L40S vs A100: Specs, VRAM & Price
Short answer: pick the A100 when you're training or doing large-batch work that's bandwidth-bound. Pick the L40S when you're running inference at scale and the L40S's positioning and price fit better than the A100's training-grade spec.
The A100 has 80 GB of VRAM; the L40S has 48 GB.
You can rent both by the hour, no purchase required. A100 from $1.10/GPU/hr; L40S from $0.726/GPU/hr. The L40S is 34% cheaper at the entry rate.
A100
Good for training and inference on models that don't need FP8 kernels
L40S
Good for fine-tuning mid-size models and high-throughput inference
Last updated: 2026-10-10 21:46:33 UTCRefreshes hourly
Specs side by side
| Spec | A100 | L40S |
|---|---|---|
| VRAM | 80 GB | 48 GB |
| Memory bandwidth | 2,039 GB/s | 864 GB/s |
| Architecture | Ampere | Ada Lovelace |
| Compute capability | 8.0 | 8.9 |
| Precisions in hardware | FP32, FP16, BF16, INT4 | FP32, FP16, BF16, FP8, INT4 |
| Peak FP16/BF16 tensor TFLOPS | 312 TFLOPS | 362 TFLOPS |
| Peak FP8 tensor TFLOPS | – | 733 TFLOPS |
| NVLink / multi-GPU interconnect | NVLink 3, 600 GB/s | – |
| Max board power (TDP) | 400W (SXM) | 350W |
| Form factor | SXM4 | PCIe |
| Regions | 6 | 5 |
On-demand price
| Rate | A100 | L40S |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest per GPU/hr | $1.49/GPU/hr | $1.07/GPU/hr |
Which is better for AI: L40S or A100?
The A100 has more than double the memory bandwidth of the L40S, 2,039 GB/s of HBM2e against 864 GB/s of GDDR6 (NVIDIA product pages, Aug 2026), which is what training and large-batch workloads are usually bottlenecked on, while the L40S is a data-center-AI-positioned card built more for inference density. Pick the A100 when you're training or doing large-batch work that's bandwidth-bound; pick the L40S when you're running inference at scale and the L40S's positioning and price fit better than the A100's training-grade spec. On price the L40S undercuts the A100 by 34% at the entry rate ($0.726 vs $1.10/GPU/hr). Worth weighing if the deciding factor above isn't a hard requirement for your job.
Decision criteria
| Memory bandwidth | A100 80GB SXM: 2,039 GB/s HBM2e. L40S: 864 GB/s GDDR6 (NVIDIA product pages, Aug 2026). |
| Compute precision | L40S has FP8 tensor cores (Ada Lovelace); the A100 (Ampere) does not (lib/tools/gpu-capabilities.ts). |
| VRAM | 80 GB (A100) vs 48 GB (L40S), live from current listings. |
| Availability | 6 region(s) list the A100 vs 5 for the L40S. |
| Entry price | $1.10/GPU/hr (A100) vs $0.726/GPU/hr (L40S). |
Pick the A100 when
- You're training or fine-tuning and need the bandwidth
- Your job is large-batch and memory-bandwidth-bound
- Your pipeline is already built around Ampere/A100
Pick the L40S when
- You're serving inference at scale and want FP8 support
- You want the SKU NVIDIA positions for data-center AI inference
- L40S pricing or availability is better where you're deploying
Price-performance
At list rates, 1,000 GPU-hours costs $726 on the L40S against $1,102 on the A100. 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.
L40S vs A100: common questions
Is the A100 or the L40S better for AI?
Short answer: pick the A100 when you're training or doing large-batch work that's bandwidth-bound. Pick the L40S when you're running inference at scale and the L40S's positioning and price fit better than the A100's training-grade spec.
Is the A100 or the L40S cheaper to rent?
On Aquanode's live marketplace the A100 starts at $1.10/GPU/hr (median $1.97/GPU/hr) and the L40S starts at $0.726/GPU/hr (median $1.20/GPU/hr). The L40S is the cheaper of the two at the entry rate, by 34%.
What is the difference between the A100 and the L40S?
The A100 has 80 GB of VRAM against the L40S's 48 GB; the A100 is an Ampere part and the L40S is Ada Lovelace (compute capability 8.0 vs 8.9); only the L40S supports FP8 compute. On price, the A100 lists from $1.10/GPU/hr and the L40S from $0.726/GPU/hr.
How widely available are the A100 and the L40S?
The A100 is listed in 6 regions and the L40S in 5 regions right now.
How much does 1,000 GPU-hours cost on the A100 vs the L40S?
At the lowest rates listed today, 1,000 GPU-hours costs $1,102 on the A100 and $726 on the L40S, a difference of $376 for the same runtime. Rates are per GPU per hour and update hourly.
How much VRAM does the A100 have compared to the L40S?
The A100 has 80 GB of VRAM; the L40S has 48 GB.
Is the L40S a cheaper alternative to the A100 for AI work?
It depends what "AI work" means for you. The L40S has FP8 tensor cores the A100 lacks, which helps quantized inference, but the A100's 2,039 GB/s of bandwidth (vs the L40S's 864 GB/s) still wins for bandwidth-bound training. Today the A100 lists from $1.10/GPU/hr and the L40S from $0.726/GPU/hr on Aquanode.
Does the A100 or the L40S support NVLink?
The A100 supports NVLink 3, 600 GB/s; the L40S has no dedicated GPU-to-GPU interconnect.
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 L40S 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 L40S 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
More L40S comparisons
Related reading: A100 pricing and specs, A100 vs H100, A100 vs V100, and The best GPUs for AI, ranked.
