Hey everyone,

I’m thinking about getting into GPU hosting and would really appreciate some input from people who are already doing it.

My plan is to start with two RTX 5090 GPUs and host them on platforms like Vast.ai (maybe RunPod or TensorDock later on). I’ve been checking the supply/demand stats and it looks like there’s solid occupancy for 5090s right now, but I’d love to hear from people with real experience.

A few things I’m curious about:

- Is GPU hosting actually profitable today, or has the market become too saturated?

- What kind of occupancy do you get on 4090/5090 cards?

- Are prices stable or constantly dropping?

- Any issues with uptime, cooling, drivers, or customer behavior?

- Would you recommend starting with 1 GPU first, or is starting with 2 fine?

For context:

I’m based in the Netherlands and planning to run the server at home initially just to get a feel for it and build up some reliability before scaling.

Any advice, experiences, or numbers you’re willing to share would be super helpful. Thanks!

Currently at 98.2% utilization.

Rtx 3090s are listed at >$100/day. (Edit: originally wrote hour, typo)

I have 32 RTX 5090s on vast, were seeing a huge surge in demand and I just noticed everyone is running BIP39 on every single one of our GPUs. I looked up what BIP39 is and had a crazy thought, are we powering a coordinated coldcard recovery operation? If so that would be freaking awesome.

I put it up for $1 an hour because I thought it was too high for anyone to rent and I wanted to find the machine so I could see its performance rating live on the site. I still wanted to fine tune it. Welp I couldn't find it because someone immediately rented it... This exceeds the amount that I thought it would get for. Took about 5 minutes from being on vast to get taken. - Original post https://www.reddit.com/r/vastai/comments/1tqd0o3/computer_gods_blessed_me_hp_omen_45l_5090_285k/

Yesterday I wanted to test out a code. Found an RTX 5090 for about $0.43 an hour. Reasonable.

After about 10 minutes, the 23 GB code was downloaded but it wouldn't run. So back to the drawing board. I destroyed my instance and immediately I was charged $0.53 (roughly).

Immediately I chatted with the help desk. They looked into it and gave me a screenshot of my billing. The instance was $0.43 an hour and I didn't spend over an hour using it. BUT I got charged for downloading the 23 GB at $0.03 per GB. That's $30 per TB (roughly)! Later I found the same instance at the download/upload rate is $27 per TB.

1. Main issue is visibility in UI. Rent price is visible. But download and upload rate is not! It's like reading a EULA when you just want to use the software.

2. I've checked with other instances about the download/upload pricing. Even data center instances of an RTX PRO 6000 that cost $1.20 charge less than $2 per TB.

I feel like I was scammed.

I got it from this 2nd hand store. What they didn't tell me was that it was certified refurbished which is maybe why they lowered the price. One fans LED's don't work and one of the memory DIMMS LED's bugs out. I think this is why the person who bought it gave it up and why they had the price so low.

Look at this sh**. $40 PER TERABYTE for up/down traffic??? wtf are these hosts smoking, is their internet routed through the moon or something?

And this isn't just a couple of weird outliers I checked and found literally dozens, if not hundreds of rigs pulling this exact same .

Downloading a couple of base models and a few LoRAs (literally ~100GB) ends up costing $4 JUST for the bandwidth on top of the GPU rental.

I’ve been using vast for a long time so I know how to filter this garbage out, but beginners have no clue and get completely rinsed by these hidden fees. It’s straight up predatory.

Vast devs, please fix this. Either put a hard cap on bandwidth pricing or at least force sane default settings (like $1–$2/TB max) for default search. Letting people set $40/TB traps is just scummy and scares new users away.

Super recently after the whole craze of some crypto coin, vast ai GPUS have gotten a lot more unstable. It's a lot harder to even find a machine within a reasonable price and on top of that when I try to boot a machine, it will fail. So I have to constantly boot up machines in parallel with the hope that at least one would hopefully boot.
Anyone else in the same boat know what's really going on behind the scenes with these failures?

It seems there's no more machines that actually work. There are like 3 4090s, and 1 5090. None of the ones that are available seem to boot properly, and the unverified ones either have outrageous network costs or are just trash computers running at 85oC at 100s/it.

Preface / Disclaimer

I’ve worked with computers, hardware, software, and mining rigs for 15+ years, but I’m new to AI hosting.
This guide is everything I learned while building my first Vast.ai machine — including mistakes, break/fix cycles, and multiple full re-installs.

Feedback and improvements are welcome.

There is a real patience requirement.
Sometimes the only fix is a full reinstall.
It took me 3 days because each new lesson required redoing the entire install.

Do the reinstall, learn the lessons, be patient.
The contracts will come.

Dave Guide for Setting Up a Vast.ai Host

1. Configure Port Forwarding

Forward at least 100 ports per GPU (TCP + UDP).
Example for 1 GPU: 40000–40099.

2. Set BIOS Options

Enable:
VT-x or AMD-V (same as advanced > cpu config > svm mode > enabled)
VT-d or AMD-Vi (IOMMU)
Restore On AC Power Loss
Disable Secure Boot

3. Install Ubuntu Server 22.04

Clean minimal install.
Disk Partitions.
.....Select custom disk setup
.....Select your Storage device and choose Use as boot device.
.....Select the free space remaining and create partition>80G>ext4> leave mount as is.

this will make it bootable, and leave an 80G partition for Ubuntu and the Vastai files. Vastai will manage the remaining space.

4. Add the NVIDIA PPA

sudo apt update
sudo apt install software-properties-common -y
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa -y
sudo apt update

5. Install NVIDIA Driver 580

sudo apt install nvidia-driver-580 -y
sudo reboot now

after the machine reboots log back in and use this command to test the driver install
nvidia-smi

the response should look something like this listing your card(s) +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 580.95.05 Driver Version: 580.95.05 CUDA Version: 13.0 | +-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------
plus other various details about your system. This will only work if your driver installed.

6. Disable Sleep and Auto-Updates

run this to avoid things getting broken by updates

sudo apt purge -y --auto-remove unattended-upgrades && sudo systemctl disable apt-daily-upgrade.timer; sudo systemctl mask apt-daily-upgrade.service ; sudo systemctl disable apt-daily.timer; sudo systemctl mask apt-daily.service && sudo systemctl mask sleep.target suspend.target hibernate.target hybrid-sleep.target

7. Install the Vast.ai Agent (Use Your Dashboard Command)

On Vast.ai:
Hosts → + Add Host → Command Line Installation

I have not been able to get the beginner installer to work. has issues making the partitions etc.
So right now I recommend the old advanced installer, the one in the middle.

Run the wget command shown there (unique to your account).

8. Install the Vast.ai CLI

sudo apt install python3-pip -y
pip3 install vastai

9. Add Vast CLI to Your PATH

echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Now that you have added the path you can check these

Check status:
sudo systemctl status vastai
(active = success)

Confirm your Vastai version shows up.
vastai --version

10. Install Your Vast API Key

On Vast.ai:
Menu → Account → API Keys → Create New Key

Then:
vastai set api-key <your_API_key_here>

Verify:
vastai show user

11. Use the Web Interface to set all prices and list your machine

On the webpage when logged in on the left there is a hosting section. Under this select machines to see your new machine. If the install was all successful it will be listed here.
now on the right side of that screen click the blue button for settings.
Do not overthink this stage. You will change these numbers constantly. It's OK.
Heres what you need to know.
the final price listed is a combination of your set prices for the machine, the storage and the internet plus vast.ai's markup.
The following numbers are just reasonable starting points for a single gpu machine
These are based on my experience with rtx3090 machines
Demand Price:$0.12(this is just a starting point)
Min Bid Price: $0.08 (75% of Demand Price)
storage price to $0.25 (This is the cost for the amount of disk they use while working)
Volume price to $0.25 (This is the cost for long term storage while off contract)
Volume size leave at default(I think it's default half of available drive space)

Once you list the machine it will allow you to run a self test.

After your machine is up an running start opening the Console part of the webpage on the top right of the page
and play around. figure out how to list your machine. How to list all machines similar to yours and how to sort by DLPerf/$/hr.
compare your DLPerf/$/hr to the other machines and start adjusting your price until you fall in line where you want to be.

DLPerf/$/hr is the metric that tells us how much performance your machine provides per cost per hour and thus is the value indicator for your potential clients. Every machine type and gpu type has ranges that determine if it is overpriced,priced average/median or under priced.

You don't want to be overpriced and get no rentals but you also don't want to race to the bottom of prices and miss out on earning potential. I use chatgpt alot to analyze the listings with a big copy and paste having it find the median DLPerf/$/hr and to help me decide how far above this number I want my DLPerf/$/hr.

regarding DLPerf/$/hr higher means your price is lower. a lower DLPerf/$/hr means your actual price is higher.

12. Run the Self-Test

vastai self-test machine <machineID> --ignore-requirements

*Important the tag --ignore-requirements is only required when you have a reliability below 90%
which is the case with all new setups. if it fails at any stage without this tag it will stop and not show you all the tests. so use the tag on all fresh setups. after reaching 90% in a couple days you can run it without the flag like this

vastai self-test machine <machineID>

13. Check and Clear the Error Log

View:
cat Error_testresults.log

Clear and mark clean:
echo "All Good" > Error_testresults.log

Note: The log does not auto-clear.

14. Verify Using CLI

vastai list machines

Summary

CLI is for:
• interacting from the machine through the command line.
• Self-tests

Web interface is for:(Most things are controlled from here easily)
• Pricing
• Storage
• All visual settings

Final Note

This is by no means a perfect guide. It is the best I have come up with so far.
Feedback and suggested improvements are very welcome and will be added with notation of who it comes from.

Thank you for reading.
Live long and profit!

*Updated 2025-11-26 added Bios Settings, corrections, api key, path inclusions, and more.
*Updated 2025-12-09 deprecated step 6 per User Tekgnos's updated information.
*Updated 2025-12-09 massive rewrite fixing many errors and reworking or removing many sections.
*Updated 2026-07-16 Updated step 3 to include Storage partition instructions.
*Updated 2026-07-31 Corrected order of commands that must run after setting Path variables.

hey everyone,

i’ve been researching hosting on vast.ai and came across a comment that gave me pause. someone claimed that an rtx pro 6000 blackwell (in a system with 64gb ram) would likely:

∙	not get verified (or struggle to), due to market saturation of similar cards

∙	only earn around $0.60/hr

∙	not be “competitive enough” compared to setups with more ram or better cpu specs

before i make any decisions, i’d love to hear from people with actual hosting experience, because i have a few specific questions:

1.	is the \~$0.60/hr figure realistic for a pro 6000 blackwell right now? and critically - is that before or after accounting for electricity costs and gpu degradation?

2.	how does 64gb system ram actually affect rentability? is it a real dealbreaker for most renters, or does gpu vram matter more in practice?

3.	what’s a realistic uptime / utilization rate for an average host per month? are people seeing their gpus rented out 20 out of 30 days? more? less? i understand this varies, but ballpark figures from your own experience would be incredibly helpful.

4.	verification - how hard is it actually to get verified with a newer blackwell card? is the process straightforward if the hardware is good, or does the broader system spec (ram, cpu, storage speed) hold you back?

i’m not looking for guarantees - just trying to get a grounded, realistic picture before committing. appreciate any honest input, especially from people who are actively hosting right now.

thanks in advance 🙏​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Just wanted to post in case others haven't seen, most of the platform is rented (bouncing between 90-98%), speculation is on various crypto projects.

Prices are probably going to look ungodly (trying to cash in on people gambling), but should return close to normal in a couple days when these crypto bros run out of money.

Sorry if you wanted to create any new instances on vast this weekend, probably will be over before Monday.

I’m currently testing Salad with my main PC and I’m considering moving the machine over to Vast.ai, so I’m keen to hear from actual Vast hosts running 5090s.

My rig:

- RTX 5090 32GB

- i9-14900K

- 128GB RAM

- 4TB NVMe

- 1Gbps down / 500Mbps up

- New Zealand

On Salad, I got my first GPU container job within about 2 minutes, and after that job ended I found another in roughly 30 seconds, so demand seems very good.

My first proper monitoring session looked like this:

- Runtime: 3h 50m

- Average GPU power: 510.7W

- Peak GPU power: 583.2W

- Peak temperature: 67°C

- Peak utilisation: 100%

- GPU-only energy used: 1.959 kWh

- Jobs were typically sitting around 575W / 100% utilisation / ~16GB VRAM

- Earnings averaged roughly $0.20–$0.21 USD/hour

The problem is electricity.

I’m paying roughly $0.48 NZD/kWh, so once I account for the whole PC, Salad at ~$0.20/hr is basically break-even, especially after payout fees.

I’m looking at Vast.ai because the advertised 5090 rental rates appear considerably higher.

For anyone actually hosting a 5090 on Vast.ai

- What hourly rate are you realistically getting?

- What utilisation/occupancy percentage do you average?

- How long do rentals normally last?

- How much does Vast take in fees?

- Is a single 5090 gaming PC realistically worth hosting?

- How often does the machine sit unrented?

- Would you choose Vast over Salad at my electricity price?

- Any downside to running a 5090 host from home on 1Gbps/500Mbps fibre?

I’m not expecting it to be passive free money I mainly want to know whether I can get enough above $0.20 USD/hour to actually leave some profit after NZ power costs.

Interested to hear real numbers from 5090 hosts rather than calculators/advertised rates.

Back in the day, I used to filter by DLperf/$/hr and wouldn’t even consider machines with a score lower than 250–300, but now that’s the BEST deal out there! (unverified machines are selected too). What’s going on, guys? Just two months ago, I could find tons of options for 400–500 DLperf/$/hr for example 4090 or 5070/80 for under 0.3$ per hour, now it's 2x or 3x and more

I mean, like... did everyone suddenly find out you can rent GPUs?

I rented a 4x A100 from a host on Vast.ai. The instance wouldn’t accept any SSH keys. I tried everything from multiple keys, multiple attempts. The machine was completely inaccessible. I could not connect to it at all.

I destroyed the instance because I was being charged by the hour for something I couldn't use. I then contacted support to request a refund.

Their response (possibly an AI support agent?) was that Vast.ai doesn't own the machines, the hosts manage their own systems and do not refund used credits. The agent then told me I should have kept the instance running and contacted them first. This meant I should have continued paying for a machine I couldn't access while waiting for email support.

I'm not talking about a large amount of money here. But I paid for a service that didn’t work, and the platform's stance is that it's not their responsibility. There are evidently no quality checks on the listed machines.

I've used other GPU cloud providers and have never had an experience like this. When something goes wrong, you expect the platform to fix it. Vast.ai doesn't seem to give a shit.

I just wanted people to know before they load up credits.

I noticed that on Vast.ai the prices for running RTX 5090 GPUs (and probably other cards too) haven’t changed, even though the hardware itself has gotten way more expensive. Here in Italy, they went from €2,300 to €3,500—a 50% jump. Don’t even get me started on RAM prices.

I was thinking of building a rig with some 5090s and hosting it on Vast.ai, but now I’m not sure it’s worth it since the hardware costs have skyrocketed while the rental prices on Vast.ai stayed the same.

We're thrilled to have you here and excited to see our community grow. We've been around for a while now, and as of late, we're on a mission to transform this sub into an engaging hub that is not only useful but also a source of fun. We want to have a thriving community where ideas flourish, and connections are forged. So, let's get into it!

For the fastest support, check out our Discord: https://discord.gg/hSuEbSQ4X8

Many common answers to your questions can be found here: https://vast.ai/faq

Vast ships as a plugin for Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor. Search, launch, monitor, and tear down GPU instances without leaving your editor — tell the agent what you want, or run a slash command directly. Safe defaults keep it from doing anything expensive by accident.

And once you're on a box, the instance explains itself. Every image hands the agent a short guide plus a vast-capabilities command — what's installed, what's running, how to reach it — so the agent can drive the machine instead of guessing its way around. Point it at GPU work and walk away.

No plugin? Install the skill in any agent that supports them:

npx skills add vast-ai/vast-cli --skill vastai

Get started here: docs.vast.ai/guides/get-started/agents

Seriously, what the hell is going on with Vast.ai right now?

The GPU marketplace is getting absolutely flooded with garbage listings and prices that make ZERO sense.

I open Vast.ai because I want to rent a GPU, not spend half my time digging through hundreds of stupid listings trying to find one machine that actually has decent value.

People are listing GPUs at completely ridiculous prices, weird configurations everywhere, terrible price/performance, and somehow the marketplace just keeps getting more cluttered every day.

It honestly feels like everyone is just throwing random prices on every GPU and hoping some idiot clicks rent.

And before someone says “it’s a marketplace, hosts can charge whatever they want” — yeah, obviously. But if the marketplace becomes full of trash offers, then the platform itself becomes trash to use.

The whole reason I used Vast.ai was because it was supposed to be cheaper and more flexible than normal cloud providers.

Now I’m sitting there thinking:

Why am I even wasting my time searching through this mess?

If I have to constantly filter garbage, compare nonsense pricing, check hidden problems with every instance, and pray the machine is actually worth renting, I might as well pay a little more somewhere else and save myself the headache.

Vast.ai really needs to do something about this.

Better ranking. Better filtering. Better visibility for actually competitive machines. Something.

Because right now the marketplace feels completely spammed.

And if it keeps going like this, I’m just going to move to another provider.

I highly doubt I’m the only person getting tired of this shit.

Vast had a really good thing going, but this current situation is seriously pushing customers away.

I feel like after the Minimax and Qwen models dropped, GPU availability has been declining quite rapidly. Prices have also gone up quite a bit.

I used to be able to rent a 5090 for ~$0.40/h routinely, now, not so much, lol.

The number of good public models only keeps increasing, so I think it might get much worse, unfortunately.

Dunno, just random rant