A40 vs L40S: Specs, VRAM & Price
Short answer: choose the L40S when 48 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the A40 when 45 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
The A40 has 45 GB of VRAM; the L40S has 48 GB.
You can rent both by the hour, no purchase required. A40 from $0.801/GPU/hr; L40S from $0.844/GPU/hr. The A40 is 5% cheaper at the entry rate.
A40
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: 2026-11-03 UTCRefreshes every 6 hours
Specs side by side
| Spec | A40 | L40S |
|---|---|---|
| VRAM | 45 GB | 48 GB |
| Memory bandwidth | – | 864 GB/s |
| Architecture | Ampere | Ada Lovelace |
| Compute capability | 8.6 | 8.9 |
| Precisions in hardware | FP32, FP16, BF16, INT4 | FP32, FP16, BF16, FP8, INT4 |
| Peak FP16/BF16 tensor TFLOPS | – | 362 TFLOPS |
| Peak FP8 tensor TFLOPS | – | 733 TFLOPS |
| Max board power (TDP) | – | 350W |
| Form factor | – | PCIe |
| Regions | 1 | 4 |
On-demand price
| Rate | A40 | L40S |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest per GPU/hr | $0.801/GPU/hr (cheapest overall) | $1.07/GPU/hr |
Which is better for AI: A40 or L40S?
Choose the L40S when 48 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the A40 when 45 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
A40 vs L40S: common questions
Is the A40 or the L40S better for AI?
Short answer: choose the L40S when 48 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the A40 when 45 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
Is the A40 or the L40S cheaper to rent?
On Aquanode's live marketplace the A40 starts at $0.801/GPU/hr (median $0.801/GPU/hr) and the L40S starts at $0.844/GPU/hr (median $2.36/GPU/hr). The A40 is the cheaper of the two at the entry rate, by 5%.
What is the difference between the A40 and the L40S?
The A40 has 45 GB of VRAM against the L40S's 48 GB; the A40 is an Ampere part and the L40S is Ada Lovelace (compute capability 8.6 vs 8.9); only the L40S supports FP8 compute. On price, the A40 lists from $0.801/GPU/hr and the L40S from $0.844/GPU/hr.
How widely available are the A40 and the L40S?
The A40 is listed in 1 region and the L40S in 4 regions right now.
How much does 1,000 GPU-hours cost on the A40 vs the L40S?
At the lowest rates listed today, 1,000 GPU-hours costs $801 on the A40 and $844 on the L40S, a difference of $42 for the same runtime. Rates are per GPU per hour and update hourly.
How much VRAM does the A40 have compared to the L40S?
The A40 has 45 GB of VRAM; the L40S has 48 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 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 A40 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 A40 comparisons
More L40S 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.
