Deploying open-source LLMs (like Llama-3) or real-time Whisper transcription in production often forces a difficult architectural trade-off: keep dedicated GPUs running 24/7 (expensive) or rely on serverless scale-to-zero (cold start latency penalty).

To evaluate container spin-up overhead, we benchmarked median cold start latencies and per-second execution costs across the major serverless GPU platforms.

Benchmark Results

Provider

Median Cold Start