The Rent-vs-Buy Index
One number we track every month: how many hours of use it takes for owning a used RTX 3090 to beat renting a 4090-class cloud GPU. Below that line, rent. Above it, buy. All prices are dated and sourced — and the history table grows each month, so you can see which way the market is moving.
Buy observation October 6, 2026: a used RTX 3090 at the midpoint of the sold typical range (~$1464; that midpoint is not the sold median and not an asking price) beats renting a 4090-class cloud GPU at the latest rent observation (August 1, 2026, ~$0.27/hr) once you use it more than ~6,595 hours — about 4.5 years at 4 hours/day. Below that, renting is cheaper; above it, owning wins and every further hour costs only ~$0.05 in electricity. The headline date on this page is the used 3090 buy row, not the newest card in the price spine. The rent row can be older than the buy row.
What that means at your usage
Break-even is usage-independent (~6,595 hours); only the calendar time to reach it changes. Run your own numbers in the rent-vs-buy calculator.
How the index has moved
| Month | Used 3090 | 4090 cloud /hr | Break-even hrs | Δ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 29, 26 | $700 | $0.29 | 2,954 | — |
| Aug 1, 26 | $680 | $0.27 | 3,063 | +109 |
How this is measured
Break-even hours = purchase price ÷ (cloud $/hr − local $/hr), where local $/hr is active draw (320 W) × electricity rate ($0.15/kWh). Depreciation is conservatively treated as sunk cost. The full model is in the rent-vs-buy break-even guide; provider-by-provider rental options are in the cloud-GPU reviews. Prices are community-cited and dated, not independently verified — see methodology.
- Buy: CompSniper eBay sold listings: median $1499 across 204 sales, typical $1329-$1599, latest sale 2026-10-06; recent table includes some RTX 3090 Ti. Asking is separate (RigPrice used going rate $1655 on 2026-10-06, not a sold price). https://compsniper.com/worth/rtx-3090 (2026-10-06)
- Rent: RunPod + Vast.ai pricing pages, observed (2026-08-01)
- Electricity: U.S. EIA average residential rate, 2025
Data as of October 6, 2026. Updated monthly.