Arrakis vs Vast.ai

Vast.ai is a marketplace where independent hosts rent out GPUs at prices set by supply and demand, billed by the second. Arrakis searches several independent GPU markets at once, rents on one prepaid balance and gives every agent token a spend cap and every rental a removal time.

Start renting See live GPU prices

Side by side

As of 31 Oct 2026, 17:42 UTC, the lowest price for the NVIDIA B300 on Arrakis is $4.60 per GPU-hour, with 73 GPUs available on 10 machines.

	Arrakis	Vast.ai
B300 per GPU-hour	$4.60/GPU-hr	Varies: from $9.94, median $15.00
B200 per GPU-hour	$6.79/GPU-hr	Varies: from $6.25, median $9.06
H100 per GPU-hour	$1.65/GPU-hr	Varies: H100 SXM from $1.73, median $2.40
Billing	By the hour; a started hour counts in full	Per second
How you pay	Prepaid balance: card, Link or Apple Pay	Prepaid credits
Root SSH and any Docker image	Yes	Yes, as root in a container
Serverless endpoints, billed per request	No: each model gets a GPU of its own	Yes: Vast Serverless, per second of worker time
Hosted models, billed per output	No: deploy any Hugging Face model yourself	No priced model catalog found
MCP server for AI agents	Yes, remote at /mcp	No official server: an agent skill and plugins
Spend cap on each API key	Yes, on every token	No spend limit per key
Automatic shutdown	Yes: every rental has a removal time	No timer; an instance can stop itself
Interruptible machines	Yes, where hosts offer them	Yes: interruptible machines by bidding
Searches several GPU markets	Yes	One marketplace of hosts

Facts about other providers come from their own pages, checked on October 31, 2026. Prices and features change: check them before you choose. Arrakis is not affiliated with them.

Which fits you

Vast.ai fits better

You want billing by the second, the cheapest interruptible machines by bidding, or the widest choice inside one marketplace.

Arrakis fits better

You want several markets searched at once instead of one, hard spend caps and removal times for agents, an MCP server built in, or a model served with your own options in one step.

Moving to Arrakis

Your Docker image, SSH keys and scripts move as they are: Arrakis boots any public or private image with root SSH, and serves your own model with your own engine options. Start with one machine in the console, or point your agent at /mcp with a capped token.

Questions

Is Arrakis cheaper than Vast.ai?

It depends on the hour. On October 31, 2026, Vast.ai listed H100 SXM machines from $1.73 an hour, with a median of $2.40, plus storage and bandwidth at rates each host sets. Arrakis shows the lowest live price across the markets it connects. Compare both when you rent.

Does Vast.ai have an MCP server?

Not an official one on October 31, 2026: Vast.ai publishes an agent skill and plugins that wrap its CLI. Arrakis runs a remote MCP server at /mcp, with a spend cap on every token.