honest comparison
Locally vs Vast.ai
Vast is a marketplace of other people's GPUs. Cheap, clever, and sometimes chaotic. We own our racks. Here is what that difference costs and buys you.
| Locally | Vast.ai | |
|---|---|---|
| Hardware source | Our datacenters, our racks | Community hosts' machines |
| Reliability | 99.9% SLA, enforced | Varies host by host |
| Interruptions | Never; the box is yours | Interruptible tiers can be reclaimed |
| Privacy | No third party can touch it | Host owns the physical machine |
| Raw $/GPU-hour | Slightly higher | Often the cheapest on the market |
| Setup consistency | Identical image every deploy | Depends on the host's config |
| Support | 24/7 humans, 7 min avg | Marketplace + community |
| Payments | Card + crypto, monthly | Credit top-ups |
| Best for | Production, privacy, always-on | Cheapest possible experiments |
Pick Locally if...
Your model, your data or your uptime actually matter: client work, production APIs, or anything you would be embarrassed to lose mid-job.
Pick Vast.ai if...
You are chasing the absolute lowest hourly price for throwaway experiments and can tolerate a host disappearing occasionally.