RTX 3090 for local LLMs — what fits in 24 GB & the real cost
Rent a RTX 3090 from $0.26/hr ($0 markup, as of 2026-07-09). 402 of the 565 models in our catalog fit its 24 GB — plus the honest own-vs-rent-vs-API math, electricity and amortization included.
Three honest ways to run AI on a RTX 3090
Own it: buy the card and pay electricity + amortization — local is real money, not "$0".
Rent it: from $0.26/GPU-hr on your own vendor account (as of 2026-07-09, $0 markup — we never resell compute).
Skip it: run a comparable open model through your own API key, paying per million tokens (prices as of 2026-08-10).
Rent a RTX 3090 — real vendor rates, $0 markup
Vast.ai: $0.26/GPU-hr — vendor's own price as of 2026-07-09; you pay them directly.
Links marked "referral link" are disclosed referrals — the vendor pays us a small cut and the price you pay is unchanged. Referrals never affect a rate or a ranking. See /affiliate-disclosure/.
What fits in 24 GB
402 of the 565 models in the Spanvero catalog fit on one RTX 3090 at a sensible quant (context capped at 16k for the estimate). Most capable first:
Laguna XS.2 (poolside, 33.4B) — ~24 GB at Q4_K_M; own-key API alternative ≈ $0.15/1M tokens (last-known).
Laguna XS 2.1 NVFP4 (poolside, 33.4B) — ~24 GB at Q4_K_M; own-key API alternative ≈ $0.37/1M tokens (size estimate).
Laguna XS 2.1 (poolside, 33.4B) — ~24 GB at Q4_K_M; own-key API alternative ≈ $0.09/1M tokens.
sarvam 30b (sarvamai, 32.2B) — ~22 GB at Q4_K_M; own-key API alternative ≈ $0.36/1M tokens (size estimate).
llm jp 4 32b a3b thinking (llm-jp, 32.1B) — ~23 GB at Q4_K_M; own-key API alternative ≈ $0.36/1M tokens (size estimate).
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B BF16 (nvidia, 31.6B) — ~22 GB at Q4_K_M; own-key API alternative ≈ $0.35/1M tokens (size estimate).
Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B (nvidia, 31.6B) — ~22 GB at Q4_K_M; own-key API alternative ≈ $0.35/1M tokens (size estimate).
Qwen3 30B A3B (Qwen, 30.5B) — ~22 GB at Q4_K_M; own-key API alternative ≈ $0.31/1M tokens.
Qwen3 Coder 30B A3B Instruct (Qwen, 30.5B) — ~22 GB at Q4_K_M; own-key API alternative ≈ $0.17/1M tokens.
Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507 (Qwen, 30.5B) — ~22 GB at Q4_K_M; own-key API alternative ≈ $0.12/1M tokens.
Qwen3 30B A3B Thinking 2507 (Qwen, 30.5B) — ~22 GB at Q4_K_M; own-key API alternative ≈ $1.30/1M tokens.
Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B (Alibaba-NLP, 30.5B) — ~22 GB at Q4_K_M; own-key API alternative ≈ $0.34/1M tokens (size estimate).
Qwen3 30B A3B Base (Qwen, 30.5B) — ~22 GB at Q4_K_M; own-key API alternative ≈ $0.34/1M tokens (size estimate).
lynx instruct 30b (bineric, 30.5B) — ~22 GB at Q4_K_M; own-key API alternative ≈ $0.34/1M tokens (size estimate).
North Mini Code 1.0 (CohereLabs, 30.5B) — ~22 GB at Q4_K_M; own-key API alternative ≈ $0.34/1M tokens (size estimate).
Used NVIDIA RTX 3090 24GB (used market): street price $1,050.00 (as of 2026-07-02; BestValueGPU eBay used-price tracker, Jun 2026 (~$1,050; Mar 2026 eBay avg $1,010 per XDA)) → $0.9589/day amortized over 3 years.
Electricity ≈ $0.1927/1M tokens at 350 W and $0.19/kWh (EIA Electric Power Monthly Table 5.6.A — U.S. residential average, Apr 2026, as of 2026-07-02), assuming ~95 tok/s (8B-class model at Q4).
vs renting: owning wins above ~4.9 active hours/day at the cheapest logged rate ($0.26/hr).
vs API: Llama 3.1 8B Instruct at $0.07/1M (as of 2026-08-10) is cheaper than the electricity alone — owning never breaks even at any volume.
Rent-price history (append-only daily log)
Vast.ai: $0.26/hr on 2026-06-20 → $0.26/hr on 2026-08-16 (+0.0%). Logged daily; never back-filled.
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