One B300 GPU hour costs more than the minimum wage in 148 of 165 countries
At a $9.50 median, one Nvidia B300 hour passes the minimum wage in 148 of 165 countries, the US included. The table, the mixed wage years and how easily the count moves.
One Nvidia B300 GPU hour now costs more than the minimum wage in 148 of 165 countries. Only 17 still have a higher one. The US isn’t one of them. Its federal minimum is $7.25.
The median on-demand price is $9.50 an hour, up about 14% in 90 days. That’s GetDeploying’s sample of 17 priced providers on November 3, 2026. It isn’t a floor. Nebius lists the same $9.50 on its own price page.
The 148 is my own count, against the latest wage on record for each country. Those records run from 2020 to 2026. So read the method before you quote it.
B300 GPU hour vs minimum wage, country by country
Here’s every country above the line, then the seven just under it. All figures are US dollars an hour, worked out by the method below.
| Country | Per hour | Wage record |
|---|---|---|
| Switzerland | $27.60 | ILO 2024, regional |
| Luxembourg | $17.93 | Eurostat 2026 |
| Iceland | $17.81 | ILO 2024, sectoral |
| United Kingdom | $17.06 | GOV.UK 2026 |
| Ireland | $15.47 | Eurostat 2026 |
| Australia | $15.32 | ILO 2024 |
| Germany | $15.16 | Eurostat 2026 |
| Netherlands | $15.13 | Eurostat 2026 |
| Belgium | $14.46 | Eurostat 2026 |
| New Zealand | $14.00 | ILO 2024 |
| Monaco | $12.60 | ILO 2024 |
| Canada | $12.15 | ILO 2024, median of regional rates |
| France | $12.08 | Eurostat 2026 |
| Israel | $11.28 | Histadrut 2026 |
| San Marino | $10.79 | ILO 2024, sectoral |
| Andorra | $10.15 | WageIndicator 2026 |
| Slovenia | $9.59 | Eurostat 2026 |
| One B300 | $9.50 | GetDeploying median, November 3, 2026 |
| Spain | $9.22 | Eurostat 2026 |
| South Korea | $7.68 | Ministry notice, reported 2026 |
| Lithuania | $7.46 | Eurostat 2026 |
| Japan | $7.45 | National average, reported 2026 |
| Iran | $7.29 | ILO 2023, official exchange rate |
| United States | $7.25 | DOL, federal floor |
| Poland | $7.24 | Eurostat 2026 |
A GPU doesn’t earn this. $9.50 is what a customer pays while it runs. It covers power, the data centre, debt and margin. The chip takes home nothing.
Both numbers are dollars per hour. That’s all the comparison claims. It doesn’t say a B300 replaces anyone.
How the count works
The inputs are public, so you can redo it. My CVE count works the same way: public data, my arithmetic, stated limits.
- Start with the ILO. Its monthly minimum wage series, as saved on November 3, 2026, gives each country’s latest figure in US dollars.
- Turn months into hours. A 40-hour week is 40 × 52 ÷ 12 = 173.33 hours a month. Divide by that.
- Drop two territories. Hong Kong and New Caledonia go. That leaves 165.
- Update near the line. EU members and candidates use Eurostat’s 2026-S2 rates. The US uses the DOL. The UK uses £12.71, South Korea ₩10,320, Japan ¥1,177, Israel NIS 35.40 and Andorra €9.05.
- Convert at one rate. Those local-currency updates use ECB reference rates from November 2, 2026. The ILO figures keep the ILO’s own dollar conversion.
- Compare with $9.50. That gives 148 below, 17 above and no ties.
South Korea, Japan and Andorra come from secondary reports, not the official notices. Japan’s figure may be ¥1,176. Either one is under the line.
The map is Natural Earth geography via world-atlas, which is public domain.
How firm is 148?
The wage years are mixed. Of the 165 wage records, 35 are from 2026 and 118 from 2024. Another 5 are from 2023, 4 from 2022 and 3 from 2020. Among the 17 above the line, 10 are 2026 rates and 7 are from 2024.
The older figures don’t sit close to the line, though. The highest one under it is Iran, at $7.29 for 2023. It would need 30.3% more in dollars to cross.
Not every row is a national legal floor. Switzerland is a regional rate. Iceland and San Marino are sectoral. Remove those three and it’s 14 of 162. Canada is a median of regional rates. Remove it too and it’s 13 of 161.
Countries with no statutory national minimum, such as Sweden, Italy and Austria, aren’t in the 165. They’re grey on the map.
The US figure is the federal floor. It isn’t every state’s wage, and states set their own. It isn’t take-home pay either.
Exchange rates ignore purchasing power. A B300 rental is priced in dollars here, so the comparison uses market rates.
The price is the fragile part. Slovenia sits $0.09 above the line. A 0.94% rise in the median crosses it. Here’s the count at other prices, with wages held still.
| Price | What it is | Countries above |
|---|---|---|
| $7.10 | Modal’s B300 rate: $0.001972 × 3,600 | 24, US included |
| $8.33 | Implied 90 days ago: $9.50 ÷ 1.14 | 18 |
| $9.50 | GetDeploying median, November 3 | 17 |
| $9.60 | Ten cents more | 16 |
| $10.83 | Another +14%: a scenario, not a forecast | 14 |
That first row matters. At Modal’s rate, $2.40 or 25.27% under the median, the US federal minimum is above the GPU hour again. It’s the same chip label under different rental conditions. This compares list prices, not throughput or availability.
Every price here is from November 3, 2026. They move fast, so recheck before you cite one.
What one B300 costs in a year
$9.50 sounds like nothing. But one B300 running all year is about $83,000. The HGX server has eight, so about $666,000.
The sums: $9.50 × 8,760 hours = $83,220. Times the eight GPUs on an HGX B300 is $665,760. That assumes nonstop on-demand rental at an unchanged price. It isn’t a purchase price or a quote for a whole server.
Hours change the sum. 40 hours × 52 weeks is 2,080 hours. At the same median, that’s $19,760. That saves $63,460, or 76.3%, if you can stop billing when idle. Startup and storage costs aren’t included.
It’s still more than a full-time job at the US federal minimum: $7.25 × 2,080 = $15,080.
So the first question for any AI agent workload is how many hours it really runs. And if it runs unattended, give it a hard budget cap.
We can’t afford B300
It’s not only the price. Reuters reported on September 17 that Nebius would raise pay-as-you-go rates on selected Nvidia GPUs from October 1. On October 29, Axios quoted Amazon CEO Andy Jassy: “Almost as fast as we install capacity, customers are gobbling it up.” That’s about Amazon’s capacity, not B300s in particular.
The map shows a price. It doesn’t show who can get a B300, or whether your workload needs one. What follows is my judgment, not a measurement.
We can’t afford B300. If you are a small lab, you will need to fight for getting this. The dependency on big labs is getting stronger.
On this page