Linode (Akamai) vs RunPod Pricing | Costbench

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.

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