DOCUMENTATION

GPU Cost Optimization and VRAM Estimation Guide

Alloc is a GPU intelligence layer for ML training. It estimates VRAM requirements, detects bottlenecks, and recommends right-sized hardware, so you stop burning money on mis-provisioned runs. No code changes required.

FROM ALLOCGUY

GPU spend is the fastest-growing line item in ML. NVIDIA's data center revenue hit $47.5B in FY2024, up 217% year over year. Cloud GPU pricing reflects this: a single H100 node runs $3–5/hr, and an 8xH100 cluster costs over $30/hr. For a 1,000-hour training run, that's $30,000+ in compute alone.

Yet most ML teams I talk to have no idea what their utilization actually is. They default to the biggest GPU they can get, launch training, and hope for the best. When I started digging into this, I found the same pattern everywhere: 30–50% of GPU spend goes to failed runs, over-provisioned instances, and idle hardware waiting on data pipelines.

Electricity alone tells the story. A single H100 SXM draws 700W at peak. Running a 128-GPU cluster for a week burns through roughly 15,000 kWh, roughly the annual electricity consumption of two US households. And data center electricity demand is growing 25%+ per year, with AI training as the primary driver. The IEA projects global data center power consumption will reach 1,000 TWh by 2026.

That's why we built Alloc. Not to sell you more GPUs, but to help you stop wasting the ones you already have.

– allocguy

Why Alloc?

GPU compute is the largest line item for most ML teams, yet most organizations have no visibility into whether they are using it efficiently. Common problems include:

  • Out-of-memory failures. Jobs OOM after hours of queuing and provisioning, wasting both time and compute budget.
  • Over-provisioning. Teams default to the biggest GPU available "just in case," paying 2-4x more than necessary for the workload.
  • Ablation tax. Finding the right hardware and config requires 10-30 trial runs. Most of those runs were always going to fail.
  • Hidden bottlenecks. Expensive GPUs sitting idle because the DataLoader, network, or storage is the real constraint. No one knows until the bill arrives.

Alloc solves this by giving ML engineers a pre-flight check for every training job. Sign up free and start scanning in under a minute.

How It Works

Alloc operates as an external intelligence layer. It never modifies your training code, never changes your exit codes, and never blocks your jobs. Three steps:

1

Scan

Point Alloc at your model and training config. It analyzes your architecture, parameters, and data pipeline to build a workload profile.

2

Analyze

Alloc estimates VRAM requirements, identifies potential bottlenecks, and evaluates which GPU configurations are likely to work for your workload.

3

Recommend

Get right-sized GPU suggestions, estimated cost ranges, and actionable optimization tips, all before you provision a single machine.

Want to see it in action? Try the interactive demo

Install

Alloc is a single pip install. Works on Linux and macOS. No root access required.

terminal

$ pip install alloc

Then follow the quickstart guide to run your first scan.

Quick Examples

Three commands that cover the most common workflows.

Estimate VRAM before launch

Ghost Scan estimates peak VRAM and recommends viable GPUs without using any compute. Runs locally in seconds.

$ alloc ghost meta-llama/Llama-3-8B --batch-size 16 --seq-len 2048

Profile a training job

Wrap your training command with alloc run. Alloc profiles the job in the background and captures GPU metrics, utilization, and bottleneck data automatically.

$ alloc run python train.py --epochs 3 --batch-size 32

Scan a model checkpoint

Point Alloc at a model directory or HuggingFace model ID to get a workload analysis with GPU recommendations.

$ alloc scan ./my-model --training-config config.yaml

See the full CLI reference in the quickstart guide.

From the Blog

Ready to stop overpaying for GPUs?

Alloc is free to get started. Install the CLI, run a ghost scan, and see estimated VRAM and GPU recommendations in seconds.