OCI charges $10.75/GPU/hr for H100 on-demand, regardless of region. For teams already deep in the Oracle ecosystem, that rate can be defensible. For everyone else, it is well above what neocloud providers charge for the same hardware.
This post covers every current OCI GPU shape, on-demand and preemptible rates, how Universal Credits work (and when they don't close the gap), the hidden costs beyond the headline rate, and a direct TCO comparison against cheaper alternatives. Pricing is sourced from Oracle's API and updated weekly.
OCI GPU Pricing (On-Demand)
| Instance | GPUs | VRAM (GB) | vCPUs1 | System RAM (GB) | Network bandwidth (Gbps)2 | Price per GPU/hr | Price per node/hr |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BM.GPU.H100.8 | 8 x NVIDIA H100 SXM5 | 640 GB HBM3 | 224 | 2,048 | 100 | $10.75 | $86.00 |
| BM.GPU.H200.8 | 8 x NVIDIA H200 SXM5 | 1,128 GB HBM3e | 224 | 3,072 | 200 | $10.00 | $80.00 |
| BM.GPU.B200.8 | 8 x NVIDIA B200 SXM6 | 1,440 GB HBM3e | 256 | 4,096 | 400 | $14.00 | $112.00 |
| BM.GPU.B300.8 | 8 x NVIDIA B300 | 2,100 GB HBM3e | 256 | 4,096 | 400 | $15.00 | $120.00 |
| BM.GPU.A100-v2.8 | 8 x NVIDIA A100 SXM4 | 640 GB HBM2e | 256 | 2,048 | 100 | $4.00 | $32.00 |
| BM.GPU.L40S-NC.4 | 4 x NVIDIA L40S | 192 GB GDDR6 | 224 | 1,024 | 200 | $3.50 | $14.00 |
| BM.GPU.MI300X.8 | 8 x AMD MI300X | 1,536 GB HBM3 | 224 | 2,048 | 100 | $6.00 | $48.00 |
| BM.GPU.RTXPro.8 | 8 x NVIDIA RTX Pro 6000 | 768 GB GDDR7 | 288 | 3,072 | 400 | $4.50 | $36.00 |
| BM.GPU3.8 | 8 x NVIDIA V100 | 128 GB HBM2 | 104 | 768 | 50 | $2.95 | $23.60 |
| Last reviewed on: August 11, 2026. Pricing sourced from Oracle's API and updated weekly. 1 OCI measures CPUs in OCPUs (1 OCPU = 2 vCPUs on x86). vCPUs shown here use the industry-standard. 2 Network bandwidth reflects VCN bandwidth; all modern shapes also include RDMA networking for cluster workloads. |
|||||||
OCI GPU Shapes Explained
OCI shape names encode instance class, GPU model, and GPU count in a single string. The BM prefix means bare metal (dedicated physical host); VM means a virtual machine on a shared host.
BM.GPU.H100.8is a bare metal node with eight H100 GPUs.VM.GPU.A10.1is a virtural machine with a single A10.
BM shapes are the only practical choice for ML training. They include NVLink (GPU-to-GPU bandwidth within the node) and RDMA cluster networking (bandwidth between nodes in an OCI Supercluster). VM variants drop NVLink and are best limited to single-GPU inference or development.
New OCI tenancies start with no available GPUs. Before launching any GPU instance, you must submit a service-limit increase request through Oracle's support portal. Approval takes 1-3 business days, a real constraint for teams that need capacity on short notice.
On-Demand vs. Preemptible OCI GPU Pricing
OCI's H100 on-demand rate is $10.75/GPU/hr across all commercial regions. Unlike AWS and Azure, OCI does not publish regional pricing variations. Where availability differs between regions, it reflects capacity constraints, not a price adjustment.
H100 preemptible rates are typically between $3–$5/GPU/hr. These spot instances offer a 50-70% discount, but OCI can reclaim them with a 2-minute notice. OCI does not publish fixed preemptible rates, and actual pricing reflects live capacity.
On preemptible nodes, checkpoints are required for training workloads. Any computation in progress when OCI reclaims the node is lost unless your training loop saves state regularly.
OCI Universal Credits
OCI Universal Credits (UC) are a spend-commit discount model: you commit to a total dollar amount of OCI spend over a fixed term, and Oracle applies a discount of roughly 10-30% off list price according to independent deal benchmarks. Discounts scale with commitment size and term length.
Credits draw from a single pool across the full OCI catalog: compute, storage, database, networking, and Oracle SaaS. This differs from AWS Savings Plans, which commit to a specific hourly spend on compute, or Azure Reserved Instances, which lock you into a specific instance type and region.
UC discounts on GPU compute are most compelling when GPU spend sits alongside Oracle Autonomous Database, Analytics Cloud, or Fusion ERP usage. Teams spending only on GPU compute see modest UC discounts, not the reductions that come from bundling GPU with a broader Oracle footprint.
Beyond Compute Costs: Storage and Egress
The are two more aspects of OCI instances worth understanding:
Paid Block Volume Storage: BM GPU shapes include local NVMe, but that storage disappears when the instance terminates. Persistent checkpoint storage requires OCI Block Volume at approximately $0.0255/GB/month (Balanced Performance tier). A 5 TB checkpoint volume adds around $127/month on top of compute.
No Egress Fee: OCI egress is $0 globally across all regions and compute shapes, following Oracle's elimination of outbound data transfer charges in February 2026.
OCI vs. AWS, Azure, and GCP: Four-Way GPU Price Comparison
All rates below are on-demand, per GPU/hr for H100 SXM5 80 GB, as of August 2026.
| Provider | Instance | On-Demand (per GPU/hr) | Preemptible (per GPU/hr) | Egress |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oracle Cloud (OCI) | BM.GPU.H100.8 | $10.75 | ~$3.00–$5.00 | $0 (free since Feb 2026) |
| AWS | p5.48xlarge | ~$6.88 | ~$3.83 | $0.09/GB |
| Azure | ND96isr H100 v5 | ~$12.29 | ~$2.25–$3.69 | $0.087/GB |
| Google Cloud | A3 High | ~$10.98 | ~$3.69 | $0.08–$0.12/GB |
| Thunder Compute | H100 PCIe | $2.19 | N/A (on-demand only) | $0 |
| Last reviewed on: August 11, 2026. Hyperscaler rates normalized to per-GPU cost from published node pricing. | ||||
AWS P5 is the most competitive H100 hyperscaler option on-demand. Azure is the most expensive. OCI and GCP A3 High sit in a similar range at ~$10.75–$11/GPU/hr. All four are well above what purpose-built GPU cloud providers charge at list price.
For a broader comparison across 10+ GPU cloud providers, see Thunder Compute's A100 GPU pricing guide.
When OCI Makes Sense (and When It Doesn't)
OCI is the right call in three situations:
- Teams already using Oracle for database, ERP, or middleware get the most value from Universal Credits, because GPU spend bundles with services they were already paying for.
- For some regulated workloads that need FedRAMP High authorization provided by OCI Government Cloud.
- Teams with petabytes of training data already in OCI Object Storage face real migration friction: re-pointing pipelines, validating data integrity, and potential downtime.
OCI is harder to justify when GPU compute is your only Oracle dependency. The $10.75/GPU/hr H100 rate has no offsetting benefit without a broader Oracle footprint, and the 1-3 day service-limit approval adds friction for teams that need to respond quickly to compute demand.
A Faster, Lower-Cost Path for Single-GPU and Dev Workloads
OCI's GPU lineup targets large-scale, multi-node training at the bare-metal level. It is not designed for the developer who needs one H100 this afternoon to fine-tune a model or prototype an inference endpoint.
Thunder Compute offers H100 80 GB at $2.19/GPU/hr and A100 80 GB at $1.09/GPU/hr, both on-demand with per-minute billing and no commit requirement. Thunder's H100 rate is roughly 5x below OCI's on-demand price. The first 100 GB of storage per GPU is included at no extra charge.
Thunder Compute instances launch in seconds without a quota approval process. Per-minute billing means a 40-minute training run costs 40 minutes of GPU time, not a full hour. The VS Code, Cursor, and Windsurf extensions connect your local IDE to a remote GPU instance with a single click.
Thunder Compute vs. OCI: Monthly TCO Comparison
Running an 8-GPU node for one month (720 hours) at continuous utilization:
| Line Item | OCI On-Demand | OCI Preemptible (~$4/GPU avg) | Thunder Compute |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compute (8x H100, 720 hrs) | $61,920 | $23,040 | $16,646 |
| Block Volume / Storage (5 TB) | $128/mo | $128/mo | $250 |
| Total | $62,048 | $23,168 | $16,896 |
| Last reviewed on: August 11, 2026. | |||
For a mixed-use month below 100% utilization and smaller 1x or 2x configurations, the Thunder Compute figure drops further. Per-minute billing means idle time costs nothing.
Last Thoughts on Oracle Cloud GPU Pricing
OCI's $10.75/GPU/hr H100 rate is predictable and the bare-metal shapes are capable. Free egress since February 2026 removes one cost variable that previously complicated comparisons.
The premium Oracle prices might make sense for enterprises with an existing service portfolio, Universal Credits and Supercluster networking. But not for developers running single-node training, fine-tuning, or inference workloads, the economics point toward purpose-built alternatives.