A40 vs P4: Specs, VRAM & Price
Short answer: choose the A40 when 48 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the P4 when 8 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
The A40 has 48 GB of VRAM; the P4 has 8 GB.
You can rent both by the hour, no purchase required. A40 from $0.649/GPU/hr; P4 from $0.069/GPU/hr. The P4 is 89% cheaper at the entry rate.
A40
Good for training and inference on models that don't need FP8 kernels
P4
Good for inference workloads on older-generation hardware
Last updated: 2026-10-10 21:59:58 UTCRefreshes hourly
Specs side by side
| Spec | A40 | P4 |
|---|---|---|
| VRAM | 48 GB | 8 GB |
| Architecture | Ampere | Pascal |
| Compute capability | 8.6 | 6.1 |
| Precisions in hardware | FP32, FP16, BF16, INT4 | FP32, FP16 |
| Form factor | – | PCIe |
| Regions | 1 | 1 |
On-demand price
| Rate | A40 | P4 |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest per GPU/hr | $0.649/GPU/hr | $0.069/GPU/hr (cheapest overall) |
Which is better for AI: A40 or P4?
Choose the A40 when 48 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the P4 when 8 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
A40 vs P4: common questions
Is the A40 or the P4 better for AI?
Short answer: choose the A40 when 48 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the P4 when 8 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
Is the A40 or the P4 cheaper to rent?
On Aquanode's live marketplace the A40 starts at $0.649/GPU/hr (median $0.649/GPU/hr) and the P4 starts at $0.069/GPU/hr (median $0.069/GPU/hr). The P4 is the cheaper of the two at the entry rate, by 89%.
What is the difference between the A40 and the P4?
The A40 has 48 GB of VRAM against the P4's 8 GB; the A40 is an Ampere part and the P4 is Pascal (compute capability 8.6 vs 6.1); only the A40 supports BF16, INT4 compute. On price, the A40 lists from $0.649/GPU/hr and the P4 from $0.069/GPU/hr.
How widely available are the A40 and the P4?
The A40 is listed in 1 region and the P4 in 1 region right now.
How much does 1,000 GPU-hours cost on the A40 vs the P4?
At the lowest rates listed today, 1,000 GPU-hours costs $649 on the A40 and $69 on the P4, a difference of $580 for the same runtime. Rates are per GPU per hour and update hourly.
How much VRAM does the A40 have compared to the P4?
The A40 has 48 GB of VRAM; the P4 has 8 GB.
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 A40 page and P4 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 A40 VRAM calculator and the P4 VRAM calculator, or browse every model by generation in the GPU index.
More A40 comparisons
More P4 comparisons
Related reading: H100 pricing and specs, H100 vs H200, A100 vs H100, H100 and H200: SXM vs NVL vs PCIe, and The best GPUs for AI, ranked.
