# Nebius vs Thunder Compute

Nebius records 1,145,711 monthly visits with +10.7% month-over-month growth and Paid, Contact for Pricing pricing. Thunder Compute records 102,147 monthly visits with -29% growth and Paid (per-minute instances, per-second sandboxes) pricing.

| Metric | [Nebius](https://openaitools.app/tool/nebius) | [Thunder Compute](https://openaitools.app/tool/thunder-compute) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| Website URL | https://nebius.com | https://thundercompute.com |
| Categories | AI Developer Tools, AI Models, AI API, Open Source AI Models | AI Developer Tools, AI Models, Large Language Models (LLMs) |
| Pricing Model | Paid, Contact for Pricing | Paid (per-minute instances, per-second sandboxes) |
| Monthly Visits | 1,145,711 | 102,147 |
| MoM Growth Rate | +10.7% | -29% |
| Primary Market | United States | United States |
| Direct Visits | 447,886 | 40,743 |
| Review Score | 4.5 | 4.4 |
| Saved Count | 0 | 0 |
| Supported Platforms | Website | Website |

## Nebius

Nebius positions itself as "the ultimate AI cloud," an infrastructure stack engineered specifically for AI workloads rather than adapted from general-purpose cloud. The core of the platform is raw GPU capacity from NVIDIA — including GB300 NVL72, HGX B300, GB200 NVL72, HGX B200, H200, H100, RTX PRO 6000, and L40S — delivered as non-virtualized instances attached to InfiniBand networking. Above that sit managed services such as Kubernetes, Soperator (Slurm on Kubernetes), PostgreSQL, and MLflow, so teams get the orchestration and experimentation tooling that large training runs need without assembling it themselves.

On the inference side, Nebius offers Token Factory, a managed endpoint for running open and frontier models, alongside serverless compute options. Storage is available as shared filesystems, WEKA, block volumes, and tiered object storage, all priced transparently by the gigabyte. Consumption is flexible: customers can pay on-demand, use preemptible and spot capacity at market-driven prices, or reserve capacity through commitments for lower rates. Networking egress, public IPs, and Kubernetes management are listed as free, which simplifies capacity planning.

Nebius supports the full lifecycle — pre-training, post-training, and inference — and publishes customer stories spanning financial services, healthcare, robotics, media, and e-commerce. Because the company also operates its own data centers and hardware supply chain, it can offer capacity guarantees and support arrangements that are hard to match on repurposed public cloud. Pricing is usage-based and published on the site, with contact needed for large clusters and enterprise agreements.

**Pricing & Plans:** Usage-based pricing published on the site. On-demand GPU instances range from roughly $1.55/GPU-hour for L40S up to about $9.50/GPU-hour for HGX B300, with preemptible and live spot options starting around $0.79/GPU-hour. CPU-only instances start near $0.06/cpu-hour, managed Kubernetes and networking are free, and large-scale clusters or commitments are quoted through sales.

- **Non-virtualized GPU clusters:** Bare-metal access to NVIDIA GB300, B300, GB200, B200, H200, H100, RTX PRO 6000, and L40S GPUs connected over InfiniBand for training and inference at scale.
- **Nebius Token Factory:** A managed inference service for running popular open and frontier models through an API, so applications can add LLM capabilities without owning GPUs.
- **Managed MLOps services:** Built-in Kubernetes, Soperator for Slurm jobs, PostgreSQL, and MLflow give teams a ready-made environment for orchestration, tracking, and experiments.
- **Flexible consumption and spot pricing:** Choose on-demand, preemptible, or live market-driven spot capacity, or commit to reserved clusters for discounts on long-running workloads.
- **Scalable AI storage:** Shared filesystems, WEKA, block volumes, and tiered object storage sized for multi-hundred-terabyte training datasets.

**Strengths:** Transparent, publicly listed per-hour GPU and storage pricing; Broad NVIDIA lineup from L40S up to GB300 NVL72; Free Kubernetes management, networking egress, and public IPs; Integrated MLOps tooling including MLflow, Slurm via Soperator, and PostgreSQL

**Limitations:** Top-end clusters like GB300 and GB200 are quote-only, not self-serve; Spot and preemptible capacity is interruptible and prices move with demand; Requires meaningful ML infrastructure knowledge to get the most out of it

[Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/nebius.md)

## Thunder Compute

Thunder Compute is a cloud GPU provider that markets itself as the GPU sandbox company. Rather than a single generic VM offering, it splits its product into two shapes. Instances are long-lived GPU machines for hands-on development and training, available with RTX A6000, L40, A100 80GB, or H100 SXM GPUs, configurable across GPU count, vCPU, RAM, and disk, and billable per minute only while running. Sandboxes are isolated, short-lived Ubuntu microVMs designed for agent workloads: reinforcement-learning environments, evaluation sweeps, and CI jobs that need a GPU for a few minutes and can then disappear.

The company leans on price and developer ergonomics. Its published rates list H100 SXM instances at $3.20 per GPU-hour, A100 80GB at $1.09, L40 at $0.79, and RTX A6000 at $0.35, with per-second sandbox pricing of $2.95 per GPU-hour for H100 and $1.95 for A100. Storage is metered per GB-month with monthly snapshot pricing, and there are no data egress fees. Thunder Compute says it keeps costs down by scheduling workloads efficiently and reducing idle time, and passes those savings on.

The workflow is designed to be scriptable rather than click-heavy. A CLI handles instance creation and connection, a VS Code extension supports in-editor iteration, and an MCP server plus REST API let agents and internal platforms provision GPUs programmatically. Snapshots preserve disk state between sessions, and neither instances nor sandboxes can be preempted. The company raised a $13 million Series A in 2026 to expand the platform, and documents the stack through guides, quickstarts, and API references.

**Pricing & Plans:** Thunder Compute bills instances per minute while running and sandboxes per second. Published instance rates: RTX A6000 $0.35/GPU-hour, L40 $0.79, A100 80GB $1.09, H100 SXM $3.20, with extra vCPUs at $0.04/vCPU-hour. Sandbox rates are $2.95/GPU-hour for H100 SXM and $1.95/GPU-hour for A100 80GB plus vCPU, memory, and storage components. Instance disk storage is $0.219/GB per month (first 100 GB per GPU included), snapshots are $0.05/GB per month, and data egress is free. Grilled specifically: rates change over time, so verify on the pricing page.

- **Persistent GPU instances:** Launch RTX A6000, L40, A100 80GB, or H100 SXM machines, often ready to SSH into within minutes, and pay only while they run.
- **Per-second GPU sandboxes:** Spin up isolated Ubuntu VMs with or without a GPU for RL rollouts, evals, and CI, billed per second and scaled to zero between runs.
- **Developer-first tooling:** A CLI, VS Code extension, MCP server, and REST API let you drive infrastructure from a terminal, an editor, an AI agent, or your own services.
- **Snapshots and persistent storage:** Save an instance disk as a snapshot and restore it later, so you can pause experiments without leaving machines running.
- **No preemption, no egress fees:** Instances and sandboxes are never preempted, and outbound data transfer is not billed.

**Strengths:** Aggressive pricing versus hyperscalers: published H100 rates around $3.20/GPU-hour against $6+ at major clouds.; Two billing models that match two real workloads: per-minute persistent instances and per-second ephemeral sandboxes.; No egress fees and no preemption, which removes two common sources of surprise cost and interruption.; Real developer surface area: CLI, VS Code extension, MCP server, REST API, and templates.

**Limitations:** GPU availability can fluctuate, so a particular type may be sold out when you try to launch it.; Sandbox access is requested through sales rather than being fully self-serve at sign-up.; The platform's GPU catalog is narrower than the largest hyperscalers, which offer a wider range of accelerator families.

[Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/thunder-compute.md)

## Frequently Asked Questions

### How do Nebius and Thunder Compute compare in monthly traffic?

Nebius has 1,145,711 monthly visits, while Thunder Compute has 102,147. Traffic estimates describe audience size, not product quality.

### How do their growth rates compare?

Nebius has a month-over-month growth rate of +10.7%; Thunder Compute has -29%.

### How does pricing compare?

Nebius: Paid, Contact for Pricing. Usage-based pricing published on the site. On-demand GPU instances range from roughly $1.55/GPU-hour for L40S up to about $9.50/GPU-hour for HGX B300, with preemptible and live spot options starting around $0.79/GPU-hour. CPU-only instances start near $0.06/cpu-hour, managed Kubernetes and networking are free, and large-scale clusters or commitments are quoted through sales. Thunder Compute: Paid (per-minute instances, per-second sandboxes). Thunder Compute bills instances per minute while running and sandboxes per second. Published instance rates: RTX A6000 $0.35/GPU-hour, L40 $0.79, A100 80GB $1.09, H100 SXM $3.20, with extra vCPUs at $0.04/vCPU-hour. Sandbox rates are $2.95/GPU-hour for H100 SXM and $1.95/GPU-hour for A100 80GB plus vCPU, memory, and storage components. Instance disk storage is $0.219/GB per month (first 100 GB per GPU included), snapshots are $0.05/GB per month, and data egress is free. Grilled specifically: rates change over time, so verify on the pricing page.

## Alternatives

| # | Tool Name | Monthly Visits | MoM Growth Rate | Pricing Model | Summary | Profile (Markdown) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| 1 | [fal.ai](https://openaitools.app/tool/fal-ai) | 3,093,684 | -3.7% | Paid, pay-as-you-go usage-based pricing | Tailored specifically for high-throughput generative media inference pipelines, whereas Nebius targets general GPU compute infrastructure. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/fal-ai.md) |
| 2 | [RunPod](https://openaitools.app/tool/runpod) | 2,881,043 | +5.9% | Paid | The AI developer cloud for GPU pods, serverless inference and clustering | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/runpod.md) |
| 3 | [Together AI](https://openaitools.app/tool/together-ai) | 1,645,930 | +64.9% | Freemium, Paid | Provides robust serverless inference APIs and GPU clusters for open-source models, but with less emphasis on raw bare-metal control. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/together-ai.md) |
| 4 | [Vast.ai](https://openaitools.app/tool/vast-ai) | 1,257,554 | +2.8% | Paid | Rent cloud GPUs by the second from a global marketplace | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/vast-ai.md) |
| 5 | [Modal](https://openaitools.app/tool/modal-com) | 1,196,021 | +30.2% | Freemium, Contact for Pricing | Serverless cloud infrastructure for AI and data workloads | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/modal-com.md) |
| 6 | [Salad](https://openaitools.app/tool/salad-gpu-cloud) | 713,519 | +10.4% | Free Trial, Paid, Contact for Pricing | Distributed GPU cloud that orchestrates the world's idle consumer GPUs | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/salad-gpu-cloud.md) |
| 7 | [DeepInfra](https://openaitools.app/tool/deep-infra) | 457,810 | -8.9% | Paid | Provides exceptionally cheap serverless inference for open models via API, but does not offer raw bare-metal GPU rentals. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/deep-infra.md) |
| 8 | [Lightning AI](https://openaitools.app/tool/lightning-ai) | 272,562 | -12.3% | Freemium, Paid, Contact for Pricing | The AI cloud built by the creators of PyTorch Lightning | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/lightning-ai.md) |
| 9 | [Novita AI](https://openaitools.app/tool/novita-ai) | 271,371 | -10.4% | Paid | One cloud for 200+ model APIs, agent sandboxes and GPU compute | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/novita-ai.md) |
| 10 | [FluidStack](https://openaitools.app/tool/fluidstack) | 154,620 | +7.3% | Paid, Contact for Pricing | Gigawatt-scale AI compute, built and operated end to end | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/fluidstack.md) |

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Source: https://openaitools.app/compare/nebius-vs-thunder-compute

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