Estimate the real total cost of ownership (TCO) of buying a GPU or a full server, including capex, power, colocation, maintenance and resale, and compare it against renting and the major clouds over your own usage horizon. Switch between the GPU and Server tabs to model a single card or a whole node.
Estimates only — figures are based on your inputs and live marketplace pricing, not a quote. Actual costs vary by vendor, configuration, region and contract.
Buying a GPU or a full server is a capital expense that also carries ongoing operating costs: electricity (multiplied by your data-center PUE for cooling overhead), colocation or rack space, and hardware maintenance. Its resale value then recovers part of the upfront price at the end of your term. Renting, by contrast, is a pure operating expense billed per GPU-hour or per node-hour. This calculator adds up the true total cost of ownership (capex plus power, hosting and maintenance, minus resale) and compares it against renting and the major clouds across your exact usage, so you can see the break-even point instead of guessing. Switch between the GPU and Server tabs to model a single accelerator or a whole 8-GPU node.
You can switch between on-demand and reserved rental rates, apply a cost of capital (NPV) to value the large upfront purchase fairly against monthly rent, add one-time setup and shipping costs, and compare against AWS, GCP, Azure and other clouds. As a rule of thumb, renting wins for short projects, bursty or uncertain workloads, and when you want to avoid a large upfront outlay. Owning wins for sustained, high-utilization workloads run over many months. Buy prices and hourly rental rates update live from our marketplace.