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Lambda
AI cloud running its own datacenters, on-demand instances and 1-Click Clusters
What is Lambda?
Lambda is aI cloud running its own datacenters, on-demand instances and 1-Click Clusters. Visit Lambda's site.
What's good about Lambda
- First-party datacenters and a hand-tuned ML image: the same instance type behaves the same way every time
- 1-Click Clusters for multi-node training with InfiniBand
- A long track record with large training customers
Lambda limitations
- No serverless tier
- Published lineup is six GPU models, narrower than a marketplace
- Published on-demand prices exclude sales tax, VAT and GST
Lambda pricing
Lambda figures are On-demand instances, price per GPU per hour, read from their own pricing page on 2026-09-19. The Aquanode column is the lowest live per-GPU rate in our marketplace feed and moves on its own. The two columns are not measured the same way, so treat this as a starting point, not a quote.
Aquanode column last updated: 2026-11-04 UTCRefreshes every 6 hours
| GPU | Lambda | Aquanode (live) |
|---|---|---|
| 1x H100 SXM instance | $4.29/GPU/hr | from $2.78/GPU/hr |
| 8x H100 SXM instance | $3.99/GPU/hr | from $2.78/GPU/hr |
| 8x A100 80GB instance | $2.79/GPU/hr | from $1.32/GPU/hr |
Source: https://lambda.ai/pricing, On-demand instances, price per GPU per hour. Verified 2026-09-19. Vendors change prices; check theirs before deciding.
Lambda billing
- Billing model: Per-hour, self-serve on-demand instances
- Minimum commitment: None for on-demand instances; 1-Click Clusters run 2 weeks to 1 year
Storage: SSD storage ships included with the instance (512 GiB up to 22 TiB depending on the instance type); the pricing page lists no separate persistent-storage rate.
Source: https://lambda.ai/pricing, read 2026-09-25.
Lambda vs Aquanode
Lambda owns and operates its own hardware, which buys consistency you do not get from a broker: the same instance type behaves the same way every time. It is also materially more expensive per GPU-hour than the marketplace floor, and an environment you build there stays there.
Where Lambda wins
- First-party datacenters and a hand-tuned ML image: consistent performance and a support path to people who own the machines.
- 1-Click Clusters for multi-node training with InfiniBand, which is a genuinely different product from single-box rental and one we do not offer.
- A long track record with large training customers, which matters if you are committing to a multi-week run.
Where Aquanode wins
- Your setup outlives the GPU you rented it on. Save the environment (custom nodes, model weights, packages, the config you spent an evening getting right) and bring it back up later on a completely different provider, instead of reinstalling it from scratch every session.
- Supply moved, the price moved, or the region ran dry. Your environment follows you out. It is not stranded in the account that happened to create it, which is the part that makes leaving any single vendor cheap.
- Pause and resume in place, the same mechanism everywhere: a snapshot-and-terminate, then a fresh box restored from that snapshot. The same environment also comes back by restoring your saved setup onto a fresh box, a little slower, same result.
- Turn on automatic snapshots yourself and pick the interval (as often as every 15 minutes, 30 by default) instead of remembering to snapshot by hand or wiring up your own cron job.
- One account, one bill and one set of keys across every provider we support, rather than a separate login and invoice per vendor every time you chase capacity.
- Run a saved version of your setup as a job. If a provider takes the box back mid-run, we detect the loss and queue the run to retry on a different provider, excluding the one that just lost it, and if the job checkpoints the next attempt picks up from the last one. Jobs scale to zero when the queue empties, so an idle one is not sitting on a rented GPU, and every job is bounded in the unit we bill: its time limit times its attempts times its machines is the most a single run can cost.
What we do not claim
Restoring an environment requires a snapshot that already exists. Stopping a deployment yourself captures it on the way out, so you can bring it back later on any provider. A provider-side termination is different: it is only recoverable if you had already switched automated snapshots on for that deployment, and it costs you the work since the last one. Automated snapshots are opt-in, nothing runs until you start it, and with none running there is nothing to restore.
`aq deploy --snapshot <id>` rents the cheapest matching GPU and restores your snapshot onto it, including onto a different provider than the one it came from. Creating the snapshot is a separate step today: the standalone ogre CLI on the box writes it.
Lambda: common questions
Is Lambda more reliable than a GPU marketplace?
For consistency of a single instance type, generally yes. They own the hardware. The trade is price and portability: a Lambda instance is a Lambda instance, and if the capacity you want is not there you wait rather than move.
Can I run multi-node training on Aquanode?
No. Lambda's 1-Click Clusters are the right tool for interconnected multi-node training and we do not have an equivalent. Aquanode is for single-box workloads whose environment you want to keep.
Do Lambda GPU instances require a contract?
Not the single instances. Lambda's pricing page describes its B200, H100, A100 and GH200 instances as self-serve, first-come access at a published per-GPU hourly rate. The commitment sits on the other product: its 1-Click Clusters are listed at durations of 2 weeks to 1 year, with longer terms handled by their sales team.
Source: https://lambda.ai/pricing, read 2026-09-02.
Lambda alternatives
Other GPU cloud provider reviews
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.
