L4 vs RTX 3080: Specs, VRAM & Price
Short answer: choose the L4 when 24 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the RTX 3080 when 12 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
The L4 has 24 GB of VRAM; the RTX 3080 has 12 GB.
You can rent both by the hour, no purchase required. L4 from $0.649/GPU/hr; RTX 3080 from $0.187/GPU/hr. The RTX 3080 is 71% cheaper at the entry rate.
L4
Good for inference and light fine-tuning workloads
RTX 3080
Good for inference and small-scale training workloads
Last updated: 2026-10-14 10:21:23 UTCRefreshes hourly
Specs side by side
| Spec | L4 | RTX 3080 |
|---|---|---|
| VRAM | 24 GB | 12 GB |
| Memory bandwidth | 300 GB/s | 760 GB/s |
| Architecture | Ada Lovelace | Ampere |
| Compute capability | 8.9 | 8.6 |
| Precisions in hardware | FP32, FP16, BF16, FP8, INT4 | FP32, FP16, BF16, INT4 |
| Peak FP16/BF16 tensor TFLOPS | – | 119 TFLOPS |
| Max board power (TDP) | 72W | 320W |
| Regions | 1 | 1 |
On-demand price
| Rate | L4 | RTX 3080 |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest per GPU/hr | $0.649/GPU/hr | $0.187/GPU/hr (cheapest overall) |
Which is better for AI: L4 or RTX 3080?
Choose the L4 when 24 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the RTX 3080 when 12 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
L4 vs RTX 3080: common questions
Is the L4 or the RTX 3080 better for AI?
Short answer: choose the L4 when 24 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the RTX 3080 when 12 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
Is the L4 or the RTX 3080 cheaper to rent?
On Aquanode's live marketplace the L4 starts at $0.649/GPU/hr (median $0.649/GPU/hr) and the RTX 3080 starts at $0.187/GPU/hr (median $0.198/GPU/hr). The RTX 3080 is the cheaper of the two at the entry rate, by 71%.
What is the difference between the L4 and the RTX 3080?
The L4 has 24 GB of VRAM against the RTX 3080's 12 GB; the L4 is an Ada Lovelace part and the RTX 3080 is Ampere (compute capability 8.9 vs 8.6); only the L4 supports FP8 compute. On price, the L4 lists from $0.649/GPU/hr and the RTX 3080 from $0.187/GPU/hr.
How widely available are the L4 and the RTX 3080?
The L4 is listed in 1 region and the RTX 3080 in 1 region right now.
How much does 1,000 GPU-hours cost on the L4 vs the RTX 3080?
At the lowest rates listed today, 1,000 GPU-hours costs $649 on the L4 and $187 on the RTX 3080, a difference of $462 for the same runtime. Rates are per GPU per hour and update hourly.
How much VRAM does the L4 have compared to the RTX 3080?
The L4 has 24 GB of VRAM; the RTX 3080 has 12 GB.
Does the L4 or the RTX 3080 support NVLink?
Neither the L4 nor the RTX 3080 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 RTX 3080 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 RTX 3080 VRAM calculator, or browse every model by generation in the GPU index.
More L4 comparisons
More RTX 3080 comparisons
Related reading: L4 pricing and specs, and The best GPUs for AI, ranked.
