ZenoCloud rents the NVIDIA L40S 48GB at ₹55,000 a card a month before tax, host included, in Mumbai, ready now. NVIDIA publishes no list price, so buying is quoted by OEMs and resellers. AWS Mumbai rents one by the hour from $2.235 (g6e.xlarge).
Last verified: 24 October 2026. Figures marked "our maths" are calculated from the sources, not quoted by them. Monthly estimates use 730 hours and ₹94.94 to the dollar (European Central Bank reference rate, 23 October 2026). Benchmarks are labelled measured (conditions published) or reported (no conditions).
How much does L40S rental cost in India?
ZenoCloud's L40S is ₹55,000 a card a month in Mumbai, on one rupee invoice, with a one-month minimum. The card, the NVIDIA driver and a baseline host are in the price; the written quote lists the host's CPU, RAM, storage and network. Spread over a full month that is about ₹75 an hour (our maths). There is no hourly plan.
| ZenoCloud plan, per card a month | What is included | Price, plus taxes |
|---|---|---|
| L4 24GB | card, driver, baseline host | from ₹32,000 |
| L40S 48GB | card, driver, baseline host | from ₹55,000 |
| RTX PRO 6000 96GB | card, driver, 16 vCPU / 128 GB host | from ₹1,10,000 |
For context, we read the public pricing pages of seven Indian GPU clouds on 24 October 2026 (names withheld; list available on request). Four state an L40S hourly rate we could read cleanly, two of them in dollars. Two state a one-month price. All are per GPU, before tax where the page says so.
| What you pay | Market low | Market high | ZenoCloud (Mumbai) |
|---|---|---|---|
| On demand, ₹ per GPU-hour (four of seven) | ₹114 | ₹185 | No hourly plan (₹55,000 ÷ 730 ≈ ₹75, our maths) |
| On demand for 730 hours, our maths | ₹83,200 | ₹1,35,100 | Not applicable |
| One-month plan, ₹ per GPU (two of seven) | ₹54,020 (₹74 an hour × 730, our maths) | ₹83,000 | ₹55,000 |
The ₹83,000 plan is a 16 vCPU, 64 GB host in Noida. What ₹55,000 buys is a fixed monthly price, a whole card that is yours for the month, the host included and a rupee invoice.
Prices on a page beat prices in a guide, including this one. Check the date.
What is the L40S good for?
The L40S is NVIDIA's Ada Lovelace data-centre card: 48GB of GDDR6 with ECC, 864 GB/s of memory bandwidth, a dual-slot passive PCIe Gen4 x16 board at up to 350W, with fourth-generation Tensor Cores, third-generation RT cores and vGPU support (NVIDIA L40S). It has no NVLink and no MIG. It does AI and graphics on the same silicon, which a compute-only card such as the H200 does not.
Inference
The question is whether the model and its context fit in 48GB. Weights only (parameters times bytes, plus 20% for the runtime; KV cache for context and users goes on top):
| Model size | FP16 | 8-bit | 4-bit | Fits on one L40S |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8B | 16GB | 8GB | 4GB | FP16 |
| 13B | 26GB | 13GB | 6.5GB | FP16 |
| 34B | 68GB | 34GB | 17GB | 8-bit |
| 70B | 140GB | 70GB | 35GB | 4-bit |
The card reports about 45 GiB to software, because NVIDIA's 48GB is decimal. One benchmark ran gpt-oss-20b at 42.1 of 45.0 GiB used (Devforth, 20 Feb 2026, measured).
What owners and testers measured:
| Result | Conditions | Label | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| gpt-oss-20b, one user, a 10k-token prompt: first token 1.17 s and full reply 1.92 s on the L40S, against 3.50 s and 6.93 s on an L4 and 0.80 s and 1.62 s on an H100 | vLLM | measured | Devforth, 20 Feb 2026 |
| Same test, five users at once: first token 1.4 to 4.6 s on the L40S, 4.6 to 16.4 s on the L4, 1.3 to 2.4 s on the H100 | vLLM | measured | same article |
| Qwen3.8 27B at 4-bit, one user: L40S 37.0 tokens a second, L4 13.9, A100 45.9, H100 80.5, RTX PRO 6000 70.6 | Q4_K_M, 11 cards tested; the channel's description carries a referral link | measured, affiliate disclosed | GPU Battle, 2 Oct 2026 |
| Two L40S, no NVLink: tensor parallel beat pipeline and data parallel on a 35B mixture-of-experts model | vLLM, PCIe 4.0 x16, Proxmox passthrough | reported | r/LocalLLaMA, 29 Jul 2026 |
| Asked "what can you run on an L40S?" by a team weighing it against H100s for confidential data, one reply said a 30B coder model at FP8 with 128k context works really well for them | one team's setup | reported | r/LocalLLaMA, 6 Nov 2025 |
What the numbers say, our reading: single-user decoding tracks memory bandwidth. The L40S has 864 GB/s against the L4's 300 GB/s, and it ran 2.7 times faster in the video test. The A100 80GB has about 1.9 to 2.0 TB/s and the H100 SXM 3.35 TB/s. Pick the L40S for a model that fits in 48GB and for the first few concurrent users. At high concurrency or for long context, a bigger KV cache and more bandwidth matter: that is the H200's job, not the L40S's.
Fine-tuning
Parameter-efficient fine-tuning fits well. The QLoRA paper reports fine-tuning a 65B model on a single 48GB GPU while keeping 16-bit fine-tuning quality (Dettmers et al., arXiv 2305.14314). That is the L40S's memory size. LoRA on 7B to 13B models at 16-bit, and QLoRA on larger ones, stays inside 48GB (our reading of the fit table above).
Full fine-tuning is a different budget. Mixed-precision Adam needs about 16 bytes per parameter for weights, gradients and optimizer state (ZeRO paper, arXiv 1910.02054), so roughly 3B parameters fill 48GB before activations (our maths). Multi-card training splits work over PCIe at 64 GB/s, not NVLink: one team's NCCL hangs on PCIe L40S cards were fixed by IOMMU passthrough (NVIDIA forum, 28 Apr 2026). If you train across several cards, ask for the H100 or H200.
Graphics, rendering and video
The L40S has 142 third-generation RT cores and four DisplayPort 1.4a outputs, and it supports NVIDIA virtual GPU software (NVIDIA L40S). A commenter counts three data-centre cards with RT cores: the A40, the L40S and the RTX PRO 6000 Server Edition (Hacker News, 15 Jan 2026). The H200 is a compute card: a Linus Tech Tips review found its NVL version has no Vulkan, DirectX or OpenGL support at all (YouTube, 25 Sep 2025).
For image and video generation the question is again memory. A tester's rule of thumb: an L4's 24GB suits SDXL with a few LoRAs, while Flux at full 16-bit needs about 24GB for weights alone and video models stop fighting out-of-memory errors at 48GB (r/hinoderun, 27 Jun 2026, reported; the poster builds a GPU rental product).
Two cautions from NVIDIA's forum. A driver update moved L40S cards on AWS Windows Server from graphics (WDDM) mode to compute (TCC) mode and broke Isaac Sim (19 May 2026). A llama.cpp runaway-generation loop made one L40S fall off the bus (Xid 79) on two driver versions (25 Aug 2026). Test your driver and display mode on a trial node before you commit.
L40S vs L4 vs RTX PRO 6000
| GPU | Memory | Bandwidth | Power | ZenoCloud, per card a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| L4 | 24GB GDDR6 | 300 GB/s | 72W, low-profile | from ₹32,000 |
| L40S | 48GB GDDR6 ECC | 864 GB/s | up to 350W | from ₹55,000, ready now |
| RTX PRO 6000 | 96GB GDDR7 ECC | 1,597 GB/s | up to 600W | from ₹1,10,000, ready now |
Pick the L40S by default when the model and its context fit in 48GB. Pick the L4 for small models and light traffic: it costs ₹23,000 a month less, but the test above showed 3.6 times the L40S's reply time (6.93 s against 1.92 s), so choose it for batch work and quantised 7B to 13B models, not for chat with several users. Pick the RTX PRO 6000 when 48GB is the limit: a 70B at 8-bit, a long context on a 30B, a Flux and video pipeline with several models resident. It costs twice as much for twice the memory. Our RTX PRO 6000 price guide has its owner benchmarks, the H200 price guide covers the next step up, and the H100 price guide the one above that.
L40S rent or buy
NVIDIA publishes no list price for the L40S. Buying goes through OEMs and resellers, who quote the card with a server around it. We do not print reseller prices here: they change weekly, and a listing from last month says little about the quote you will get. Ask for the card, the server, GST and delivery in writing.
What a purchase involves, from NVIDIA's specification: a passive dual-slot card that needs chassis airflow, a 16-pin power connector, a PCIe Gen4 x16 slot, up to 350W. At full draw that is about 255 kWh a month per card (our maths); multiply by your tariff. The tariff entry for HSN 84718000 shows 0% basic customs duty and 18% IGST (Eximpe tariff finder, as at 13 May 2026); whether a given shipment lands under that line is for your customs broker to confirm.
The break-even is arithmetic. Months to break even equal the card, the host and the installation divided by ₹55,000, so every ₹1 lakh you spend up front is about 1.8 months of rent (our maths). Power, a room, spares and someone on call sit on top, and the card has to run most of every month.
One owner has published the full count for the same GPU generation. An independent researcher built a six-GPU server on RTX 6000 Ada cards, which share the L40S's Ada chip and 48GB. At 2024 rental rates he expected about a year at 85% use to match cloud rental. Over two years his GPUs were active 76% of hours, 85% since January 2025, with a queue of experiments running around the clock. Electricity was about $125 a month, the server went down three times for maintenance, and by 13 March 2026 he had saved about $17,000 against on-demand rental, which he compared with on-demand rates only (Rosmine ML blog, 13 May 2026; Hacker News, 18 May 2026, 571 points, reported).
Buying makes sense when the card runs near full utilisation for two years or more, you have the room, power and hands, and your data cannot leave the building. Otherwise rent, and rent before you buy: a trial node tells you your own tokens a second for ₹55,000, not for an OEM quote.
Need an L40S for a few hours? Use AWS in Mumbai
For a benchmark, a weekend fine-tune or a demo, rent by the hour. AWS's G6e instances carry the L40S, one card on five sizes, four cards on two and eight on the largest (AWS EC2 G6e instances). We read the Mumbai on-demand prices from AWS's published price list of 23 October 2026.
| AWS instance | Cards | Host | Mumbai, Linux, $ per hour | ₹ per hour, our maths | 730 hours, our maths |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| g6e.xlarge | 1 | 4 vCPU, 32 GiB | $2.235 | ₹212 | ₹1,54,900 |
| g6e.2xlarge | 1 | 8 vCPU, 64 GiB | $2.693 | ₹256 | ₹1,86,600 |
| g6e.4xlarge | 1 | 16 vCPU, 128 GiB | $3.608 | ₹343 | ₹2,50,100 |
| g6e.48xlarge | 8 | 192 vCPU, 1,536 GiB | $36.187 ($4.523 a card, our maths) | ₹3,436 for the node | ₹25,08,000 |
Source: AWS EC2 On-Demand price list, Linux, Asia Pacific (Mumbai), published 23 October 2026. Prices are in dollars, before tax.
The crossover, our maths, on compute alone: ₹55,000 buys about 259 hours of g6e.xlarge, or about 161 hours of g6e.4xlarge, in a month. Under that, pay AWS by the hour. Over it, the monthly card costs less, and a full 730 hours on g6e.xlarge is ₹1,54,900 against ₹55,000 with us.
Hourly capacity is not guaranteed. A startup engineer wrote in June 2026 that two hyperscalers could not supply L40S on demand for their burst jobs, so they fell back to older T4 cards (Hacker News, 25 Jun 2026, reported). We manage AWS: our Managed AWS desk watches the account 24/7, patches what you approve and explains the bill.
When ZenoCloud is the right choice
ZenoCloud is the right choice when the L40S will run most of the month and you want the host, driver and invoice handled. You get one card at ₹55,000 a month in Mumbai, ready now, on a one-month minimum. A longer card count, a bigger host or a different region goes on the quote.
We have run servers since 2009, more than 1,000 of them, on a 99.9% uptime SLA, from partner facilities. The quote states the card, the host, the boot disk, the network and the price before tax, with the NVIDIA driver installed. You run your own software. With GPU Infrastructure Care we also watch the host and runtime 24/7, with P1 response under 15 minutes, from ₹25,000 a node a month (₹50,000 account minimum).
Not a fit: light or bursty use, a few hours or days a month, where AWS by the hour costs less (we manage AWS if you would rather not run the account); a model that needs more than 48GB on one card, where the RTX PRO 6000 or H200 is the next step; or work that needs NVLink or MIG.
Take a trial node before committing: a short paid trial on the card you plan to use, terms agreed before setup. If you keep it, the trial node becomes your production node. For serving sizes and card counts, see our GPU inference hosting page.
How to get an L40S quote
Send us five things and we reply within one business day:
- Model, framework and precision (FP16, FP8, 4-bit GGUF).
- Inference, fine-tuning or rendering, and the target: tokens a second, concurrent users or frames an hour.
- Card count and whether your framework splits across PCIe cards.
- Storage size, dataset location and network needs.
- Start date and term.
Request an L40S quote. The quote states the card, the host, the price before tax and how long it holds. The whole range is on the GPU cloud page and pricing.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does the NVIDIA L40S cost in India?
ZenoCloud rents an L40S 48GB at ₹55,000 a card a month before tax, host included, one-month minimum, checked 24 October 2026. NVIDIA publishes no list price, so buying is quoted by OEMs and resellers with a server around the card.
What is the L40S rental price per hour in India?
Our L40S is a monthly plan, about ₹75 an hour over 730 hours (our maths). Four of the seven Indian GPU clouds we checked publish an on-demand rate, ₹114 to ₹185 an hour. AWS Mumbai starts at $2.235 an hour (g6e.xlarge), about ₹212.
Is the NVIDIA L40S available in India?
Yes. ZenoCloud has it ready now in Mumbai at ₹55,000 a month, and AWS rents it by the hour in Mumbai on G6e instances. One startup engineer reported that two hyperscalers had no on-demand L40S for them in June 2026, so confirm capacity before you plan around hourly rental.
Can I buy an L40S in India?
Through NVIDIA's OEM and reseller channels, on a quote. NVIDIA lists no price. Ask for the card, the server, GST and delivery in writing, and check the host can cool a 350W passive card. The tariff entry for HSN 84718000 shows 0% duty and 18% IGST.
L40S vs L4: which should I rent?
The L40S, unless your model is small and traffic light. The L40S has 48GB and 864 GB/s against the L4's 24GB and 300 GB/s, and one test measured a 1.92 s reply against 6.93 s. The L4 costs about 1.7 times less.
L40S vs A100: which is better for my workload?
The L40S for inference and graphics where 48GB is enough. The A100 80GB for training, HBM bandwidth, NVLink and MIG. If you mostly serve models under 48GB, start with the L40S, then test the A100 only if you hit its limits.
Is the L40S enough for fine-tuning an LLM?
For LoRA and QLoRA, yes: the QLoRA paper fine-tunes a 65B model on one 48GB GPU. Full fine-tuning needs about 16 bytes a parameter, so roughly 3B parameters fill the card. Multi-card training runs over PCIe, not NVLink, so ask for H100 or H200 there.
Does the L40S support NVLink or MIG?
No. NVIDIA lists both as unsupported on the L40S. Two cards stay two separate 48GB devices, so your software must split the work. If you need NVLink or MIG, look at the A100, H100 or H200.
Can I run my own software and containers on a rented L40S?
Yes. You get a dedicated card with the NVIDIA driver installed and run your own software. Tell us your framework and container setup in the quote request and we confirm the host. We install the driver; the stack above it is yours.
How much memory does the L40S really have?
48GB of GDDR6 with ECC, a decimal figure. Software reports about 45 GiB, and one benchmark used 42.1 of 45.0 GiB with gpt-oss-20b. Plan the context and KV cache against the reported figure, not the 48.
Is GST included in ZenoCloud's L40S price?
No. We quote before tax and add GST on the invoice; at 18%, ₹55,000 a month bills at ₹64,900 (our maths). Whether you can claim it back as input credit depends on your tax status; ask your accountant.
Sources
Checked 24 October 2026 unless dated.
- ZenoCloud L40S GPU cloud, GPU cloud pricing, pricing, GPU inference hosting and Managed AWS
- NVIDIA L40S specifications, NVIDIA L4 and NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition
- AWS, Amazon EC2 G6e instances and EC2 On-Demand price list, Linux, Asia Pacific (Mumbai), published 23 October 2026
- European Central Bank euro reference rates, 23 October 2026: USD/INR cross-rate ₹94.94 (via frankfurter.dev)
- Public pricing pages of seven Indian GPU clouds, read 24 October 2026 (providers are not named or linked; list available on request)
- Devforth, self-hosted GPT-OSS-20B on L4, L40S and H100, 20 February 2026
- GPU Battle, Qwen3.8 27B on 11 GPUs (YouTube, 2 October 2026)
- Dettmers et al., QLoRA and Rajbhandari et al., ZeRO
- Reddit threads: r/LocalLLaMA, tuning two L40S (29 Jul 2026); r/LocalLLaMA, what can you run on an L40S (30 Oct 2025); r/hinoderun, L4 vs L40S for ComfyUI (27 Jun 2026)
- Hacker News: rosmine.ai, was my $48K GPU server worth it (18 May 2026); on-demand L40S shortage (25 Jun 2026); RT cores in data-centre cards (15 Jan 2026)
- Rosmine ML blog, Was my $48K GPU server worth it?, 13 May 2026; Linus Tech Tips, H200 NVL review, 25 September 2025
- NVIDIA developer forum: NCCL hangs on PCIe L40S (28 Apr 2026); driver forces TCC mode (19 May 2026); L40S falls off the bus (25 Aug 2026)
- Eximpe tariff finder, HSN 84718000, rates as at 13 May 2026