Primary sources first
We prefer licensed or openly reusable machine feeds, exchange notices, index-provider methodologies, regulatory filings, investor-relations releases and direct product documentation. Secondary reporting is used for context and clearly labeled.
- Ornn transaction index & APIOPEN ↗
- GPU Cloud Compare open dataOPEN ↗
- Silicon Data GPU Rental Price IndicesOPEN ↗
- CME Group Compute FuturesOPEN ↗
- ICE / Ornn compute futures announcementOPEN ↗
Two clocks, not one
Checked at records when SiliconTicker last queried a source. Observed at records when the upstream measurement was produced. The public market API is refreshed on demand with a daily scheduled refresh and an hourly request cache, while its current CC-BY price source publishes daily. Calling that data “real-time” would be misleading, so the interface exposes both clocks and marks delayed or fallback states.
Units before headlines
Public GPU plan prices are normalized to US dollars per individual GPU-hour. When a plan contains multiple GPUs, its hourly total is divided by the source’s reported GPU count. Source-plan totals include the complete upstream catalog; normalized-offer totals include only rows with an explicit GPU model, count and hourly price. We do not silently combine public list prices, negotiated contracts, spot capacity or executed-transaction indices.
A family median is calculated across the currently observed qualifying plans after per-GPU normalization. Different memory, interconnect, region and service levels remain basis risk, so the minimum, maximum and provider count are shown beside it.
Rental comparison and cost estimates
The GPU comparison uses the same public rental observations plus the two Azure Spot SKUs. It enriches DigitalOcean model labels using a reviewed mapping to official GPU Droplet specifications. Unknown models and unsupported providers are excluded. Regional variants remain separate offers. This catalog is separate from the CL-FCR reference-index calculation.
Prices are labeled on-demand, public list, or Spot. Public list means the source does not supply a complete commitment classification. Spot capacity can be interrupted. Location labels describe the source listing, not confirmed inventory. Every offer requires capacity and commercial-term confirmation with the provider.
The estimate purchases whole plans: round the requested GPU count up to a multiple of GPUs per plan, multiply the number of plans by the plan-hour rate, then multiply by requested hours. It estimates compute charges at a constant displayed rate, excluding storage, egress, taxes, setup fees, monthly caps and negotiated discounts. A cheaper GPU-hour does not establish better workload performance. Source RAM is system memory; GPU VRAM is shown separately when identified.
Share links store filters and up to three offer identifiers, not frozen prices. Opening a link uses the current catalog; retired offers are omitted. The Save action stores one comparison only in the current browser. No account or supplier request is created. The comparison JSON publishes the catalog with observation dates, explicit availability limitations, source links and pricing types.
Azure Spot retail tape
The Azure tape queries Microsoft's unauthenticated Retail Prices API for Consumption meters containing “Spot” on two exact Linux VM SKUs: Standard_NC40ads_H100_v5 and Standard_NC24ads_A100_v4. Windows, Dev/Test, Low Priority, reservation and non-Spot rows are excluded. For each SKU and region, the latest effective tariff that is not future-dated is retained.
Microsoft documents those VMs as containing one H100 NVL 94GB and one A100 PCIe 80GB respectively. The published VM-hour retail price is divided by that documented GPU count and rounded to six decimal places. Observed at is our API query time; effective start date is Microsoft's tariff date. Neither field proves that capacity can be provisioned.
Microsoft also states that net-new capacity is currently being deployed only for the NCads H100 v5 generation. The A100 tariff is therefore published with an explicit legacy, capacity-constrained warning; a listed tariff does not establish available A100 supply.
Azure Spot pricing varies by region and SKU and remains subject to quota, capacity and interruption. The tape is not executable, tradeable, availability-guaranteed or a record of transactions. It covers two representative single-GPU SKUs rather than the full Azure GPU catalog.
CL-FCR: Frontier Compute Rate
CL-FCR is the median of every eligible normalized offer in the current public-cloud snapshot across the H100 family, H200, MI300X and B300. Each plan total is divided by its reported GPU count before the offers are ordered; the middle value, or mean of the two middle values, becomes the published USD-per-GPU-hour rate.
It is a current-snapshot reference rate, not a time-series return index. It is not an investable or transaction-based benchmark, an executable quote, or the settlement price of any derivative. Hardware mix, geography, availability, service terms and changing provider coverage create basis risk. The API therefore publishes the range, provider count, offer count, constituents, eligible model strings and observation time beside the value.
Rights are part of the data
GPU Cloud Compare’s open dataset is embedded under CC-BY 4.0 with attribution. ORNN’s hourly transaction-based index is a valuable institutional source, but ORNN states that third-party redistribution requires a commercial agreement. ORNN is therefore documented but not connected or republished. Silicon Data’s API likewise requires an eligible subscription.
News versus analysis
Official NVIDIA, AMD and AWS RSS feeds are refreshed by a daily server schedule and checked again on request after the hourly cache expires. Intel and Google Cloud remain listed editorial references but are not described as connected feeds because reliable official RSS endpoints are unavailable. We filter for compute-market relevance and display only the headline, publication date, source and canonical link; article bodies are not copied. Publication recency is calculated separately from connector health. SiliconTicker analysis is separately labeled. Planned products remain pending until their venue and regulator confirm launch.
Corrections
Material changes update the timestamp and preserve a clear correction note. The public corrections standard and current submission status are maintained on the about page.
Machine use
The JSON endpoint uses stable field names and ISO 8601 timestamps. llms.txt documents canonical resources; the source registry exposes rights and cadence; source health reports degraded feeds; RSS orders updates. Agents should retain attribution, license, source URL, observed time, checked time and freshness status when citing the dataset.