L4 vs RTX 4090: Specs, VRAM & Price
Short answer: choose the RTX 4090 when 24 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the L4 when 23 GB is enough for the workload and availability points that way.
The L4 has 23 GB of VRAM; the RTX 4090 has 24 GB.
You can rent both by the hour, no purchase required. L4 from $0.730/GPU/hr; RTX 4090 from $0.393/GPU/hr. The RTX 4090 is 46% cheaper at the entry rate.
L4
Good for inference and light fine-tuning workloads
RTX 4090
Good for inference and light fine-tuning workloads
Last updated: 2026-10-22 UTCRefreshes every 6 hours
Specs side by side
| Spec | L4 | RTX 4090 |
|---|---|---|
| VRAM | 23 GB | 24 GB |
| Memory bandwidth | 300 GB/s | 1,008 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 |
| Max board power (TDP) | 72W | 450W |
| Form factor | – | PCIe 4.0 x16 |
| Regions | 1 | 3 |
On-demand price
| Rate | L4 | RTX 4090 |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest per GPU/hr | $0.730/GPU/hr (cheapest overall) | $0.761/GPU/hr |
Which is better for AI: L4 or RTX 4090?
Choose the RTX 4090 when 24 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the L4 when 23 GB is enough for the workload and availability points that way.
L4 vs RTX 4090: common questions
Is the L4 or the RTX 4090 better for AI?
Short answer: choose the RTX 4090 when 24 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the L4 when 23 GB is enough for the workload and availability points that way.
Is the L4 or the RTX 4090 cheaper to rent?
On Aquanode's live marketplace the L4 starts at $0.730/GPU/hr (median $0.730/GPU/hr) and the RTX 4090 starts at $0.393/GPU/hr (median $1.14/GPU/hr). The RTX 4090 is the cheaper of the two at the entry rate, by 46%.
What is the difference between the L4 and the RTX 4090?
The L4 has 23 GB of VRAM against the RTX 4090's 24 GB; both are Ada Lovelace parts; both run BF16, FP8, INT4 workloads in hardware. On price, the L4 lists from $0.730/GPU/hr and the RTX 4090 from $0.393/GPU/hr.
How widely available are the L4 and the RTX 4090?
The L4 is listed in 1 region and the RTX 4090 in 3 regions right now.
How much does 1,000 GPU-hours cost on the L4 vs the RTX 4090?
At the lowest rates listed today, 1,000 GPU-hours costs $730 on the L4 and $393 on the RTX 4090, a difference of $337 for the same runtime. Rates are per GPU per hour and update hourly.
How much VRAM does the L4 have compared to the RTX 4090?
The L4 has 23 GB of VRAM; the RTX 4090 has 24 GB.
Does the L4 or the RTX 4090 support NVLink?
Neither the L4 nor the RTX 4090 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 4090 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 4090 VRAM calculator, or browse every model by generation in the GPU index.
More L4 comparisons
More RTX 4090 comparisons
Related reading: L4 pricing and specs, and The best GPUs for AI, ranked.
