SDXL cost test: RTX A6000, L40S, RTX 5090 and H100 from $0.91 per 1,000 images

A developer rented four single-GPU machines on Runcrate and measured the cost of generating 1,000 SDXL 1024x1024 images at 30 steps. The RTX A6000 came out cheapest at $0.91, followed by the RTX 5090 at $0.93, the L40S at $1.01 and the H100 at $1.80 despite being the fastest at 1.67 s per image.

• RTX A6000: $0.91 per 1,000 images, 4.94 s per image with torch.compile
• H100 PCIe: 1.67 s per image but $1.80 per 1,000 images
• torch.compile cuts time 8-20%, pays off after 210-400 images
• Batch 4 barely helps: -4% to +4% change except on H100