GPU Cloud Egress Fees - The Hidden Cost Nobody Talks About

You found the cheapest H100 on the market. You spun up your training job, exported your model weights, and downloaded your results. Then the bill arrived - 30% higher than expected. What happened? Egress fees.

What Are Egress Fees?

Egress is the data that leaves a cloud provider's network - model checkpoints you download, inference results you send to clients, or datasets you transfer to another provider. Most cloud providers charge per gigabyte for this outbound traffic, and the costs add up fast when you're moving large model weights and training artifacts.

For GPU workloads, egress matters more than typical cloud usage. A single LLaMA 70B checkpoint is ~140 GB. If you're running experiments across providers or downloading results regularly, you could be transferring terabytes per month.

Egress Fees Across 26 GPU Cloud Providers

Here's the current egress pricing from every provider we track, pulled live from our database:

The Good News: Most GPU Clouds Offer Free Egress

Unlike the big three hyperscalers (AWS, GCP, Azure), most GPU-focused cloud providers offer free egress. This is a major competitive advantage - providers like Lambda, RunPod, Vast.ai, and Vultr let you move data in and out without extra charges.

This makes sense strategically. GPU cloud startups are competing for workloads against well-established players. Removing egress fees lowers the switching cost and makes it easier for teams to try new providers without worrying about data transfer bills.

The Expensive Ones

AWS leads the pack at $0.09/GB after the first 100 GB free tier. For a team transferring 10 TB/month, that's $900 in egress alone - enough to rent several additional GPU hours.

Google Cloud (GCP) charges up to $0.12/GB depending on the destination region, though they offer 200 GB free per month. Azure sits at $0.087/GB with a 100 GB free tier.

If you're using AWS, GCP, or Azure for GPU workloads, factor egress into your total cost of ownership. The cheapest instance price doesn't always mean the cheapest total bill.

Tips to Minimize Egress Costs

1. Choose providers with free egress when possible - especially for workloads that produce large outputs (model training, data processing pipelines).

2. Compress before transferring. Model checkpoints and datasets often compress well. A simple gzip or zstd pass can cut transfer sizes by 30-50%.

3. Use object storage strategically. Some providers offer cheaper or free egress from their object storage even when compute egress is charged.

4. Keep data close to compute. If you're multi-cloud, store intermediate results in the same provider where your GPU jobs run. Only transfer final outputs.

5. Watch for free tier limits. AWS and GCP offer free tiers (100 GB and 200 GB respectively), but these can be consumed quickly with GPU workloads.

The Bottom Line

Egress fees are a hidden cost that can significantly impact your GPU cloud spending, especially if you're working with large models or running distributed training across providers. The good news is that the majority of GPU-focused cloud providers charge nothing for egress.

Before committing to a provider based on hourly GPU price alone, check what you'll pay to get your data out. Use GPU Finder to compare prices across all 26+ providers, and factor in egress when making your decision.