Compare · prices checked 2026-09-03
RTX 4090 vs L40S: specs, price per hour, which to rent
NVIDIA RTX 4090 (24 GB, $0.262/hr) against NVIDIA L40S (48 GB, $0.466/hr): public specs side by side, live fixed prices from our sheet, what fits in each card's VRAM, and a verdict written for real workloads — both are rentable right now.
RTX 4090 vs L40S specifications
Public NVIDIA figures (dense, non-sparsity). The last column is RTX 4090 relative to L40S.
| Spec | RTX 4090 | L40S | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Architecture | Ada Lovelace (2022) | Ada Lovelace (2023) | — |
| VRAM | 24 GB GDDR6X | 48 GB GDDR6 | −50% |
| Memory bandwidth | 1,008 GB/s | 864 GB/s | +17% |
| FP16 tensor (dense) | 330 TFLOPS | 362 TFLOPS | −9% |
| FP32 | 82.6 TFLOPS | 91.6 TFLOPS | −10% |
| CUDA cores | 16,384 | 18,176 | −10% |
| TDP | 450 W | 350 W | +29% |
| PCIe · NVLink | Gen 4.0 · no NVLink | Gen 4.0 · no NVLink | — |
| PowerScore (RTX 3090 = 100) | 232 | 255 | −9% |
| Max GPUs per machine | 8× | 8× | — |
RTX 4090 vs L40S price per hour
Fixed rates from our sheet — every on-demand price is the marketplace median × 0.70, rounded down. Monthly = 730 hours.
| Rate | RTX 4090 | L40S | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| On-demand, per GPU-hour | $0.262 | $0.466 | RTX 4090 (−44%) |
| Interruptible, per GPU-hour | $0.131 | $0.233 | RTX 4090 |
| Reserved (3 mo), per GPU-hour | $0.170 | $0.302 | RTX 4090 |
| On-demand, per month | $191 | $340 | RTX 4090 |
| Market median (reference) | $0.37 | $0.67 | — |
| $ per 1,000 FP16 TFLOP-hours | $0.79 | $1.29 | RTX 4090 (better value) |
| $ per GB of VRAM per hour | $0.0109 | $0.0097 | L40S (better value) |
Try a full month with storage and bandwidth in the GPU cost calculator.
What fits in VRAM: 24 GB vs 48 GB
| Workload | RTX 4090 | L40S |
|---|---|---|
| Largest LLM in FP16, one card | ~8B | ~14B |
| Largest LLM at 4-bit, one card | ~32B | ~72B |
| Flux dev (FP8, ~17 GB) | fits | fits |
| Wan 2.x 14B video (offloaded) | yes | yes |
| 70B 4-bit LLM on one card | no | yes |
Rules of thumb: ~2.4 GB per billion parameters in FP16 all-in, ~0.62 GB in 4-bit. Full tables in the VRAM guide.
Verdict: which should you rent?
The L40S is the datacenter Ada card: 48 GB, passive cooling, FP8, built for 24/7 duty; the RTX 4090 has similar per-clock throughput, 24 GB and a lower rate. Serve production endpoints on the L40S; run interactive and batch generation on the 4090.
- Cheaper per hour: RTX 4090 ($0.262 vs $0.466, −44%).
- More VRAM: L40S (48 GB vs 24 GB).
- More FP16 throughput: L40S (about 1.1×).
- Best value per TFLOP-hour: RTX 4090.
- Best value per GB of VRAM: L40S.
- Multi-GPU: RTX 4090 over PCIe · L40S over PCIe.
Related comparisons
- RTX 5090 vs RTX 4090 $0.318 vs $0.262 per hour Compare
- RTX 4090 vs RTX 3090 $0.262 vs $0.104 per hour Compare
- RTX 4090 vs A100 PCIE $0.262 vs $0.662 per hour Compare
- L40S vs A100 PCIE $0.466 vs $0.662 per hour Compare
- L40S vs H100 PCIE $0.466 vs $2.147 per hour Compare
- RTX 5090 vs L40S $0.318 vs $0.466 per hour Compare
RTX 4090 vs L40S: FAQ
Deeper reading: H100 vs H200 vs B200, RTX 4090 vs RTX 5090, how cloud GPU pricing works.
Is the L40S faster than the RTX 4090?
On dense FP16 tensor throughput the L40S leads by about 1.1× (362 vs 330 TFLOPS). Memory bandwidth matters as much for inference: RTX 4090 1,008 GB/s vs L40S 864 GB/s.
Which is cheaper to rent, the RTX 4090 or the L40S?
The RTX 4090: $0.262/hr on-demand versus $0.466/hr — 44% less. Interruptible rates are $0.131 (RTX 4090) and $0.233 (L40S). Per TFLOP-hour the better value is the RTX 4090.
Which has more VRAM and what does that change?
The L40S has 48 GB versus 24 GB. In LLM terms that is roughly a 14B FP16 model (or ~72B in 4-bit) on one card against 8B FP16 (~32B 4-bit). If the model does not fit, speed is irrelevant.
Can I rent both on PowerGPU right now?
Yes — 439 × RTX 4090 and 59 × L40S are online as this page renders, deployable in about 30 seconds, billed per second, paid in crypto with no KYC.