Label every GPU rate: on-demand, reserved or interruptible

Three products that share a price column

A GPU rate should carry its commitment beside it, written as one of three words: on-demand, reserved or interruptible. They are different products. On-demand can be started and stopped at will, reserved is a lower rate in exchange for a term, and interruptible is cheaper again because the provider can take the card back. A rate with no label leaves the reader to guess which one it is, and nothing makes that guess come out in the seller’s favour.

The guess matters because the comparison is made row by row. With 464 rate observations on record across the market, a reader building a spreadsheet has little reason to stop and ask what a bare number on your page means. The natural assumption is that it is the same kind of number as the one beside it, and it may not be.

How a mixed column flatters the cheapest row

Picture a table with one column headed "Price per hour". The first row is an interruptible rate, the second is on-demand, the third is a one-year reservation. Read top to bottom, the interruptible row looks like the deal, and a buyer who wanted on-demand capacity may sign up for it, get reclaimed in the middle of a run and blame the provider for a product they never meant to buy.

The other failure runs the opposite way. A provider that shows only its reserved rate, unlabelled, looks cheap next to an on-demand table elsewhere. The buyer finds the term in the checkout or the contract and leaves, and the provider has spent a lead to learn that its headline number was read as something it was not.

Neither outcome needs bad faith. It only needs a column that holds three kinds of number under one heading.

What each label needs to say

On-demand needs the least: the word, the billing increment, and whether there is any minimum. If the instance can be stopped at any minute and billing stops with it, say so, because that is what a buyer is paying the higher rate for.

Reserved needs the term in months or years, whether payment is up front or monthly, and what happens if the buyer wants out early. A reserved rate without its term is not a price, because a buyer cannot work out what they are committing to spend. If the discount changes with the term, give each term its own row instead of a footnote.

Interruptible needs the most. Say how much warning a buyer gets before a card is reclaimed, whether a reclaimed job is restarted or simply ended, and whether the rate moves with demand. A later post in this series covers that wording on its own, because the reclaim terms are what decide whether the discount is usable.

Where the label belongs on the page

Put it in the same cell or the same line as the rate. A label in a column header two screens up, a tab the buyer may not have clicked, or a legend under the table is a label that a copied number leaves behind. Rates get copied into chat threads, procurement sheets and assistant answers, and only the words next to the figure travel with it.

The same holds for anything that reads your page on a schedule. Every GPU rate on this site is shown with the page it was read from and the date, and the comparison tables are of listed on-demand rates for an exact card. A rate whose commitment cannot be read from the line it sits on is harder to place correctly than one that says what it is.

If your page uses tabs for each commitment, keep the word in the row as well. It costs a few characters and closes off one way a GPU price page gets misread.

What the on-demand rate is for in a comparison

On-demand is the commitment a comparison can line up most easily, because it carries no term and no reclaim conditions. The lowest listed on-demand rate for the H100 SXM 80GB is $1.68 an hour, and that figure only means something because every rate beside it on the H100 SXM page is the same kind of offer for the same card.

Reserved and interruptible rates are harder to line up. Terms differ, warning periods differ, and a buyer has to read each one. That is a reason to state them clearly, and no reason to hide them: a buyer who has already decided on a term wants to find your reserved rate quickly, labelled, next to the on-demand one it discounts.

How a figure is read, dated and hidden once stale is written down on the data page. A provider that wants its reserved and interruptible offers understood should make sure the page they sit on would survive being read by a stranger with no context.

Rates that change with the term

Reserved pricing is often a ladder: one rate for a month, a lower one for a year, lower again for longer. Publish the ladder as rows, each with its term in the first cell. A sentence such as "save more with longer commitments" gives a buyer nothing to put in a budget, and a buyer building a budget is the one deciding whether to sign for a term.

If any reserved rate needs a conversation with sales, say that on the row and still give a figure if you can, even as a starting point. A known rate is easier to put in a budget than an unknown one, and a provider that publishes a starting figure gives the buyer something to bring to the call.