DGX A100 vs L40S: Specs, VRAM & Price
Short answer: choose the DGX A100 when 80 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the L40S when 48 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
The DGX A100 has 80 GB of VRAM; the L40S has 48 GB.
You can rent both by the hour, no purchase required. DGX A100 from $1.52/GPU/hr; L40S from $0.844/GPU/hr. The L40S is 44% cheaper at the entry rate.
DGX 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: 2026-11-03 UTCRefreshes every 6 hours
Specs side by side
| Spec | DGX A100 | L40S |
|---|---|---|
| VRAM | 80 GB | 48 GB |
| Memory bandwidth | – | 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 | – | 362 TFLOPS |
| Peak FP8 tensor TFLOPS | – | 733 TFLOPS |
| Max board power (TDP) | – | 350W |
| Form factor | – | PCIe |
| Regions | 1 | 4 |
On-demand price
| Rate | DGX A100 | L40S |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest per GPU/hr | $1.52/GPU/hr | $1.07/GPU/hr |
Which is better for AI: DGX A100 or L40S?
Choose the DGX A100 when 80 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the L40S when 48 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
DGX A100 vs L40S: common questions
Is the DGX A100 or the L40S better for AI?
Short answer: choose the DGX A100 when 80 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the L40S when 48 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
Is the DGX A100 or the L40S cheaper to rent?
On Aquanode's live marketplace the DGX A100 starts at $1.52/GPU/hr (median $1.52/GPU/hr) and the L40S starts at $0.844/GPU/hr (median $2.36/GPU/hr). The L40S is the cheaper of the two at the entry rate, by 44%.
What is the difference between the DGX A100 and the L40S?
The DGX A100 has 80 GB of VRAM against the L40S's 48 GB; the DGX 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 DGX A100 lists from $1.52/GPU/hr and the L40S from $0.844/GPU/hr.
How widely available are the DGX A100 and the L40S?
The DGX A100 is listed in 1 region and the L40S in 4 regions right now.
How much does 1,000 GPU-hours cost on the DGX A100 vs the L40S?
At the lowest rates listed today, 1,000 GPU-hours costs $1,518 on the DGX A100 and $844 on the L40S, a difference of $674 for the same runtime. Rates are per GPU per hour and update hourly.
How much VRAM does the DGX A100 have compared to the L40S?
The DGX A100 has 80 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 DGX 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 DGX 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 DGX A100 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.
