H100 GPU Rental Rates Climb to $3.28/hr in 2026 Despite Chip Age

H100 one-year contract rental rates rose roughly 40% between October 2025 ($1.70/hr) and July 2026 (~$2.80/hr), with spot prices reaching $3.28/hr in September 2026 per the Ornn index. Marketplace median rates sit at $3.38/hr, with the cheapest tracked rate at $1.49/hr on Vast.ai. The price increase occurred even after Nvidia's Blackwell generation shipped, contrary to standard hardware depreciation patterns. The primary demand driver is AI inference for reasoning and agentic workloads, which consume far more tokens per request than simple chat. Supply constraints include TSMC CoWoS packaging capacity, HBM memory output, and 36-52 week lead times against a roughly 3.6 million unit industry backlog; HBM costs rose around 30% in Q4 2025. AWS raised H200 instance prices 15% in January 2026. Newer chips command higher rates: the H200 runs $3.59-$4.59/hr, the B200 $5.63-$8.64/hr, while AMD MI300X undercuts Nvidia equivalents at as low as $1.85/hr on Vultr. H100 rates are projected to drift toward $1/hr by mid-2027 as B200 absorbs premium demand, following the depreciation curve the A100 followed.