packet.ai’s Dynamic model charges only for GPU cycles your workload actually consumes, not for the card sitting idle. That’s how packet.ai undercuts RunPod without cutting performance, and why it offers a 99.99% uptime SLA that RunPod’s community cloud doesn’t.
Snapshot at 8 NVIDIA B200 GPUs running 24/7 (730 hrs/mo) at packet.ai Dynamic $3.75/GPU-hr vs RunPod’s indicative public B200 rate of $5.89/GPU-hr. Actual pricing varies by region, term, and availability.
RunPod rents you a whole card and charges for every idle second. packet.ai’s software-defined platform is different: your workload gets full-card NVIDIA B200 performance while the scheduler fills idle GPU cycles with complementary workloads. You pay only for what your job actually runs. That’s why packet.ai can charge 36% less than RunPod, not because the hardware is different, but because the waste is gone.
Your workload runs at native B200 speed, not a fixed MIG slice or a throttled fraction. The same 192 GB HBM3e, the same TFLOPs, the same VRAM when you need it.
Billing tracks the GPU cycles your job actually consumes. When it pauses or scales down, you stop paying. No charge for idle silicon you never touched.
packet.ai Dedicated comes with a contractual 99.99% uptime SLA. RunPod’s community cloud is peer-hosted: reliability varies by host with no comparable guarantee.
packet.ai is the neocloud built by hosted.ai, the team that previously built OnApp and shipped infrastructure at VMware, NVIDIA and the Xen project. We’re doing for GPUs what VMware did for CPUs two decades ago: turning idle, single-tenant hardware into elastic, software-defined capacity. Backed by $23.6M led by Creandum.
| Capability | packet.airecommended | RunPod |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Dynamic (pay for actual GPU usage) | Full-card reservation (pay idle too) |
| B200 · on-demand | $3.75 / GPU-hr | $5.89 / GPU-hr |
| Savings vs RunPod | 36% cheaper | Baseline |
| Idle charges | None. Dynamic model | Yes. Full card reserved |
| Billing interval | Hourly · no idle charges via Dynamic | Per minute (pods) / per second (serverless) |
| Time to first GPU | Under 5 minutes | Minutes |
| Uptime SLA | 99.99% on Dedicated | Secure Cloud only, none on community |
| Contract required | None | None |
| Regions | US & EU · data residency + DPA | Global (community varies) |
| Start free | No credit card | Card required |
RunPod details are indicative public information and may change. packet.ai Dynamic delivers the same peak GPU performance as a dedicated card while billing only for actual GPU consumption.
Full-card B200 performance on shared infrastructure: the same peak TFLOPs as a dedicated card, at 36% less than RunPod. The savings come from eliminating idle charges, not from cutting capability.
No quota requests, no sales calls, no reserved-capacity paperwork. Create a key, point your container, and launch: SSH-ready with CUDA preinstalled.
Published rates billed by the hour. No minimums, no platform fee, no commitment required. The Dynamic model means your effective rate is lower than the headline price because idle cycles aren’t billed.
Single-tenant Dedicated cards with a 99.99% uptime SLA, US and EU data residency, and a DPA for regulated workloads: none of which RunPod’s community cloud offers.
Switch from RunPod and launch a B200 in under 5 minutes. From $3.75/GPU-hour, no contract, no idle charges.
No credit card · hourly billing · zero idle charges · US & EU