Paperspace Alternative: Budget Cloud GPUs for AI (April 2025)

1. Why look for a Paperspace alternative?

If you search for “paperspace alternative: budget cloud GPUs for AI” you probably want cheap, flexible access to an A100 GPU for experiments, fine-tuning, or small-scale inference. Cost matters because an A100 can run 6–8 USD per hour on hyperscalers like AWS or GCP, and long runs add up fast.

Paperspace markets itself as low-cost, but let’s check the fine print first.

2. Paperspace A100 pricing—what the banner does not say

Key takeaways

• The eye-catching $1.15/hr rate is locked behind a three-year term.

• On-demand users pay $3.09/hr plus a $39 monthly plan.

• Effective hourly cost for a one-month, 100-hour project is ($3.09 × 100 + 39) ÷ 100 ≈ $3.48/hr.

3. Thunder Compute: true pay-as-you-go A100s

What this means in practice:

• Seven hours on Thunder Compute cost about the same as one hour on Paperspace.

• You can spin up or shut down in minutes; no long-term bill.

• Per-minute billing on Thunder Compute trims idle time waste.

“For an 8-hour fine-tuning run on an A100, Thunder Compute costs $4.56 vs. $32.80 on AWS.” (Thunder Compute blog) Thunder Compute

4. When to choose each platform

Pick Thunder Compute if you…

• Need a few dozen to a few hundred GPU-hours per month.

• Hate long-term contracts.

• Want the lowest cash outlay right now.

Pick Paperspace if you…

• Plan to reserve GPUs full-time for three years and can prepay.

• Already depend on the Gradient ecosystem for notebooks and workflows.

• Don’t mind the $39/mo Growth plan on top of hourly fees.

5. Actionable next steps

1. Estimate hours. Add up training plus tuning plus validation time.

2. Calculate true cost. Multiply hours by each provider’s on-demand rate and add any required monthly plan.

3. Test performance. Run a short benchmark on Thunder Compute: your first 35 hours are covered by the free credit.

4. Switch or stay. If Thunder Compute finishes the job for less than half the price, move your workloads. If not, lock in a contract on Paperspace and commit to long-term usage to justify it.

6. Resources

• Thunder Compute pricing and sign-up: https://www.thundercompute.com/

• Cheapest cloud GPU providers in 2025 (Thunder Compute blog): https://www.thundercompute.com/blog/cheapest-cloud-gpu-providers-in-2025

• Paperspace GPU pricing page: https://www.paperspace.com/pricing

• DigitalOcean Paperspace pricing reference: https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/paperspace/machines/details/pricing/

The bottom line

Paperspace’s A100 headline price looks attractive until you notice the three-year lock-in. For flexible workloads, Thunder Compute’s $0.57/hr A100 is the clear budget option, no strings attached.