# Vast.ai

37 Hacker News commenters recommended Vast.ai and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 9 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Rent GPUs by the hour from many hosts, often far cheaper than buying hardware, for training or testing models. Prices vary with demand.

## Why people recommend it

- Wide choice of GPUs on demand (7 comments): "A benefit is that if I need a burst of more power, that’s not an issue since it’s available from other hosts." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49916114)) "rent a vast.ai box with similar specs for a month or two to get a feel for it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50134796)) "where you can get all kinds of machines on tap for ~$0.20/hour+" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49151886))
- Much cheaper than buying hardware (5 comments): "Paying runpod or vast or just about anyone else is _far_ cheaper than buying this hardware myself." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46536144)) "set one up on vast.ai really quickly and ran it for a day for the price of lunch" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47344153)) "p2p GPU rental marketplaces like vast.ai can offer much more economical options" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48611807))
- Worked well in practice (6 comments): "running this model on a B6000 from Vast with a native NVFP4 model weight from Nvidia, it's really good" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47620217)) "set one up on vast.ai really quickly and ran it for a day for the price of lunch" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47344153)) "In my limited test it worked quite well, but I only needed it for a few hours." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48977605))
- Good for training and experiments (7 comments): "I keep a $10 rolling budget on vast.ai. I tend to use it more for training things, but equally as useful." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50271827)) "I ended up renting GPUs through vast.ai and running the model myself" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49670526)) "Test LLMs on rented GPUs on vast.ai or other similar services" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48695509))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Modal](https://hackerapproved.com/p/modal.md): 38 recommend
- [RunPod](https://hackerapproved.com/p/runpod.md): 28 recommend
- [Verda GPU cloud](https://hackerapproved.com/p/verda.md): 10 recommend
- [Lambda GPU Cloud](https://hackerapproved.com/p/lambda.md): 9 recommend
- [Nebius GPU rental](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nebius.md): 5 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://vast.ai/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Vast.ai", https://hackerapproved.com/p/vast-ai/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).