RTX 3090 vs RTX 4090: cloud rental cost compared
Short answer: pick the RTX 4090 when your workload uses FP8 quantization, or you just want the newer, faster card and the price gap is small enough. Pick the RTX 3090 when you're running BF16/FP32-only work and want the lowest possible hourly rate.
You can rent both by the hour, no purchase required. RTX 3090 from $0.137/GPU/hr across 3 providers; RTX 4090 from $0.340/GPU/hr across 3 providers. The RTX 3090 is 60% cheaper at the entry rate.
Specs side by side
Price by provider
Which should you pick: RTX 3090 or RTX 4090?
The RTX 4090 has FP8 tensor cores the RTX 3090 lacks entirely, Ada Lovelace clears the FP8 floor while Ampere doesn't (lib/tools/gpu-capabilities.ts), which is the deciding factor for anyone doing quantized inference or fine-tuning rather than legacy BF16/FP32 work. Pick the RTX 4090 when your workload uses FP8 quantization, or you just want the newer, faster card and the price gap is small enough; pick the RTX 3090 when you're running BF16/FP32-only work and want the lowest possible hourly rate. On price the RTX 3090 undercuts the RTX 4090 by 60% at the entry rate ($0.137 vs $0.340/GPU/hr). Worth weighing if the deciding factor above isn't a hard requirement for your job.
Decision criteria
Pick the RTX 3090 when
- Your workload is BF16/FP32-only and gets nothing from FP8
- You want the lowest possible hourly rate for the job
- RTX 3090 supply is what's available in your region
Pick the RTX 4090 when
- Your workload benefits from FP8 quantization
- You want meaningfully more compute for a moderate price step-up
- You're doing anything training-adjacent where the newer generation helps
Price-performance
At list rates, 1,000 GPU-hours costs $137 on the RTX 3090 against $340 on the RTX 4090. Neither NVIDIA nor Aquanode publishes a workload-normalized $/token or $/epoch figure for this pair, so $/GPU-hour below is the only apples-to-apples number. A faster card can still cost less per finished job even at a higher hourly rate.
RTX 3090 vs RTX 4090: common questions
Is the RTX 3090 or the RTX 4090 cheaper to rent?
On Aquanode's live marketplace the RTX 3090 starts at $0.137/GPU/hr (median $0.341/GPU/hr across 3 providers) and the RTX 4090 starts at $0.340/GPU/hr (median $0.740/GPU/hr across 3 providers). The RTX 3090 is the cheaper of the two at the entry rate, by 60%.
What is the difference between the RTX 3090 and the RTX 4090?
Both cards report 24 GB of VRAM; the RTX 3090 is an Ampere part and the RTX 4090 is Ada Lovelace (compute capability 8.6 vs 8.9); only the RTX 4090 supports FP8 compute. On price, the RTX 3090 lists from $0.137/GPU/hr and the RTX 4090 from $0.340/GPU/hr.
Which cloud providers offer the RTX 3090 and the RTX 4090?
3 providers list the RTX 3090 (Akash, RunPod and Vast.ai) and 3 list the RTX 4090 (RunPod, SimplePod and Vast.ai), across 3 and 3 regions respectively. Both are available from RunPod and Vast.ai.
How much does 1,000 GPU-hours cost on the RTX 3090 vs the RTX 4090?
At the lowest rates listed today, 1,000 GPU-hours costs $137 on the RTX 3090 and $340 on the RTX 4090, a difference of $204 for the same runtime. Rates are per GPU per hour and update hourly.
Is the RTX 3090 still worth renting over the RTX 4090?
Mainly on price. The RTX 3090 has no FP8 tensor cores at all, so if your workload can use FP8 the RTX 4090 is the clear pick. Today the RTX 3090 lists from $0.137/GPU/hr against the RTX 4090's $0.340/GPU/hr on Aquanode, worth it only if that gap outweighs the missing FP8 support for your job.
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.
