Vast.ai

Yes, our marketplace allows you to filter instances by specific GPU models, VRAM capacity, and even geographic location. This flexibility ensures you can find the exact hardware performance required for intensive tasks like LLM fine-tuning, 3D rendering, or complex scientific simulations.

Absolutely. You can rent single-node machines with up to 8+ GPUs or utilize multiple instances simultaneously. Our platform provides the necessary networking information and SSH access to configure distributed frameworks like PyTorch Distributed or Horovod across your rented resources.

The onboarding process is designed for speed; you can typically launch an instance in under two minutes. Once you add credits to your account and select a template, the system pulls your Docker image and provides SSH or Jupyter Notebook access almost instantly.

Since instances can be terminated, we recommend using cloud storage buckets (like S3) or our built-in sync tools to move your datasets and model weights. Always ensure your important outputs are saved to external storage or use our 'Direct' storage options to keep data persistent across instance restarts.

Vast.ai is built natively on Docker, allowing you to launch instances using any public image from Docker Hub or your own private registry. This ensures that your specific software stack, drivers, and dependencies are perfectly replicated every time you spin up a new GPU instance.

Yes, we offer a robust Python-based CLI and a REST API that allow you to programmatically search for hardware, create instances, and manage data. This is particularly useful for MLOps pipelines where you need to dynamically scale compute resources based on workload demand.

Vast.ai operates a decentralized marketplace that allows individual hosts and data centers to list their idle GPU capacity. By creating a competitive bidding environment and utilizing consumer-grade hardware alongside enterprise units, we reduce overhead costs and pass those savings directly to you, often resulting in 3x to 5x lower prices.

On-demand instances guarantee your access at a fixed rate, while interruptible instances offer even deeper discounts but can be outbid by other users. Interruptible instances are ideal for stateless workloads like batch processing or machine learning training with frequent checkpointing where cost-efficiency is the primary goal.

We use industry-standard encryption for data in transit and provide tools to help you secure your data at rest. While hosts provide the hardware, your instance runs in a secure Docker container; however, for highly sensitive data, we recommend using our 'Verified' data center hosts which undergo stricter vetting processes.

Verified hosts are professional data centers that have been vetted by the Vast.ai team for reliability, high uptime, and security standards. Choosing a verified host provides an extra layer of assurance regarding hardware maintenance and network stability compared to unverified individual contributors.

We maintain extensive documentation and a library of pre-configured templates for popular AI frameworks. Our guides cover everything from basic SSH setup to advanced networking and storage configurations, ensuring you spend less time on DevOps and more time on your core research.

Users can reach out to our support team via the integrated chat on our website or through our community Discord server. If a host's hardware is underperforming or faulty, you can report the instance through the dashboard to receive a refund for the affected time and help us maintain marketplace quality.