AI infrastructure & chips

Amazon EC2 accelerated computing (NVIDIA GPU) vs Azure ND-series GPU VMs

Amazon EC2 P-family instances (P5/P5e/P5en, P6-B200, P6-B300, P6e-GB200) map to Azure ND-series VMs (ND H100 v5, ND H200 v5, ND GB200 v6, ND GB300 v6).

Direct match Use it to: Rent top-end GPU servers for training and serving large models.

Last verified: Oct 19, 2026 · Edit on GitHub · Report an error

Side-by-side comparison

NVIDIA GPU instances for AI training: AWS vs Azure side by side
Aspect	Amazon Web Services	Microsoft Azure
Service	Amazon EC2 accelerated computing (NVIDIA GPU)	Azure ND-series GPU VMs
Lifecycle	Generally available	Generally available
What it is	GPU instances. Training families include P5/P5e/P5en (H100/H200), P6-B200, P6-B300, and P6e-GB200 UltraServers. Inference and graphics families include G6/G6e/G7/G7e.	AI training/HPC VMs. ND A100 v4, ND H100 v5, ND H200 v5, ND MI300X v5 (AMD), ND GB200 v6, and ND GB300 v6 (NVIDIA Blackwell).
Pricing model	On-demand, Savings Plans, Spot, and Capacity Blocks for ML (reserved GPU time slots).	Pay-as-you-go, Reserved VM Instances/savings plan, Spot VMs, and on-demand capacity reservations.
Docs	Amazon EC2 accelerated computing (NVIDIA GPU) docs	Azure ND-series GPU VMs docs
Pricing page	Amazon EC2 accelerated computing (NVIDIA GPU) pricing	Azure ND-series GPU VMs pricing
Exams	MLA-C01 Retiring	AI-300

Key differences

Rough generation mapping. P5 (H100) ↔ ND H100 v5. P5e/P5en (H200) ↔ ND H200 v5. P6-B200/P6-B300 ↔ ND GB300 v6 (Blackwell Ultra). P6e-GB200 UltraServers ↔ ND GB200 v6.
Azure offers AMD Instinct MI300X (ND MI300X v5). AWS's listed accelerated families don't include an AMD Instinct training instance.
Inference/graphics GPUs. AWS G6/G6e/G7/G7e map to Azure NC/NV families (not detailed in this release).
Capacity access differs. AWS has EC2 Capacity Blocks and SageMaker flexible training plans, while Azure uses capacity reservations and reserved instances.

Pricing summary

Pricing models only. No prices are quoted because they change by region and over time.

AWS: On-demand, Savings Plans, Spot, and Capacity Blocks for ML (reserved GPU time slots). Amazon EC2 accelerated computing (NVIDIA GPU) pricing →
Azure: Pay-as-you-go, Reserved VM Instances/savings plan, Spot VMs, and on-demand capacity reservations. Azure ND-series GPU VMs pricing →

Certification exam mapping

Exam	Provider	Level	Status
AWS Certified Machine Learning Engineer – Associate MLA-C01	AWS	Associate	retiring Being updated to MLA-C02 (beta registration opened Sep 1, 2026). Last day for MLA-C01 in English was Sep 28, 2026; Korean, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese remain until MLA-C02 GA.
Microsoft Certified – Machine Learning Operations Engineer Associate AI-300	Azure	Associate	current MLOps and GenAIOps infrastructure on Azure (IaC with Bicep/CLI, GitHub Actions). Closest successor in scope to the retired DP-100.

Relevance is based on each exam's published scope, not a line-by-line objective match. Check the official study guide.

Verification notes

The generation mapping is approximate (GPU model, not identical node specs). Compare GPU count, memory, and interconnect per SKU.

FAQ

What is the Azure equivalent of Amazon EC2 accelerated computing (NVIDIA GPU)?

Amazon EC2 P-family instances (P5/P5e/P5en, P6-B200, P6-B300, P6e-GB200) map to Azure ND-series VMs (ND H100 v5, ND H200 v5, ND GB200 v6, ND GB300 v6).

How does pricing compare between Amazon EC2 accelerated computing (NVIDIA GPU) and Azure ND-series GPU VMs?

AWS: On-demand, Savings Plans, Spot, and Capacity Blocks for ML (reserved GPU time slots). Azure: Pay-as-you-go, Reserved VM Instances/savings plan, Spot VMs, and on-demand capacity reservations. Check the official pricing pages for current rates.

Which certification exams cover this topic?

AWS Certified Machine Learning Engineer – Associate (MLA-C01) [retiring]; Microsoft Certified – Machine Learning Operations Engineer Associate (AI-300).