This story was originally published on HackerNoon at:
https://hackernoon.com/i-priced-the-same-inference-workload-on-4-gpu-clouds-egress-was-the-catch.
A reproducible 2026 cost model pricing one inference workload across six GPU clouds, and why egress, not GPU-hours, decides a third of the bill.
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Most GPU cloud comparisons stop at dollars-per-GPU-hour, which is only half the bill. Pricing one identical inference workload (1 GPU, 24/7, 30 TB/month egress) across six clouds from their published rates shows egress quietly eating 22–31% of an AWS, Azure, or GCP bill, a line item that's $0 on providers that don't meter it. The real lesson: egress is an architecture decision, not a billing surprise, so model it before you commit.