Linode (Akamai) vs RunPod Pricing | Costbench
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25 seats

Linode (Akamai) vs RunPod

Cloud Infrastructure pricing comparison · 2026

Linode (Akamai) pricing ranges from $5–$992/month, while RunPod ranges from $0.34–$3.49/GPU/hour. These products use different pricing models (Per-seat subscription vs Usage-based (pay per token/image/minute)), so a direct price comparison isn't meaningful — costs depend on usage volume and mix.

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See pricing on each vendor's site
Above-the-fold path — each link opens the vendor's pricing page in a new tab.
Visit Linode pricing
Free plan limits → Discount programs →
Visit RunPod pricing
Free plan limits → Discount programs →
Compare
2 products · Cloud Infrastructure
Side-by-side · live
Linode (Akamai)
Linode, now part of Akamai Technologies, is a developer-friendly cloud infrastructure prov
verified 27d ago
$240 $400
View pricing →
RunPod
RunPod is a pay-as-you-go GPU cloud platform with three compute tiers: Community Cloud (Sp
verified 27d ago
$240 $400
View pricing →
Verdict · Vendr median · year 1
Linode saves $160 vs RunPod · 25 seats
Cheapest $240
Spread 40%
Estimated license cost
at 25 seats
List price × seats. Click a tier below to lock it.
Shared CPU (4 GB)
$6.0K/yr
year 1 license · $20/seat
Usage-based
$0.000061 per second
see vendor pricing for volume tiers
What buyers actually pay
median, annual
Vendr deal-flow data. The real benchmark, not list price.
↓ Lowest median
Median annual
$240/yr
Vendr · n=3 · limited data
Median annual
$400/yr
Vendr · n=15
REF · 01

Sources & confidence

Every dollar amount and contract clause below traces back to a sourced fact. We don't manufacture composite scores.

Where this data comes from
Vendr · TrustRadius · Reddit · BBB · official docs
Sources 2 sourced facts
Vendr median · 1 review platform
Last verified 3w ago
Confidence Medium confidence
Sources 19 sourced facts
16 hidden-cost · 2 contract · Vendr median
Last verified 3w ago
Confidence Medium confidence
REF · 02

Plans at a glance

Every tier per product. Lock one to drive the cost row above and reveal a tier-specific outbound CTA.

Tier ladder
Click a tier to lock the cost row to it. Locking surfaces a tier-specific Visit CTA.
REF · 03

Hidden costs

Each cost is severity-ranked, with the dollar range quoted from its source (Vendr, Reddit, TrustRadius, BBB, official docs) — never our estimate.

Beyond the sticker
Severity-ranked, sourced
No hidden costs documented
5 documented
  • Network Volume Storage Fees When Pod Is Stopped
    $0.07-$0.20/GB/month
    2 sources
  • Container Startup Time Billing
    $0.50-$2 per startup
    1 source
  • Serverless Cold Start and Keepalive Idle Costs
    20-40% of compute costs
    3 sources
  • Community Cloud Reliability Issues
    Lost work time + redeployment costs
    2 sources
  • Serverless Markup Over On-Demand Pod Pricing
    20-160x on-demand pod rate
    1 source
REF · 05

What users say

Aggregated, with sample sizes. We use whichever review platform has data.

User reviews
TrustRadius · Trustpilot · G2
TrustRadius
9/5 (5)
Best for
Small websites, development servers, personal blogs, and staging environments
Watch out
Gets pricey when scaling up
No public ratings yet
Best for
Batch workloads, training runs, and cost-sensitive inference that can tolerate interruptions
Watch out
Serverless cold start times make real-time or low-latency applications impractical
Decide
Get a quote from each vendor
Each link opens the vendor's pricing page in a new tab.
Visit Linode pricing
Free plan limits → Discount programs →
Visit RunPod pricing
Free plan limits → Discount programs →
License cost is computed from publicly listed plans (real math, list price × seats). Median annual cost is from Vendr's deal flow when available — see source badges. Hidden costs and contract terms each cite their own sources. We do not invent composite scores.
Option A

Linode (Akamai)

$5–$992
/month
5 plans
Full pricing breakdown →
VS
Option B

RunPod

$0.34–$3.49
/GPU/hour
3 plans
Full pricing breakdown →
⚖

Different Pricing Models

Direct price comparison isn't meaningful here — Linode (Akamai) uses Per-seat subscription pricing while RunPod uses Usage-based (pay per token/image/minute) pricing. Your actual cost will depend on usage volume, team size, or both. Here's each product in its native unit.

Per-seat subscription

Linode (Akamai)

$5–$992 / month
See full Linode (Akamai) pricing →
vs
Usage-based (pay per token/image/minute)

RunPod

From $0.000061 per second
See full RunPod pricing →

Plan-by-Plan Pricing

Plan Linode (Akamai) RunPod
Shared CPU (1 GB) $5 /month Custom
Shared CPU (4 GB) $20 /month Custom
Dedicated CPU (4 GB) $36 /month Custom
Premium Dedicated G8 (1:2) Custom —
Kubernetes (LKE) $60 /month (HA control plane) —

Cost at Scale

Total cost of ownership — licenses, implementation, and hidden costs included.

Linode (Akamai)

6 scenarios
$6
Personal Website
8/month
$35
Small Application Stack
50/month
$160
Production Deployment
250/month
See all 6 scenarios →

RunPod

8 scenarios
$30
Whisper Transcription - 400 Hours of Audio
$40 total
$262/month
Daily AI Inference Workload
$96
Video Generation with Hunyuan
$108 for 6 H100-hours
See all 8 scenarios →

Market Intelligence

Linode (Akamai)

Median annual cost
$240
Based on
3 deals

RunPod

Median annual cost
$400
Based on
15 deals

Continue researching

Linode (Akamai)

RunPod

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