H100 PCIe vs H100 SXM: Which GPU Should You Choose?
This page settles whether H100 PCIe or H100 SXM better fits your workload, based on observed cloud pricing and published NVIDIA specifications.
At an on-demand price ratio of 1.23, H100 PCIe wins when hourly spend matters most, while H100 SXM wins for performance-bound workloads, unless its extra throughput cannot shorten the job.
Run one short representative-job A/B benchmark at the on-demand minimums of $2.14 for H100 PCIe and $1.74 for H100 SXM, verifying both rates in the live table before launch.
Today's prices
USD/hr · 1× GPU · lowest on-demand price per provider
| Provider | H100 PCIe | H100 SXM |
|---|---|---|
| Vast.ai | $2.14 | $1.74 |
| Hyperstack | $2.50 · Not reported | $3.20 · Not reported |
| RunPod | $2.89 | $3.29 |
| DataCrunch | Not offered | $3.25 |
| Crusoe | Not offered | $3.90 · Not reported |
| Together AI | Not offered | $3.99 · Not reported |
| Paperspace | Not offered | $5.95 · Not reported |
see all H100 prices → · see all H100 prices →
What your workload needs
Find your parameter count on the model's Hugging Face card. Serving maps to the inference rows, training to the fine-tuning rows.
| Workload | VRAM needed | H100 PCIe | H100 SXM | Cheapest today |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 70B Q4 inference | 42 GB | 1× $2.14/hr | 1× $1.74/hr | H100 SXM ×1 → $1.74/hr |
| 70B FP16 inference | 168 GB | 3× $2.14/hr | 3× $1.74/hr | H100 SXM ×3 → $5.22/hr (est.) |
| 70B QLoRA | 46 GB | 1× $2.14/hr | 1× $1.74/hr | H100 SXM ×1 → $1.74/hr |
| 7B full fine-tune | 112 GB | 2× $2.14/hr | 2× $1.74/hr | H100 SXM ×2 → $3.48/hr (est.) |
| 70B FP8 training | 154 GB | 2× $2.14/hr | 2× $1.74/hr | H100 SXM ×2 → $3.48/hr (est.) |
| Downshift recommendation | 42 GB | 1× $2.14/hr | 1× $1.74/hr | H100 SXM ×1 → $1.74/hr |
What the numbers say
H100 PCIe has an on-demand price ratio of 1.23 relative to H100 SXM, making it the stronger choice when comparable jobs run for similar durations; when faster completion changes billed runtime, hourly price alone should not decide.
H100 SXM is the performance-led choice: vendor peak specifications imply a 0.76 performance ratio for H100 PCIe versus H100 SXM, which yields an on-demand effective cost-per-job ratio of 1.61. These are modeled results from datasheet peaks, not measured workload throughput, so validate them with your own job.
H100 PCIe and H100 SXM share the same workload threshold: FP8, BF16, or FP32 workloads within 80GB VRAM. The exception is a job that must span multiple GPUs or whose runtime depends heavily on inter-GPU communication; choose H100 SXM for that case, and choose H100 PCIe when the workload fits one GPU and hourly spend is the priority.
Before you rent
Marlin matches your workload requirements to the lowest-priced suitable GPU across major cloud providers.
Coverage is limited to the listed provider offers, and pricing and availability can change after publication. Performance, VRAM needs, GPU counts, and cost per job are modeled from published specifications and workload assumptions rather than measured end-to-end benchmarks. https://vast.ai/pricing · https://lambda.ai/service/gpu-cloud · https://www.coreweave.com/pricing · https://datacrunch.io/pricing · https://resources.nvidia.com/en-us-tensor-core/nvidia-tensor-core-gpu-datasheet · https://www.runpod.io/pricing · https://www.hyperstack.cloud/gpu-pricing · https://www.together.ai/pricing · https://crusoe.ai/cloud/pricing
Stop comparing. Start running.
Marlin matches your workload to the lowest-priced suitable GPU across supported providers.
Get started with Marlin