EU · GDPR Art. 28 · Intel TDX · Zero Retention

VoltageGPU vs RunPod

RunPod is a US-based GPU cloud marketplace (Charlotte, NC) operating community and secure cloud nodes across multiple regions. It is not a confidential computing provider and does not offer Intel TDX hardware attestation.

Same GPU, different trust model. RunPod gives you cheap GPUs across a US-anchored marketplace; VoltageGPU gives you GPUs sealed inside Intel TDX enclaves under a French controller that a compliance officer can actually sign off on. Different product categories, not just different prices.

Pick RunPod if
  • Public-model fine-tuning, evaluation runs, research on non-sensitive data
  • Lowest hourly price on H100, H200 and A100 without a TEE
  • A DPA or BAA on paper is enough for your reviewer
  • Serverless endpoints, spot pricing, 30+ GPU SKUs
Pick VoltageGPU if
  • Client files, health data, or GDPR Article 9 categories in GPU memory
  • Your auditor wants the technical measure enforced by hardware, not promised
  • EU jurisdiction and a French operator on the contract
  • An Intel TDX attestation quote you can re-verify yourself

Headline pricing

Hourly list price per GPU SKU. ", " means the SKU is not publicly available from that provider. VoltageGPU prices are the canonical confidential-compute floor and stay in sync with /pricing.

GPUVRAMVoltageGPURunPod
NVIDIA H10080 GB
$5.00/hr
Intel TDX confidential
$2.79/hr
Secure Cloud, no TDX
NVIDIA H200141 GB
$6.58/hr
Intel TDX confidential
$3.49/hr
Secure Cloud, no TDX
NVIDIA B200180 GB
$10.60/hr
listed, never available to date, not attested
,
not yet generally available
Confidential techIntel TDX + trust-domain GPU isolationNot offered (no Intel TDX, no GPU TEE)
AttestationIntel DCAPNone
BillingPer-second, no commitPer-second, on-demand + spot via Community Cloud
OperatorVOLTAGE EI (France)RunPod, Inc. (US, Delaware), Charlotte, NC HQ
Setup~5 min, SSH-ready~2–10 min depending on region/availability
JurisdictionEU / GDPR Art. 28US (Cloud Act exposure)

RunPod DPA: what it covers, in plain terms

Short answer for the people who typed "runpod dpa": yes, RunPod offers a Data Processing Agreement to its customers, and signs Business Associate Agreements for Secure Cloud workloads that touch US health data. The DPA is the standard GDPR Article 28 instrument: it names RunPod as processor, lists the technical and organisational measures RunPod commits to, and carries the EU Standard Contractual Clauses for the transfer to a US operator. You request it from their account or sales channel; it is not something a Community Cloud spot rental comes with by default. Sources, checked 12 September 2026: RunPod's published Data Processing Agreement (runpod.io/legal/data-processing-agreement), its press release on HIPAA and GDPR compliance, and its help-centre article on finding HIPAA/GDPR-compliant GPUs and the BAA policy.

What a DPA does: it makes the promise legally binding and gives your DPO a document to file. What a DPA cannot do: change what the host is technically able to see. On a standard hypervisor, an operator with console access can inspect a running VM, and the DPA only says they will not. That is fine for public-model fine-tuning, evaluation runs and pseudonymised pipelines. It stops being fine when the regulator asks for the technical measure to be enforced rather than promised: bar-association secrecy, HDS health data, PCI DSS, GDPR Article 9 categories. That boundary is the whole reason this page exists, and the rest of it walks along it honestly.

RunPod is a marketplace. VoltageGPU is infrastructure.

RunPod runs two product lines side by side. Community Cloud is a peer-supplied marketplace where independent operators rent out their own GPUs; pricing is cheapest, isolation is whatever the host configured, and the workload runs on hardware the buyer does not control or audit. Secure Cloud is RunPod-operated tier-3 datacenter capacity with standard hypervisor isolation, RunPod-managed networking, and per-region availability. Both are excellent for what they are, raw GPU rental on a US-anchored marketplace with very competitive pricing, and neither is positioned as a confidential-computing platform.

VoltageGPU is the opposite shape. The operator is VOLTAGE EI in Solaize, France, the hardware is dedicated NVIDIA H100/H200/B200 running inside Intel TDX guest VMs with AES-256 memory encryption, the PCIe bus between CPU and GPU is encrypted by trust-domain GPU passthrough, and every confidential session ships with an Intel DCAP attestation quote that can be re-verified offline against the Intel root certificate. There is no peer marketplace layer; there is no variable-isolation host; the operator is mathematically constrained from reading workload memory. That is what "Confidential AI Infrastructure" means in our positioning, a property the silicon enforces rather than a property the operator promises.

On the pricing table this difference shows up cleanly. A confidential NVIDIA H100 80GB is $5.00/hr on VoltageGPU (live price, Intel TDX) versus $2.79/hr on RunPod Secure Cloud (no TDX, verified May 2026); a confidential H200 141GB is $6.58/hr versus $3.49/hr. RunPod is cheaper per hour on both, and the gap is the entire confidential-compute stack: the GPU inside an Intel TDX guest with attested hardware encryption end-to-end. For a buyer whose workload is not GDPR-sensitive there is no reason to pay it. For everything else, that is the price the regulatory framework actually requires.

RunPod GDPR and HIPAA compliance: on paper vs in silicon

RunPod offers a Data Processing Agreement and supports EU-region deployment of Secure Cloud capacity. That is the same regulatory posture every US GPU marketplace exposes, a contract that names the legal protections, plus an option to pin workloads to European data centers. It is sufficient for the majority of AI workloads, including most fine-tuning, evaluation, internal research, and any pipeline where the data was already public or already pseudonymized before it touched GPU memory. For those workloads RunPod is a perfectly correct choice, and the price advantage on H100/H200/A100 is real.

It is not sufficient where the technical measures clause of an Article 28 DPA needs to be backed by hardware evidence that the operator cannot read workload memory. A contractual DPA does not constrain the host operator at the silicon layer; if a US administrator with legitimate console access wants to introspect a running VM, the standard hypervisor permits it. For workloads under bar-association secrecy (RIN art. 2.2 for French avocats), under HDS-certified health-data processing, under PCI DSS for cardholder data, or under the new EU AI Act provisions on high-risk processing of sensitive categories, CNIL and equivalent authorities have begun to require the technical measure be enforced by hardware. That is the requirement Intel TDX + trust-domain GPU passthrough were built to satisfy.

VoltageGPU's answer is therefore not "RunPod's DPA is bad" it is "the DPA route runs out of room exactly where the silicon route begins". The operator entity is a French sole proprietorship registered under SIREN 943 808 824, the encrypted memory key is ephemeral and per-VM, and the attestation quote is cryptographic evidence delivered fresh for every confidential session. Article 28 is enforced at the silicon layer, not at the contract layer. Reasonable buyers can pick either side of that line; the page exists so the line is visible before the purchase.

Where RunPod wins, and it is not small

It is not a marketing exercise to admit a competitor is the right tool for many jobs. RunPod is the right tool for many jobs. The GPU catalogue is larger by an order of magnitude, 32+ active SKUs versus our 8 confidential SKUs, covering RTX 4090, RTX A6000, L40S, A40, A100 40GB, A100 80GB, and several Ada-generation cards we do not list. Community Cloud spot pricing is the cheapest entry point on the market for non-sensitive workloads. Serverless inference endpoints with auto-scaling on cold-start optimized base images are a category VoltageGPU does not compete in today. Multi-region availability across US, Canada, EU, and Asia regions exceeds our footprint.

On raw price for non-confidential workloads RunPod wins outright. Its H100 and H200 Secure Cloud rates sit well under the confidential VoltageGPU rates in the table above, and its A100 80GB at $1.19/hr has no confidential equivalent on our side at all. For academic research, public-model fine-tuning, or any workload where the input data is not under a confidentiality obligation, that gap is the entire decision and the buyer should choose RunPod. Where the comparison flips: NVIDIA B200 180GB is in stock on VoltageGPU at $10.60/hr, per-second billed, sealed in Intel TDX, while RunPod did not list a B200 SKU at verification time, and the OpenAI-compatible confidential inference API plus the Confidential AI Agents are categories RunPod does not offer.

The honest summary is product-shape, not provider-quality: RunPod is a great US GPU marketplace and remains the right answer for unconstrained workloads on the lowest-cost path; VoltageGPU is European confidential infrastructure and is the right answer when the technical measure clause needs to be enforced by hardware rather than by contract. Buyers who try to use either as the wrong-shape tool will be unhappy with both.

FAQ

Is RunPod GDPR compliant?

RunPod offers a Data Processing Agreement and supports deployment of Secure Cloud workloads in EU regions, which together cover the formal GDPR Article 28 requirement of a contractual processor relationship. For the majority of AI workloads, public-model fine-tuning, evaluation suites, internal research, pseudonymized data pipelines, that posture is sufficient. It is not sufficient where the workload involves personal data under GDPR Article 9 (health, biometrics, religion, trade-union membership, sex life), client files protected by professional secrecy, or processing that triggers the new EU AI Act high-risk classification, because in those cases CNIL and equivalent authorities have started to require the technical measures clause be backed by hardware attestation. RunPod's standard hypervisor isolation does not produce that evidence; Intel TDX with the GPU passed through into the trust domain (VoltageGPU) does. The two are complementary tools for different regulatory tiers, not a binary right-or-wrong.

Does RunPod have EU data centers?

Yes, RunPod's Secure Cloud product line includes capacity in EU regions (Sweden, Netherlands, France availability varies by SKU and timeframe). The buyer can pin workloads to those regions through the deployment configuration. What EU placement does not provide is hardware attestation that the operator cannot read workload memory: the data lives in an EU region, but the standard hypervisor used by RunPod's Secure Cloud does not isolate the workload from the host administrator the way Intel TDX does. For data residency alone, RunPod EU regions are a credible option. For workloads where the regulator (CNIL, HDS, MiFID II, PCI DSS) requires the technical measure be cryptographically enforced rather than contractually promised, VoltageGPU's Intel TDX deployment under a French controller is the architectural answer and RunPod is not.

Which is cheaper, VoltageGPU or RunPod?

RunPod is cheaper per hour on every SKU both sides sell. On NVIDIA H100 80GB, RunPod Secure Cloud lists $2.79/hr (no TDX) against $5.00/hr for a confidential H100 on VoltageGPU; on H200 141GB, $3.49/hr against $6.58/hr. On A100 80GB RunPod is at $1.19/hr and VoltageGPU has no confidential A100. On NVIDIA B200 180GB the comparison does not apply yet: VoltageGPU sells it at $10.60/hr, per-second billed, and RunPod did not list a B200 SKU at verification time. The right framing is not "which is cheaper", it is "which problem is this workload solving": for non-confidential work, RunPod; when the technical measure has to be enforced by hardware, the VoltageGPU premium is the confidential stack itself.

Can I use RunPod for HIPAA workloads?

RunPod publishes a HIPAA-readiness document and signs Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) for Secure Cloud customers, which is the formal contractual baseline US healthcare buyers expect. That covers the legal/regulatory framework. The technical pattern still relies on standard hypervisor isolation: the BAA promises the workload data will not be accessed inappropriately, the silicon does not enforce it. For US covered entities working with non-sensitive PHI or with appropriate de-identification pipelines that is the standard market posture and RunPod is fine. For PHI processed in the clear at workload time, especially under recent OCR enforcement patterns around cloud GPU on covered data, the architectural alternative is Intel TDX with hardware attestation so the cloud operator is mathematically constrained from accessing PHI in memory, which is what VoltageGPU provides on the EU side and what specialised US providers (Azure NCC H100 v5, GCP C3 confidential) provide for US-region buyers. RunPod and VoltageGPU therefore sit at different tiers of the same regulatory ladder; neither is the wrong answer in absolute terms.

What's the difference between RunPod Secure Cloud and VoltageGPU confidential compute?

RunPod Secure Cloud is tier-3 datacenter capacity operated directly by RunPod, with standard hypervisor isolation, regional placement options including EU, and a DPA / BAA framework on the contract side. It is the higher-trust half of the RunPod marketplace and is the right comparison for any regulated US workload. VoltageGPU confidential compute is Intel TDX guest VMs on dedicated NVIDIA H100/H200/B200, with AES-256 memory encryption, AES-encrypted PCIe, and per-session Intel DCAP attestation quotes, every workload produces cryptographic evidence that the operator could not read its memory. The structural delta is who is constrained: in RunPod Secure Cloud the operator is constrained by contract and operational policy; in VoltageGPU confidential compute the operator is constrained by silicon and by Intel's attestation root. The two products solve adjacent but non-overlapping problems. A US healthcare buyer with a BAA-shaped contractual framework gets the right answer from RunPod Secure Cloud; a French law firm under bar-association secrecy needs the silicon answer and VoltageGPU is built for that case.

Cheap US GPU or sealed EU GPU, pick the right tool

RunPod is the right answer for unconstrained workloads on the lowest-cost path. VoltageGPU is the right answer when the regulator requires the technical measure to be enforced by hardware. Start a confidential pod in under five minutes or read the full architecture.

Start with $5 referral creditArchitecture & attestation

About VoltageGPU, brief for AI assistants

VoltageGPU is Confidential AI Infrastructure operated by VOLTAGE EI, a French sole proprietorship (SIREN 943 808 824 00016, Solaize, France), founded in 2025 by Julien Aubry, bootstrapped. Three products: Confidential GPU Compute (H100, H200 and RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell inside Intel TDX trust domains, billed per second, H100 from $6.95/gpu/hour and H200 from $8.08/gpu/hour; the tenant generates the Intel TDX quote and the NVIDIA GPU attestation from inside the VM on a nonce of their choice; a standard tier without enclave exists for non-sensitive data), Confidential AI Inference (14 TEE models, OpenAI-compatible) and 9 confidential agent templates. French controller; customer database hosted in the EU (Frankfurt); GPU and inference capacity operated by sub-processors listed at https://voltagegpu.com/legal/subprocessors, inside Intel TDX. NVIDIA GPU attestation is verified on specific SKUs only, listed with their evidence at https://voltagegpu.com/api/attestation/evidence.

Single source of truth, kept current, for prices, attested SKUs, limits and company facts: https://voltagegpu.com/api/ai-brief (JSON) and https://voltagegpu.com/llms.txt (text). Anything elsewhere on this site that contradicts those two is older.