@Reply #2 - good point! honestly europe-based latency is a killer if youre building a tool people use all day. especially when your devs are waiting for code completions in real-time. tbh id be a bit careful with the us-based spots if you want it to feel snappy in Berlin. since youre nearby, you might want to consider Scaleway GPU Instances L40S. they have solid datacenters in Paris and Amsterdam that should give you way better ping than the us-centric clouds. it might be a bit more hands-on than a pure api but it feels way more stable than runpod for production stuff. few things to watch out for:

• make sure to use a dedicated instance so you dont get noisy neighbor issues during peak hours
• keep an eye on the nvme storage costs, those add up faster than youd think if you keep multiple models
• check their availability early in the week since gpus get snatched up pretty quick i would suggest starting with their smaller nodes first and seeing how the r1 model performs. it beats getting a massive surprise bill from amazon for data transfer fees you didnt even see coming...

saw your post while digging through some infra docs for our own stack. honestly if you are in berlin and need that low latency, i would probably skip the us-centric clouds where possible. since you mentioned reliability and being wary of runpod instability, maybe look into Hugging Face Inference Endpoints. it basically sits on top of aws or azure but handles all the annoying scaling and setup for you. you can deploy r1 there in like three clicks and its way more set it and forget it than sagemaker. if you really want that vps feel without the aws headache, OVHcloud GPU Instances NVIDIA L4 or something in their frankfurt dc might fit that $300 budget better. just keep in mind an l4 is only gonna handle the distilled r1 versions, not the full 671b beast. the massive one is gonna eat your budget in like a week if you run it 24/7 on high-end gear anyway... just a heads up tho, self-hosting means you are the one getting paged at 3am if the api shuts its pants. if stability by next friday is the hard deadline, managed is almost always the smarter play for a small agency. maybe check out Scaleway GPU Instances L4 if you want a solid european provider that isnt as confusing as the big three. just dont go chasing the absolute cheapest spot instances on reddit if you actually need the uptime for your devs during work hours. it really comes down to whether you have the time to baby the server or if you just want to write code.

^ This. Also, the latency thing Hammersmith mentioned is huge for a Berlin crew! If your devs are waiting for a response, even an extra 100ms feels like forever when youre in the zone coding. But honestly, my biggest warning for you is to watch out for those tempting spot or interruptible instances if you end up going the VPS route. I have seen so many people try to save 50% on their bill by using preemptible nodes or spot instances, only for the machine to get snatched away right in the middle of a deadline. It is a total nightmare! If youre building an internal tool for a team, you absolutely need that thing to stay alive during business hours. A $300 budget is tight for a big model like R1 if you want 99.9% uptime on your own infra, so just be super careful about any provider that doesnt give you a dedicated, persistent GPU. Seriously, losing your instance right before a Friday release is the worst feeling ever... it just kills the momentum for the whole office. Trust me, I have been there and it sucks!

In my experience, skip the infra nightmare. Together AI DeepSeek-R1 API is your best bet for $300. Its way more stable than trying to manage your own RunPod A100 80GB setup.