The Commitment Discount: Three Years of H100 Posted Prices
Monthly neocloud H100 posted prices reconstructed from archived pricing pages: on-demand versus committed-term, October 2023 through June 2026. Two findings survive the composition repair: the committed discount is persistent and schedule-like, and guaranteed on-demand did not crash to the marketplace floor — it based near $2.80 through 2025 and has turned up since December.
01 The Series
Table view — all 33 months with panel depth
| Month | OD median | n | Committed | n | Discount |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-10 | $4.78 | 1 | $3.37 | 1 | 29% |
| 2023-11 | $4.78 | 1 | $3.37 | 1 | 29% |
| 2023-12 | $4.78 | 1 | $1.89 | 1 | 60% |
| 2024-01 | $4.78 | 1 | $1.89 | 1 | 60% |
| 2024-02 | $4.30 | 3 | $1.89 | 1 | 56% |
| 2024-03 | $4.30 | 3 | $1.89 | 1 | 56% |
| 2024-04 | $4.30 | 3 | $1.89 | 1 | 56% |
| 2024-05 | $4.30 | 4 | $3.06 | 2 | 29% |
| 2024-06 | $4.30 | 4 | $3.71 | 2 | 14% |
| 2024-07 | $3.92 | 4 | $2.12 | 3 | 46% |
| 2024-08 | $3.49 | 5 | $2.21 | 4 | 37% |
| 2024-09 | $3.24 | 5 | $2.21 | 4 | 32% |
| 2024-10 | $3.00 | 7 | $2.30 | 5 | 23% |
| 2024-11 | $2.99 | 7 | $2.30 | 5 | 23% |
| 2024-12 | $2.84 | 7 | $2.50 | 5 | 12% |
| 2025-01 | $2.84 | 7 | $2.50 | 5 | 12% |
| 2025-02 | $2.84 | 7 | $2.50 | 5 | 12% |
| 2025-03 | $2.84 | 7 | $2.50 | 5 | 12% |
| 2025-04 | $2.84 | 7 | $2.30 | 5 | 19% |
| 2025-05 | $2.79 | 6 | $2.39 | 4 | 14% |
| 2025-06 | $2.84 | 7 | $2.39 | 4 | 16% |
| 2025-07 | $2.84 | 7 | $2.39 | 4 | 16% |
| 2025-08 | $2.79 | 8 | $1.94 | 6 | 30% |
| 2025-09 | $2.92 | 8 | $2.00 | 6 | 32% |
| 2025-10 | $2.92 | 8 | $2.00 | 6 | 32% |
| 2025-11 | $2.92 | 8 | $1.99 | 5 | 32% |
| 2025-12 | $3.18 | 7 | $1.94 | 4 | 39% |
| 2026-01 | $3.18 | 7 | $1.94 | 4 | 39% |
| 2026-02 | $3.18 | 7 | $1.94 | 4 | 39% |
| 2026-03 | $3.74 | 5 | $2.39 | 3 | 36% |
| 2026-04 | $3.74 | 5 | $2.50 | 3 | 33% |
| 2026-05 | $3.98 | 4 | $2.50 | 3 | 37% |
| 2026-06 | $3.39 | 5 | $2.50 | 3 | 26% |
02 Method, and the Composition Repair
Source: archived provider pricing pages (Common Crawl and Wayback captures), provider-primary, for eight neoclouds. Raw monthly medians whipsaw because the capture panel changes month to month (n = 1–6) — the largest swings in a naive plot are providers entering and leaving, not prices moving. The repair exploits the fact that a posted price is a step function: it persists until the provider changes it. Each provider's last observed price is carried forward (capped at six months), so the panel changes composition only when a provider first enters — never on a missed capture. The same carry-forward convention, tighter-capped, governs the live daily panel per the Methodology.
The backfill is a different collection method from the live daily
panel and is not spliced to it. For reference, the live series
(CRI-T2-H100-ALL-GTD-OD-ALL, 20 sources) printed $3.22 on
2026-07-06 — inside the backfill's June range on a much deeper panel.
03 What Survives
The committed discount is persistent and schedule-like. Committed prices sit below on-demand in every month of the window, mostly 20–50% below, settling at 26–39% over the last year — the time-series counterpart of the fixed discount schedule visible in today's cross-section (≈ −36% at one year). The discount compresses when on-demand falls toward committed (mid-2025, ~12–16%) and re-opens when on-demand recovers — committed reprices slower in both directions, which is what an administered schedule looks like.
Guaranteed on-demand did not crash to the marketplace floor. The widely-cited "$2 H100" of late 2024 was real but was an auction/interruptible print. Posted guaranteed on-demand at neoclouds slid from ~$4.78 to a floor of ~$2.80, held that base through 2025, and turned upward from December 2025 — +20–40% off the floor by spring 2026. The guaranteed–interruptible gap is a grade distinction, not noise; pooling the two grades is how the steeper narrative gets made.
Rate-card stickiness is visible provider by provider. The flat stretches are not interpolation artifacts: individual posted cards genuinely sit unchanged for quarters at a time (one large neocloud's H100 card held one price from April 2023 to December 2024, then moved once). Posted-price series move in steps, which is also why the carry-forward repair is faithful.
04 Limitations
Panel depth is thin early (n = 1 before February 2024 — dashed above; treat those months as a single provider's card, not a market level). Committed pools whatever tenors providers posted — predominantly one month to one year, with a small minority of multi-year rows — so the discount series mixes tenor as well as provider. Captures are monthly at best; a mid-month cut appears one month late. All prices are posted list asks, not transactions. Eight providers is the recoverable archive, not the full market.