GPU Spot Prices Surge 114% in Six Weeks

NVIDIA's latest GPU rental prices, as tracked by the Ornn Compute Price Index, rose from $2.31 in early March to $4.95 per hour in just six weeks, a jump of 114%. Over the same period, the hourly price gap between B200 (Blackwell) and the previous-generation H200 (Hopper) widened from $0.28 to $1.80.

The price surge is the result of simultaneous demand and supply shocks. Since September 2025, the release of major frontier models has coincided with sharp increases in B200 prices, and GPT-5.5's expanded context window requires Blackwell-level memory headroom.

• In September 2025, B200 prices were tightly clustered across providers, but the gap has now more than doubled.
• Some providers keep prices close to H200 levels, while others add a scarcity premium.
• The spread between B200 and H200 narrowed to as little as $0.28 early after launch, then widened again to $1.80 following GPT-5.3-Codex in February 2026.

Pricing power has shifted back to providers, and the spot market leads contract pricing by roughly 90 days. The author believes B200 could exceed $5.00 per hour by summer, with demand-driven inflation outpacing the deflationary effects of algorithmic and chip improvements.