Runpod vs Shakti Cloud: Complete Comparison (2026)
An in-depth comparison of Runpod and Shakti Cloud to help you choose the right tool for your business.
Last updated: November 2026
Runpod
6.8/10
Runpod is a GPU cloud for AI teams, offering per-second GPU pods, autoscaling serverless inference endpoints, and multi-node instant clusters.
Shakti Cloud
5.8/10
Shakti Cloud is Yotta Data Services' sovereign GPU cloud in India. It offers H100, L40S and B200 virtual machines, bare metal, clusters and serverless inference for AI teams.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
| Feature | | |
|---|---|---|
| Scores | ||
| Overall Rating | 6.8/10 | 5.8/10 |
| Integration | 6/10 | 6/10 |
| Analytics | 5/10 | 4/10 |
| Customization | 8/10 | 7/10 |
| Ease of Use | 7/10 | 5/10 |
| Support | 4/10 | 5/10 |
| Cost | 8/10 | 5/10 |
| Scalability | 8/10 | 8/10 |
| Security | 7/10 | 7/10 |
| Pricing | ||
| Free plan | No | No |
| Cheapest paid plan | Contact for pricing | ₹197,000/mo AI Lab (1x H100 80GB workstation) |
| Estimated cost for 10 users | Contact for pricing | ₹197,000/mo AI Lab (1x H100 80GB workstation) |
| Features | ||
| API and CLI | ||
| Managed WordPress | Not listed | |
| Multiple Regions | ||
| Uptime SLA | Not listed | |
| Serverless Functions | ||
| Git Deployments | Not listed | |
| Cloud Compute | ||
| Shared Hosting | Not listed | |
| Managed Kubernetes | Not listed | |
| Dedicated Servers | Not listed | |
Runpod vs Shakti Cloud cost by team size
| Team size | Runpod | Shakti Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| 1 user | Contact for pricing | ₹197,000/moAI Lab (1x H100 80GB workstation) |
| 5 users | Contact for pricing | ₹197,000/moAI Lab (1x H100 80GB workstation) |
| 10 users | Contact for pricing | ₹197,000/moAI Lab (1x H100 80GB workstation) |
| 25 users | Contact for pricing | ₹197,000/moAI Lab (1x H100 80GB workstation) |
| 50 users | Contact for pricing | ₹197,000/moAI Lab (1x H100 80GB workstation) |
The plan that fits each team size, billed monthly, before add-ons and usage charges. Each cost opens that tool's pricing calculator for the team size.
Which One Should You Choose?
Why choose Runpod
- Higher Cost score (8/10 vs 5/10)
- Higher Ease of Use score (7/10 vs 5/10)
- Better fit for developers (9/10 vs 6/10)
- Better fit for startups (9/10 vs 6/10)
Why choose Shakti Cloud
- Higher Support score (5/10 vs 4/10)
- Better fit for enterprise (9/10 vs 6/10)
Pros & Cons
Runpod
Pros
- Per-second billing with no ingress or egress fees keeps short experiments cheap.
- Community Cloud GPUs cost far less than hyperscalers, for example an RTX 4090 at $0.34 per hour.
- Serverless endpoints scale to zero, so spiky inference traffic costs nothing when idle.
- A wide catalogue of more than 30 GPU models, including B200 and B300, across 31 regions.
- Secure Cloud is backed by SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 compliance.
Cons
- Community Cloud machines can drop out mid-job, and some users report pods that crash while billing continues.
- GPU availability fluctuates, and listed GPUs can disappear before you launch.
- Standard accounts have no published support response times or uptime SLA, and the SLA is limited to enterprise contracts.
- Stopped pods pay double for volume disk, and deposited credits are non-refundable.
- Serverless assumes Docker knowledge, and network volumes are tied to a single region.
Shakti Cloud
Pros
- It publishes INR prices for VMs, bare metal and clusters, so Indian buyers avoid exchange-rate risk and can estimate costs without a sales call.
- Data centres in Navi Mumbai and Greater Noida keep data in India for DPDP Act compliance.
- It covers the full range from hourly single-GPU VMs to 256-plus-GPU H100 clusters over InfiniBand, as one of NVIDIA's Cloud Partners.
- Unlimited ingress and egress are included on VMs, and data transfer is included on bare metal and clusters.
- It bundles NVIDIA AI Enterprise and NIM, plus OpenAI-compatible serverless endpoints for hosted open models.
Cons
- The on-demand H100 VM, at 356 rupees per hour, costs more than Cyfuture AI (329) and JarvisLabs (about 330), according to a comparison article.
- It is limited to GPU and AI workloads. It has no general web hosting, managed databases, object storage pricing or CDN.
- InfiniBand and the Kubernetes control plane cost extra, and term discounts are not published.
- Independent user reviews are scarce, and sources disagree on whether access is self-serve or quote-based.
Not sold on either?
Frequently Asked Questions
Runpod scores higher on our AI Software criteria: 6.8/10 against 5.8/10 for Shakti Cloud. The largest gap is in Cost: 8/10 for Runpod and 5/10 for Shakti Cloud.
No, neither Runpod nor Shakti Cloud lists a free plan.
Runpod is the better fit for developers: we rate it 9/10 for them, against 6/10 for Shakti Cloud.
