DGX A100 vs L4: Specs, VRAM & Price
Short answer: choose the DGX A100 when 80 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the L4 when 24 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
The DGX A100 has 80 GB of VRAM; the L4 has 24 GB.
You can rent both by the hour, no purchase required. DGX A100 from $1.37/GPU/hr; L4 from $0.649/GPU/hr. The L4 is 53% cheaper at the entry rate.
DGX A100
Good for training and inference on models that don't need FP8 kernels
L4
Good for inference and light fine-tuning workloads
Last updated: 2026-10-10 18:07:26 UTCRefreshes hourly
Specs side by side
| Spec | DGX A100 | L4 |
|---|---|---|
| VRAM | 80 GB | 24 GB |
| Memory bandwidth | – | 300 GB/s |
| Architecture | Ampere | Ada Lovelace |
| Compute capability | 8.0 | 8.9 |
| Precisions in hardware | FP32, FP16, BF16, INT4 | FP32, FP16, BF16, FP8, INT4 |
| Max board power (TDP) | – | 72W |
| Regions | 1 | 1 |
On-demand price
| Rate | DGX A100 | L4 |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest per GPU/hr | $1.37/GPU/hr | $0.649/GPU/hr |
Which is better for AI: DGX A100 or L4?
Choose the DGX A100 when 80 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the L4 when 24 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
DGX A100 vs L4: common questions
Is the DGX A100 or the L4 better for AI?
Short answer: choose the DGX A100 when 80 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the L4 when 24 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
Is the DGX A100 or the L4 cheaper to rent?
On Aquanode's live marketplace the DGX A100 starts at $1.37/GPU/hr (median $1.52/GPU/hr) and the L4 starts at $0.649/GPU/hr (median $0.649/GPU/hr). The L4 is the cheaper of the two at the entry rate, by 53%.
What is the difference between the DGX A100 and the L4?
The DGX A100 has 80 GB of VRAM against the L4's 24 GB; the DGX A100 is an Ampere part and the L4 is Ada Lovelace (compute capability 8.0 vs 8.9); only the L4 supports FP8 compute. On price, the DGX A100 lists from $1.37/GPU/hr and the L4 from $0.649/GPU/hr.
How widely available are the DGX A100 and the L4?
The DGX A100 is listed in 1 region and the L4 in 1 region right now.
How much does 1,000 GPU-hours cost on the DGX A100 vs the L4?
At the lowest rates listed today, 1,000 GPU-hours costs $1,367 on the DGX A100 and $649 on the L4, a difference of $718 for the same runtime. Rates are per GPU per hour and update hourly.
How much VRAM does the DGX A100 have compared to the L4?
The DGX A100 has 80 GB of VRAM; the L4 has 24 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 DGX A100 page and L4 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 DGX A100 VRAM calculator and the L4 VRAM calculator, or browse every model by generation in the GPU index.
More DGX A100 comparisons
More L4 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.
