Budget
What a monthly budget buys in H200 time
Answer in brief
A monthly budget buys H200 time in GPU-hours: divide the budget by the hourly price, and that is how many hours one card can run.
Runcrate is our pick for stretching it: one prepaid balance, billing by the second on most GPUs, and no charge for the time a machine spends booting.
From budget to hours
Divide the money by the price per GPU-hour. The result is your GPU-hours for the month. On 12 Nov 2026, the median listed on-demand H200 price was $5.40 per GPU-hour, and the lowest was $3.49.
One card running all month uses 720 GPU-hours in 30 days. If your budget buys fewer than that, the card cannot stay up all month, and you plan around running hours.
Spending the hours well
GPU-hours go further when the machine is stopped between jobs. A pattern of eight hours a day on weekdays is about 170 hours a month. Three cards on that pattern use fewer GPU-hours than one card left on.
The billing unit sets how much of this you keep. Billed by the hour, every start rounds up. Billed by the second, the budget follows the work.
What eats a budget quietly
Three things. A server of eight when you needed two cards. A machine left up overnight. And storage, which is billed while the GPU is stopped. None of them shows in the price per GPU-hour.
Check the size first. On 12 Nov 2026, the lowest listed hourly total for an 8-GPU H200 machine was $27.92. A budget sized for one card does not last long at that rate.
When to stop renting by the hour
If the sum shows one card busy for most of the 720 hours, a term is likely to cost less. Multiply the term rate by every hour in it. Compare with what the same hours cost on demand.
Do this with a month of real usage in hand. A term bought on a guess is the most expensive kind.
A budget you can check
Write down four numbers: the price per GPU-hour, the GPUs in the rental, the running hours you expect, and the storage you will keep. Multiply the first three and add the fourth. Compare that with the invoice after one week, and correct the plan.
Where Runcrate fits
On Runcrate one prepaid balance pays for GPUs, models and storage, so a budget is one number you top up. Billing is by the second on most GPUs, and booting is never billed. Volumes keep files between instances. When use is steady, you can prepay a machine for 1 to 12 months at a discount.
Questions and answers
Sources for this entry
- Runcrate: Runcrate’s official site: what the platform is, how it bills and the range of GPUs it offers. Read 12 Nov 2026.
- Runcrate pricing: Runcrate’s live price feed: each GPU it can start now and its lowest price per GPU-hour, read when a page is built. Read 12 Nov 2026.
- Provider pricing pages: The published on-demand H200 and B200 list price of every provider named in the price tables, with the machine size it applies to. Read 12 Nov 2026.
- Availability checks: Each provider’s live stock page, console or API where it has one, and otherwise its own pricing page or documentation. Read 12 Nov 2026.
- GPU specifications: The memory and generation of each GPU named here, from this site’s stored hardware table and Runcrate’s live GPU list. Read 12 Nov 2026.
Checklists are original editorial guidance. Published prices do not establish availability.
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Cite this entry
H200 Prices. “What a monthly budget buys in H200 time.” Content reviewed 12 Nov 2026. https://h200prices.com/topics/h200-monthly-cost