On-Demand vs Spot GPU Instances: Which One Actually Saves You Money?

When choosing between on-demand and spot GPU instances, consider the workload's interruption risk and cost. Spot instances offer lower hourly prices but can interrupt workloads, while on-demand instances provide stable capacity. Use spot for checkpointed training, hyperparameter sweeps, and retryable batch jobs, and on-demand for production inference, demos, and deadline-bound fine-tuning. A hybrid setup with a stable on-demand baseline and spot for elastic workloads can be the most practical answer. Compare lower-cost on-demand GPU options before assuming spot is the only way to reduce spend.