the cheapest cloud GPU for ComfyUI and Flux costs pennies an hour — stop renting H100s

You don't need an expensive card for image generation. A 24GB GPU runs Flux with ControlNet for $0.12–0.34/hr. Here's the GPU each workflow actually… Aliteq Ravi Malhotra · Hardware Editor

SDXL: 8GB minimum, ~12GB comfortable — almost any modern GPU runs it.

Flux.1-dev (fp16): 16–24GB; complex Flux + ControlNet needs the full 24GB → an RTX 3090/4090 is the practical floor (FP8 fits it on 16GB).

Cheapest sensible rig: RTX 3090 (24GB) from ~$0.12/hr Vast spot / $0.22 RunPod, or RTX 4090 from ~$0.14/$0.34 (22 Sep 2026).

Video / heavy multi-model pipelines: step up to a 48GB card (L40S ~$0.52–0.79/hr, A6000 ~$0.28–0.33/hr).

You never need an H100 for image generation — spend the saving on more hours instead.

If you just want images and not a GPU to babysit, hosted tools generate them without any setup — worth it if you value speed over control. Self-hosting ComfyUI wins when you need specific custom…

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