Cheapest GPU to fine-tune a 7B model.
prices as of · re-ranked daily · 139 qualifying machines
A LoRA fine-tune of a 7-billion-parameter model fits on one card with 24 GB of memory, which puts most of this market in reach. We count only machines with 24 GB of GPU memory or more on a single board, and 139 of the 156 rentals we read qualify. The cheapest of them is $0.960 per run at RTX A5000 · Community Cloud, which rents for $0.160/GPU-hr. They are ranked by what the work costs rather than by the hourly rate, because a faster card at twice the price can still be the cheaper way to buy the job.
The cheapest machine that can do this job is RTX A5000 · Community Cloud at RunPod: $0.960 per run, read 17 Sept 2026.
Cheapest that fits
RTX A5000 · Community Cloud
RunPod$0.960per run
$0.160/GPU-hr
lowest cost per run
Cheapest interruptible
1A6000.10V · 1x RTX A6000 48GB
Verda (DataCrunch)$3.54per run
$0.592/GPU-hr · $1.78 on spot
same machine, taken back at any moment
Most memory for the money
2A6000.20V · 2x RTX A6000 48GB
Verda (DataCrunch)$7.08per run
$0.592/GPU-hr · $3.55 on spot
the largest instance in the first twenty-five
What actually matters here
- 24 GB of memory
- A 7B model in 16-bit weights is about 14 GB. The adapter, the optimiser state and a batch of training data go on top, which is what the rest of the 24 GB is for.
- One GPU is enough
- Nothing about this job needs two cards talking to each other, so the interconnect does not matter and a single-GPU instance is the cheapest way to buy it.
- Billing by the second or the minute
- A run this short is where fine-grained billing pays: an hour's minimum on a six-hour job is a rounding error, on a twenty-minute one it is not.
- A disk you can write to
- The weights have to be downloaded and the result written back. Several providers include no disk at all in the hourly price, which the row says.
Cheapest 10 per run
- 1RunPod
RTX A5000 · Community Cloud
$0.960 per run · 1x RTX A5000 · 24 GB · 9 vCPU · 25 GB RAM · $0.16/hr for the machineCommunity Cloud: vetted third-party hosts, cheaper and less consistent · storage billed separately · billed per second
✓ 24 GB per GPU
$0.160/GPU-hr
- 2RunPod
RTX 3090 · Community Cloud
$1.32 per run · 1x RTX 3090 · 24 GB · 16 vCPU · 125 GB RAM · $0.22/hr for the machineCommunity Cloud: vetted third-party hosts, cheaper and less consistent · storage billed separately · billed per second
✓ 24 GB per GPU
$0.220/GPU-hr
- 3RunPod
RTX A5000 · Secure Cloud
$1.62 per run · 1x RTX A5000 · 24 GB · 9 vCPU · 25 GB RAM · $0.27/hr for the machineSecure Cloud: RunPod's own datacentres · storage billed separately · billed per second
✓ 24 GB per GPU
$0.270/GPU-hr
- 4RunPod
RTX A6000 · Community Cloud
$1.98 per run · 1x RTX A6000 · 48 GB · 9 vCPU · 50 GB RAM · $0.33/hr for the machineCommunity Cloud: vetted third-party hosts, cheaper and less consistent · storage billed separately · billed per second
✓ 48 GB per GPU
$0.330/GPU-hr
- 5RunPod
RTX 4090 · Community Cloud
$2.04 per run · 1x RTX 4090 · 24 GB · 6 vCPU · 41 GB RAM · $0.34/hr for the machineCommunity Cloud: vetted third-party hosts, cheaper and less consistent · storage billed separately · billed per second
✓ 24 GB per GPU
$0.340/GPU-hr
- 6RunPod
A40 · Community Cloud
$2.10 per run · 1x A40 · 48 GB · 9 vCPU · 50 GB RAM · $0.35/hr for the machineCommunity Cloud: vetted third-party hosts, cheaper and less consistent · storage billed separately · billed per second
✓ 48 GB per GPU
$0.350/GPU-hr
- 7RunPod
L4 · Community Cloud
$2.64 per run · 1x L4 · 24 GB · 12 vCPU · 50 GB RAM · $0.44/hr for the machineCommunity Cloud: vetted third-party hosts, cheaper and less consistent · storage billed separately · billed per second
✓ 24 GB per GPU
$0.440/GPU-hr
- 8RunPod
A40 · Secure Cloud
$2.94 per run · 1x A40 · 48 GB · 9 vCPU · 50 GB RAM · $0.49/hr for the machineSecure Cloud: RunPod's own datacentres · storage billed separately · billed per second
✓ 48 GB per GPU
$0.490/GPU-hr
- 9RunPod
L4 · Secure Cloud
$2.94 per run · 1x L4 · 24 GB · 12 vCPU · 50 GB RAM · $0.49/hr for the machineSecure Cloud: RunPod's own datacentres · storage billed separately · billed per second
✓ 24 GB per GPU
$0.490/GPU-hr
- 10RunPod
RTX 3090 · Secure Cloud
$3.00 per run · 1x RTX 3090 · 24 GB · 16 vCPU · 125 GB RAM · $0.50/hr for the machineSecure Cloud: RunPod's own datacentres · storage billed separately · billed per second
✓ 24 GB per GPU
$0.500/GPU-hr
A LoRA fine-tune of a 7-billion-parameter model is counted as 6 hours on the machine you rent. That is a working figure for planning, not something measured here, and a full fine-tune rather than a LoRA is several times longer. The price beside each row is the on-demand rate for one GPU for one hour, so the two numbers answer different questions: $0.160/GPU-hr is what the GPU costs, and $0.960 per run is what the work costs.
Frequently asked
- What is the cheapest GPU to fine-tune a 7b model?
- RTX A5000 · Community Cloud at RunPod, $0.960 per run. That is 1x RTX A5000 with 24 GB of memory each, renting for $0.160/GPU-hr. Read on 17 Sept 2026.
- How is the cost worked out?
- A LoRA fine-tune of a 7-billion-parameter model is counted as 6 hours on the machine you rent. That is a working figure for planning, not something measured here, and a full fine-tune rather than a LoRA is several times longer.
- Why do only 139 machines qualify?
- The job needs 24 GB of GPU memory or more on a single board. The other 17 rentals we read are still in the index; they just cannot do this job as described. Serverless rates are left out entirely, because they buy a container that runs when it is called rather than a machine you hold.
- Can I pay less on spot?
- 57 of the 139 qualifying machines publish an interruptible rate, and the column beside each row shows what the same work would cost on it if the run were never preempted. It can be, so treat the spot figure as a floor rather than a quote.
- How current are these prices?
- Prices are read daily from 10 providers' own public pages and keyless APIs, and this ranking recomputes with them. Last refresh: 17 Sept 2026.