Vast.aiReviews of vast.ai

It's a scam! Don't use it!

Long time user of the platform, support has been quick and attentive to fixing issues, and transactions are smooth and consistent.

Its a great service to get GPU on demand. Pricing is good, everything is nice!

Good support is their best feature.

During my conversation, the operator communicated with patience, and expanded my knowledge of the vast (and in general the GPU-renting) ecosystem. I really appreciate him/her.

Price/performance ratio is good, but be sure to read terms and conditions before using the service. Spent credits are non-refundable. It's probably a good idea to set some checks in place before running expensive intances. I have been using VastAI mostly to train neural networks for a chess engine. There were often drawbacks (machines not starting, ssh certificate or internet connectivity issues), but considering the hourly price for "unverified" machines, it was worth the trial and error. My worst experience took place I was charged for what effectively were "services not provided". I started a verified VM instance, which then was running for almost a day. Checking the progress on the next day, I found that the instance was turned offline without any warning somewhere along the way, meaning that I cannot access my data. The time the instance was online was fully charged to my account. I tried to resolve the issue with the support, but basically I was told that the charged time is not refundable. My losses were low, but good luck telling that someone running a H100 or better for a week.

Best prices and the best support!

Highly disappointing. Despite logs showing startup completion, initialization took over 10 minutes and the UI never loaded—stuck on "running" the entire time. I was charged $1.70 for ~20 minutes of completely non-functional service. Support claimed the charge was only $1.20 for a model download, which is an unacceptable excuse for downtime and unfair billing. Unreliable performance and poor support make this service completely unusable. I will not be returning.