L4 vs L40S: Specs, VRAM & Price
Short answer: choose the L40S when 48 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 L4 has 24 GB of VRAM; the L40S has 48 GB.
You can rent both by the hour, no purchase required. L4 from $0.649/GPU/hr; L40S from $0.726/GPU/hr. The L4 is 11% cheaper at the entry rate.
L4
Good for inference and light fine-tuning workloads
L40S
Good for fine-tuning mid-size models and high-throughput inference
Last updated: 2026-10-10 22:00:39 UTCRefreshes hourly
Specs side by side
| Spec | L4 | L40S |
|---|---|---|
| VRAM | 24 GB | 48 GB |
| Memory bandwidth | 300 GB/s | 864 GB/s |
| Architecture | Ada Lovelace | Ada Lovelace |
| Compute capability | 8.9 | 8.9 |
| Precisions in hardware | FP32, FP16, BF16, FP8, INT4 | FP32, FP16, BF16, FP8, INT4 |
| Peak FP16/BF16 tensor TFLOPS | – | 362 TFLOPS |
| Peak FP8 tensor TFLOPS | – | 733 TFLOPS |
| Max board power (TDP) | 72W | 350W |
| Form factor | – | PCIe |
| Regions | 1 | 5 |
On-demand price
| Rate | L4 | L40S |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest per GPU/hr | $0.649/GPU/hr | $1.07/GPU/hr |
Which is better for AI: L4 or L40S?
Choose the L40S when 48 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.
L4 vs L40S: common questions
Is the L4 or the L40S better for AI?
Short answer: choose the L40S when 48 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 L4 or the L40S cheaper to rent?
On Aquanode's live marketplace the L4 starts at $0.649/GPU/hr (median $0.649/GPU/hr) and the L40S starts at $0.726/GPU/hr (median $1.20/GPU/hr). The L4 is the cheaper of the two at the entry rate, by 11%.
What is the difference between the L4 and the L40S?
The L4 has 24 GB of VRAM against the L40S's 48 GB; both are Ada Lovelace parts; both run BF16, FP8, INT4 workloads in hardware. On price, the L4 lists from $0.649/GPU/hr and the L40S from $0.726/GPU/hr.
How widely available are the L4 and the L40S?
The L4 is listed in 1 region and the L40S in 5 regions right now.
How much does 1,000 GPU-hours cost on the L4 vs the L40S?
At the lowest rates listed today, 1,000 GPU-hours costs $649 on the L4 and $726 on the L40S, a difference of $77 for the same runtime. Rates are per GPU per hour and update hourly.
How much VRAM does the L4 have compared to the L40S?
The L4 has 24 GB of VRAM; the L40S has 48 GB.
Does the L4 or the L40S support NVLink?
Neither the L4 nor the L40S has a 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 L4 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 L4 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 L4 comparisons
More L40S comparisons
Related reading: L4 pricing and specs, and The best GPUs for AI, ranked.
