GPU VPS: Contabo at $1,199/month, compared with AWS, Google and Hetzner

On 2 October, Contabo published a price-list comparison of nine GPU configurations from seven providers, placing its own GPU VPS offering with the RTX PRO 6000 alongside AWS, Google Cloud, Hetzner, IONOS, Leaseweb and Vast.ai. For anyone who needs to rent a card for inference or training without buying one outright, what matters is the monthly price for an equivalent 96 GB VRAM card.\n\nContabo GPU VPS costs $1,199 per month for an NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition, with 96 GB of video memory on the card, 18 CPU cores, 96 GB of RAM and 900 GB of NVMe storage, with no setup fees. According to the comparison published by Contabo, out of nine configurations priced across seven providers in September 2026, only two came in cheaper — and this was the lowest rate found for a card that stays dedicated for the whole month.\n\n## The comparison for 96 GB cards\n\n| Provider | Type | RAM | CPU | Storage | $/month |\n|---|---|---|---|---|---|\n| Vast.ai | GPU marketplace | – | – | – | 1,011.00* |\n| AWS | GPU VPS (spot) | 64 GB | 8 vCPU | 1.9 TB | 1,043.90* |\n| Contabo | GPU VPS | 96 GB | 18 vCPU | 900 GB NVMe | 1,199.00 |\n| Hetzner | Bare metal | 256 GB | 24 cores | 960 GB NVMe | 1,399.00 (+699 setup) |\n| Leaseweb | Bare metal | 128 GB | 2x24 cores | 2x960 GB NVMe | 1,416.28 (+56.35 setup) |\n| IONOS | Bare metal | 256 GB | 2x16 cores | 1.92 TB NVMe | 2,340.00 (+2,340 setup) |\n| Google Cloud | GPU VPS | 180 GB | 48 vCPU | not included | 3,284.95 |\n\n*Figure calculated from the published hourly cost on a 730 hours/month basis.\n\nThe two rows that come in below Contabo's price are selling spare or marketplace capacity, not a machine that remains yours alone. Vast.ai and AWS spot instances can be reclaimed without significant notice: fine for burst workloads, less so for a training run that lasts days.\n\n## Why a VPS costs less than a bare metal server\n\nThe card itself isn't cheap: an RTX PRO 6000 costs the same to buy whether it ends up in a shared server or a fully dedicated one. What changes is how much of the rest of the machine ends up on the bill. In Contabo's comparison, Hetzner's bare metal server costs $2.24 an hour and IONOS $3.25; spread over a month, Contabo GPU VPS works out at around $1.64 for the same card — nearly a third less than Hetzner and roughly half of IONOS.\n\nIt's worth noting, though, that Hetzner's price does move. At the launch of the GEX131 with RTX PRO™ 6000 Blackwell Max-Q, Hetzner offered it from €889.00 per month (€1.4247 per hour), IPv4 included. By late September 2026, independent price trackers were reporting the same machine on sale for around €1,197 per month plus €599 in setup fees — a rise of roughly 35% in nine months.\n\nFor those weighing up a multi-year commitment, AWS and Google Cloud's reserved rates remain on the table, which can drop below $1,199 only with discounts from one- or multi-year commitments: a choice made for predictability, not for the lowest absolute price in the short term.\n