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These are different infrastructure formats. Establish control and responsibilities before estimating complete costs and testing suitable configurations.
Hetzner, OVHcloud and Scaleway can join a GPU-infrastructure shortlist, but their particular products differ. Dedicated servers and cloud instances imply different control and operations. A suitable graphics card alone does not make them direct equivalents.
Current to 1 November 2026, this editorial method uses official catalogues without independent tests, affiliate rankings or universal cheapest-offer claims.
Compare your model and operating mode
Fix memory, device count, host resources and requests. Separately define period, acceptable regions and the team’s operating capacity. These constraints outweigh provider popularity.
Exclude products unable to support the scenario before discussing rates. Use the same task and quality criteria. A successful brief request does not establish long-context or concurrent-user suitability.
Different starting products
| Provider | Product to investigate | First clarification |
|---|---|---|
| Hetzner | GEX GPU server | Complete dedicated node and rental terms |
| OVHcloud | Public Cloud GPU | Instance configuration and location |
| Scaleway | GPU Instances | Resource type, image and available zone |
This does not describe every service from these companies. It sets concrete starting offers so comparison does not jump between VMs, physical servers and managed APIs.
Include full budget and responsibilities
Record compute, storage, network and support for each. Dedicated servers need one-off setup checks; the Hetzner payment overview provides a starting point. For cloud products, establish resource states and charges separately.
Identify who deploys the engine, updates the model and handles faults. More internal work belongs in the comparison. A low hardware price does not establish the full cost of a working service.
Test a month-long experiment
Suppose a team evaluates its model for a bounded period. It selects suitable configurations and preserves image, weights and inputs. Compare preparation, quality, latency, recovery and completion with required files retained.
Tie results to plans and date. A different scale needs renewed availability and constraint checks. The outcome may be a suitable option, revised requirements or postponing expansion until a technical problem is solved.
Include existing equipment
An available server makes external rental a control point rather than necessarily the next expense. Use the same model profile and add owned-site, power and maintenance costs.
Read on-premises versus data-centre placement and inference economics.