inference/research
draftmedium · 0.70updated 2026-10-04

Peer-to-peer rental index: datacenter PCIe L40S and RTX 6000 Ada (per-GPU-hour)

nvidia · global
This record is a draft. Not yet verified. Provisional. Treat every number on this page as provisional.

Fields

id
supply/rental-datacenter-l40s-6000ada-vast-index
Kind
cloud
Vendor
nvidia
Region
global
Channels
rentalmarketplace
Price (USD)
0.7085
Price basis
USD per GPU-HOUR for the GPU component, verified peer-to-peer hosts, 1-GPU bundles, observed 2026-10-03. Asking rental rate, NOT a realised rental PERISHABLE-FIGURE STAMP (added 2026-10-04, uniform across data/supply/ so it is greppable). PRICE CLASS: ASKING RENTAL - an advertised rate a host lists on a peer-to-peer marketplace, NOT a realised rental transaction, NOT a broker SLA price and NOT a provider list rate. A host can and does undercut this within hours, so the figure is the least durable in this directory. OBSERVED: 2026-10-03 RE-VERIFY BY: 2027-01-04 - the repo's quarterly re-verification bar. After that date this figure is presumed drifted and must be re-checked against its source before it is quoted again. A price without its observation date is noise; this stamp exists so a reader can tell a fresh figure from a stale one without reading prose. UNIT: USD per GPU-HOUR for the GPU component, verified peer-to-peer hosts, 1-GPU bundles, observed 2026-10-03 READING RULE: No further perishable flag is published for this figure.
Availability
in-stock
Lead time source
structural-na
Lead time basis
lead_time_weeks is null because the quantity is structurally not applicable: on-demand cloud capacity starts on request, so there is no order-to-delivery lead time. The constraint is the price per GPU-hour and the availability snapshot, not an interval. The one caveat worth keeping: scarce tiers gate capacity behind a reservation or Capacity Block commitment (AWS caps the booking horizon at 8 weeks, source spl-aws-capacity-block-booking-horizon), and that is a commitment window, not a lead time.
Export controlled
yes
Export control regime
EAR 742.6(a)(6)(iii)(A) + EAR 744.23/744.6 (Entity, Unverified, MEU list screening of the end user) + the advanced-computing IaaS obligations of 91 FR 1684 (consignee KYC, and management/limitation of IaaS access to the hardware)
Export control note
LAYER 1, EXPORT LICENCE: under the Jan 2026 BIS rule 91 FR 1684 (effective 2026-01-15) the license review policy for advanced-computing commodities with TPP < 21,000 AND total DRAM bandwidth < 6,500 GB/s - the NVIDIA H200 and AMD MI325X are the rule's named examples - moved from PRESUMPTION OF DENIAL to CASE-BY-CASE REVIEW, but only for exports FROM THE UNITED STATES to end users located in China or Macau, and only against six exporter certifications filed via SNAP-R before shipment: (1) items below the thresholds with the count of units shipped in the US; (2) sufficient US supply, judged 'taking into account normal lead times'; (3) no diversion of global foundry capacity away from US end users; (4) aggregate China+Macau shipments <= 50% of total US end-use shipments of that product; (5) no end-user or use prohibition; (6) the consignee runs rigorous KYC. Every shipment must then pass a qualified third-party testing lab - US-headquartered, not controlled by a D:5/Macau entity, no ownership stake in any party, qualification revocable by BIS at any time - verifying TPP, total DRAM bandwidth, interconnect bandwidth and copackaged DRAM capacity. Reexports and in-country transfers of the same chips to China/Macau REMAIN PRESUMPTION OF DENIAL. LAYER 2, END-USER AND PARENT SCREENING: per BIS guidance of 2026-05-31 a licence is required where the consignee is HEADQUARTERED in Country Group D:5 (15 CFR part 740 supplement no. 1) or Macau OR whose ULTIMATE PARENT COMPANY is so headquartered - even when the consignee itself sits outside D:5/Macau. The requirement sits at EAR 742.6(a)(6)(iii)(A) for destinations outside the US, with an exception available only under the license exception at 740.2(a)(9)(ii). The destination country alone therefore never answers the question; screen the parent. LAYER 3, REMAINING LIMITS: exports to D:5/Macau-headquartered OR -parented entities stay PRESUMPTION OF DENIAL wherever the buyer sits, and the AI Diffusion Rule that would have set a country-tier structure on who could lawfully buy what was RESCINDED on 2025-05-13 and is not being enforced, so any recorded status rests on the instruments named here rather than on tiering.
notes
OBSERVATION DATE 2026-10-03. Source sup-price-vast-rental-api. TWO BANDS, both observed 2026-10-03, per-GPU-hour on verified hosts: L40S 1-GPU n=12, range $0.5348-$0.8161, median $0.7085; L40S 8-GPU n=6, median $0.8002, range $0.5336-$0.8149 - the per-card rate RISES with bundle size here, again SKU-specific. RTX 6000 Ada 1-GPU n=13, range $0.5345-$0.8022, median $0.6289; 4-GPU n=7, median $0.5606, range $0.4792-$0.6272. THE SEGMENT BOUNDARY: L40S (0.7085) and RTX 6000 Ada (0.6289) rent within ~13% of each other - both 48GB Ada-generation datacenter PCIe parts - while sitting ~6.5x below H100 SXM ($2.4704) and ~1.6x above RTX 4090 ($0.4289). Three clean rental tiers, and they line up with the purchase-market tiers in the sibling records. EXPORT CONTROL (2026-10-04, mechanism-level; sources spl-eccn-3a090-ccl, spl-bis-2026-01-advanced-computing-case-by-case, spl-bis-2026-05-d5-guidance): these parts classify under ECCN 3A090.a/.b, whose thresholds are 'total processing performance' (TPP) >= 4800, or TPP >= 1600 with performance density >= 5.92 (the .b band is TPP 2400-4800 with performance density 1.6-5.92, or TPP >= 1600 with performance density 3.2-5.92). The mechanism has THREE layers and all three must be cleared, not just one: (a) LICENSE FOR EXPORT FROM THE US - controlled by the January 2026 rule (91 FR 1684, effective 2026-01-15), which moved TPP < 21,000 AND total DRAM bandwidth < 6,500 GB/s parts from presumption of denial to CASE-BY-CASE REVIEW, but only for exports from the US to end users in China/Macau, and only against six exporter certifications - US supply sufficiency judged 'taking into account normal lead times', no diversion of foundry capacity away from US end users, aggregate China+Macau shipments capped at 50% of US end-use shipments, no end-user prohibition, consignee KYC procedures, and prior verification by a qualified third-party US testing lab of TPP, total DRAM bandwidth, interconnect bandwidth and copackaged DRAM capacity; (b) END-USER AND PARENT-COMPANY SCREENING under 742.6(a)(6)(iii)(A) - per BIS guidance of 2026-05-31 a licence is required where the consignee is HEADQUARTERED in Country Group D:5 or Macau OR ITS ULTIMATE PARENT is so headquartered, EVEN IF the consignee itself is outside D:5/Macau, which means the destination country alone never answers the question; (c) THE LIMITS THAT REMAIN - reexports and in-country transfers of the same chips to China/Macau remain PRESUMPTION OF DENIAL, and exports to D:5/Macau-headquartered or -parented entities remain presumption of denial wherever the buyer sits. The Jan-2025 AI Diffusion Rule was rescinded and not enforced from 2025-05-13, but that rescission did not remove (a) or (b). EXPORT CONTROL (2026-10-04, mechanism-level; sources spl-bis-2026-05-d5-guidance, spl-bis-2026-01-advanced-computing-case-by-case): renting capacity does NOT remove the export-control question, it relocates it. Providing remote access to controlled computing capability can constitute a transfer under the EAR, so the provider must screen the end user; and separately, under the 91 FR 1684 licence regime the consignee must run KYC procedures to prevent unauthorized remote access and must manage and limit IaaS access to the hardware - obligations pushed onto the customer, who must be told to implement them. For a customer headquartered or parented in Country Group D:5 or Macau the 742.6(a)(6)(iii)(A) end-user/parent test can bite even when the capacity is consumed in a permitted region. Recorded true because the underlying hardware is controlled and the provider carries the screening duty, not because access to a US region is itself restricted. LEAD TIME: null - and specifically because a PEER-TO-PEER marketplace has no lead time at all. Host nodes appear and disappear, so the availability a buyer sees is a snapshot of what some host posted on the observation date, not a schedulable delivery date. This is the widest availability uncertainty in the whole supply set and it is structural rather than a missing datum: it argues directly for the renting-over-buying decision this record feeds. Probe log in source spl-negative-no-oem-publishes-lead-time.

Notes

OBSERVATION DATE 2026-10-03. Source sup-price-vast-rental-api. TWO BANDS, both observed 2026-10-03, per-GPU-hour on verified hosts: L40S 1-GPU n=12, range $0.5348-$0.8161, median $0.7085; L40S 8-GPU n=6, median $0.8002, range $0.5336-$0.8149 - the per-card rate RISES with bundle size here, again SKU-specific. RTX 6000 Ada 1-GPU n=13, range $0.5345-$0.8022, median $0.6289; 4-GPU n=7, median $0.5606, range $0.4792-$0.6272. THE SEGMENT BOUNDARY: L40S (0.7085) and RTX 6000 Ada (0.6289) rent within ~13% of each other - both 48GB Ada-generation datacenter PCIe parts - while sitting ~6.5x below H100 SXM ($2.4704) and ~1.6x above RTX 4090 ($0.4289). Three clean rental tiers, and they line up with the purchase-market tiers in the sibling records.

EXPORT CONTROL (2026-10-04, mechanism-level; sources spl-eccn-3a090-ccl, spl-bis-2026-01-advanced-computing-case-by-case, spl-bis-2026-05-d5-guidance): these parts classify under ECCN 3A090.a/.b, whose thresholds are 'total processing performance' (TPP) >= 4800, or TPP >= 1600 with performance density >= 5.92 (the .b band is TPP 2400-4800 with performance density 1.6-5.92, or TPP >= 1600 with performance density 3.2-5.92). The mechanism has THREE layers and all three must be cleared, not just one: (a) LICENSE FOR EXPORT FROM THE US - controlled by the January 2026 rule (91 FR 1684, effective 2026-01-15), which moved TPP < 21,000 AND total DRAM bandwidth < 6,500 GB/s parts from presumption of denial to CASE-BY-CASE REVIEW, but only for exports from the US to end users in China/Macau, and only against six exporter certifications - US supply sufficiency judged 'taking into account normal lead times', no diversion of foundry capacity away from US end users, aggregate China+Macau shipments capped at 50% of US end-use shipments, no end-user prohibition, consignee KYC procedures, and prior verification by a qualified third-party US testing lab of TPP, total DRAM bandwidth, interconnect bandwidth and copackaged DRAM capacity; (b) END-USER AND PARENT-COMPANY SCREENING under 742.6(a)(6)(iii)(A) - per BIS guidance of 2026-05-31 a licence is required where the consignee is HEADQUARTERED in Country Group D:5 or Macau OR ITS ULTIMATE PARENT is so headquartered, EVEN IF the consignee itself is outside D:5/Macau, which means the destination country alone never answers the question; (c) THE LIMITS THAT REMAIN - reexports and in-country transfers of the same chips to China/Macau remain PRESUMPTION OF DENIAL, and exports to D:5/Macau-headquartered or -parented entities remain presumption of denial wherever the buyer sits. The Jan-2025 AI Diffusion Rule was rescinded and not enforced from 2025-05-13, but that rescission did not remove (a) or (b). EXPORT CONTROL (2026-10-04, mechanism-level; sources spl-bis-2026-05-d5-guidance, spl-bis-2026-01-advanced-computing-case-by-case): renting capacity does NOT remove the export-control question, it relocates it. Providing remote access to controlled computing capability can constitute a transfer under the EAR, so the provider must screen the end user; and separately, under the 91 FR 1684 licence regime the consignee must run KYC procedures to prevent unauthorized remote access and must manage and limit IaaS access to the hardware - obligations pushed onto the customer, who must be told to implement them. For a customer headquartered or parented in Country Group D:5 or Macau the 742.6(a)(6)(iii)(A) end-user/parent test can bite even when the capacity is consumed in a permitted region. Recorded true because the underlying hardware is controlled and the provider carries the screening duty, not because access to a US region is itself restricted.

LEAD TIME: null - and specifically because a PEER-TO-PEER marketplace has no lead time at all. Host nodes appear and disappear, so the availability a buyer sees is a snapshot of what some host posted on the observation date, not a schedulable delivery date. This is the widest availability uncertainty in the whole supply set and it is structural rather than a missing datum: it argues directly for the renting-over-buying decision this record feeds. Probe log in source spl-negative-no-oem-publishes-lead-time.

Cross-references