra cost over the A100?
Only if your workload actually uses FP8. The A100 has no FP8 tensor cores at all, so a BF16-only pipeline gets no benefit from the H100's Transformer Engine. The H100 currently lists from $2.19/GPU/hr against the A100's $1.10/GPU/hr on Aquanode, so the premium only pays for itself when FP8 or the extra HBM3 bandwidth is actually load-bearing for your job.
Does the A100 or the H100 support NVLink?
Yes, both support a multi-GPU interconnect: the A100 has NVLink 3, 600 GB/s and the H100 has NVLink 4, 900 GB/s bidirectional.
How this comparison is calculated
Every price is normalized to a per-GPU hourly rate using the same pipeline as every other pricing surface on Aquanode, and only the cheapest qualifying offer per provider is shown. A dash means that provider does not currently list that GPU.
Architecture, compute capability and supported precisions come from each vendor's published datasheet for that generation, not from the marketplace feed. This page regenerates at most once per hour.
Memory bandwidth, tensor TFLOPS, NVLink/interconnect and max board power are the same verified-from-datasheet figures shown on each model's own A100 page and H100 page, which link the primary vendor source for that model. A dash here means Aquanode hasn't verified that figure from a primary source yet, never a guess.
Go further
Check what fits in each card's memory with the A100 VRAM calculator and the H100 VRAM calculator, see vendor-published throughput in the GPU benchmarks and specs table, or browse every model by generation in the GPU index.
More A100 comparisons
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Related reading: A100 pricing and specs, A100 vs H100, A100 vs V100, and The best GPUs for AI, ranked.
