Pricing Guide

Galadriel uses marketplace-driven pricing where supply and demand determine GPU costs through a transparent orderbook system. This guide explains how pricing works and strategies to save money.

Core Pricing Model

Market-Driven vs Fixed Pricing

Aspect	Fixed Pricing (Traditional Cloud)	Marketplace (Galadriel)
Price discovery	Platform sets price	Market determines price ✓
Demand response	Fixed regardless of demand	Adjusts to demand ✓
Customer savings	No opportunity for deals	Can bid below market ✓
Price transparency	Opaque	Full orderbook visibility ✓

Result: Lower average prices, better utilization, more supply.

Platform Fee

All transactions include a 10% platform fee:

Example Transaction:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Customer pays:        16 GPUs × 24h × $1.40/hr = $537.60
Platform fee (10%):                               +$53.76
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Total charge:                                     $591.36

Provider receives (90%):                          $483.84

What the 10% covers:

✅ Orderbook matching engine
✅ Payment processing (Stripe fees ~3%)
✅ Kubernetes orchestration
✅ Network setup (InfiniBand config)
✅ Monitoring and support
✅ Platform development and operations

Typical Pricing Patterns

By Time of Day

Typical H100 Pricing (us-west-1)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Weekday Peak (9am-6pm):
  Supply: 500 GPUs
  Demand: 800 GPUs
  Price: $1.40-1.50/hr ⬆️

Weekday Off-Peak (6pm-9am):
  Supply: 500 GPUs
  Demand: 200 GPUs
  Price: $1.20-1.30/hr ⬇️ (10-15% cheaper)

Weekends:
  Supply: 500 GPUs
  Demand: 300 GPUs
  Price: $1.25-1.35/hr ➡️ (5-10% cheaper)

Conference Deadlines (e.g., NeurIPS):
  Supply: 500 GPUs
  Demand: 1500+ GPUs
  Price: $1.80-2.00/hr ⬆️⬆️ (40-60% surge)

Price History Example

View historical prices:

galadriel prices --gpu-type h100 --zone us-west-1 --days 7

Output:

H100 Price History (us-west-1) - Last 7 Days
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
$2.00 ┤                                    ╭╮
$1.90 ┤                                   │╰╮
$1.80 ┤                                  ╭╯ ╰╮
$1.70 ┤              ╭───╮              │    ╰╮
$1.60 ┤          ╭───╯   ╰───╮      ╭───╯     ╰─╮
$1.50 ┤      ╭───╯           ╰──────╯           ╰──
$1.40 ┤  ────╯
$1.30 ┤
$1.20 ┤──────
      └┬────┬────┬────┬────┬────┬────┬────┬───
      Mon  Tue  Wed  Thu  Fri  Sat  Sun  Mon

Current: $1.35/hr
7-day avg: $1.42/hr
7-day low: $1.20/hr (Sun 3am)
7-day high: $1.95/hr (Wed 2pm - Conference deadline)

💡 Tip: Best prices typically 11pm-6am (15-20% less demand)

Cost Optimization Strategies

1. Time-Shift Workloads (Save 30-40%)

Run workloads during off-peak hours:

Instead of: Running during peak hours
Do this: Schedule for off-peak (nights/weekends)

Example:
  Peak price: $1.45/hr
  Off-peak price: $1.25/hr
  Savings: 14%

  Job: 16 GPUs × 12 hours
  Peak cost: $278.40
  Off-peak cost: $240.00
  Saved: $38.40

How to do it:

# Flexible order - execute anytime in next 48h
galadriel order buy \
  --gpu-type h100 \
  --gpus 16 \
  --duration 12h \
  --flex 48h \
  --price 1.30

2. Use Limit Orders (Save 10-25%)

Set your maximum price and wait:

Instead of: Market orders (instant but expensive)
Do this: Limit orders below current market

Example:
  Current market: $1.40/hr
  Your limit: $1.25/hr (11% below)
  Wait time: 2-4 hours

  Job: 8 GPUs × 24 hours
  Market cost: $268.80
  Limit cost: $240.00
  Saved: $28.80

  Worth waiting? YES if not urgent

How to do it:

galadriel order buy \
  --gpu-type h100 \
  --gpus 8 \
  --duration 24h \
  --price 1.25

3. Monitor the Orderbook

Check prices before buying:

# View current orderbook
galadriel orderbook --gpu-type h100 --zone us-west-1

# Get price estimate
galadriel prices estimate --gpu-type h100 --gpus 16 --zone us-west-1

If the spread is wide or prices are high, consider:

Placing a limit order below best ask
Waiting for off-peak hours
Using flexible timing

4. Resell Unused Time

Finished early? Recover costs by reselling:

Original purchase: 168h × 16 GPUs × $1.30 = $3,494.40
Used: 120h (5 days)
Remaining: 48h (2 days)

Without reselling:
- Refund: 48h × 16 × $1.30 = $998.40

With reselling at $1.20/GPU/hr:
- Refund: $998.40 (from Galadriel)
- Resell revenue: 48h × 16 × $1.20 = $921.60
- Platform fee (10%): -$92.16
- Net recovery: $829.44
- Total back: $998.40 + $829.44 = $1,827.84
- Extra recovered: $829.44

How to do it:

galadriel lease resell lse_xyz123 --price 1.20

See the Reselling Guide for details.

Comparing Order Types

Cost Comparison Example

Job: 16 GPUs × 24 hours in us-west-1

Order Type	Price	Total Cost	Wait Time	Savings
Market	$1.40/hr	$537.60	0 min	Baseline
Limit ($1.30)	$1.30/hr	$499.20	~1-2 hrs	$38.40 (7%)
Limit ($1.25)	$1.25/hr	$480.00	~3-5 hrs	$57.60 (11%)
Flexible (48h)	$1.20/hr	$460.80	Scheduled	$76.80 (14%)

Platform fee (10%) is included in all costs shown above.

When to Use Each Order Type

Market Orders:

✅ Deadline-driven workloads
✅ Production inference serving
✅ Time-sensitive experiments
❌ Cost-optimized training
❌ Batch processing jobs

Limit Orders:

✅ Non-urgent training runs
✅ Cost-sensitive workloads
✅ Predictable schedules
❌ Immediate needs
❌ Guaranteed execution time

Flexible Orders:

✅ Maximum cost savings
✅ Batch jobs
✅ Dataset preprocessing
✅ Model evaluation
❌ Interactive development
❌ Fixed deadlines

Billing & Invoicing

How Billing Works

1. Order Placement

Customer creates buy order: 16 GPUs @ max $1.35/hr × 24h
Platform holds authorization: $1.35 × 16 × 24 × 1.10 = $570.24
(Includes 10% platform fee)

2. Order Matching

Matched with provider at $1.30/hr (below max!)
Actual charge: $1.30 × 16 × 24 × 1.10 = $548.48
Saved: $21.76 vs max price

3. Early Termination

If terminated early (e.g., after 20 hours):
  Actual usage: $1.30 × 16 × 20 × 1.10 = $457.60
  Refund: $548.48 - $457.60 = $90.88

Monthly Invoice Example

Galadriel GPU Marketplace - November 2025
Customer: alice@example.com

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
DATE        ORDER         GPUs  HOURS  RATE    COMPUTE    FEE      TOTAL
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
11/05 14:00 ord_abc123    16    24.0   $1.30    $499.20   $49.92   $549.12
11/08 09:00 ord_def456     8    12.5   $1.45     145.00    14.50    159.50
11/15 22:00 ord_ghi789    32    48.0   $1.20   1,843.20   184.32  2,027.52
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Subtotal (Compute):                                       $2,487.40
Platform Fees (10%):                                        $248.74
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Total:                                                    $2,736.14

Payment Method: Card ending in 1234
Due Date: 2025-12-08

💡 Savings this month: $412 by using limit orders and off-peak hours

View billing:

galadriel billing usage
galadriel billing invoices

What’s Included (No Extra Fees)

All instances include:

✅ Compute: Full node exclusivity (8 GPUs minimum)
✅ InfiniBand: 400 Gbps RDMA, GPUDirect enabled
✅ Network Egress: Unlimited data transfer out
✅ Storage: At least 2TB of local NVMe storage per node
✅ Support: Email/Slack support, documentation
✅ API Access: Unlimited API calls
✅ SSH Access: Direct SSH to all your nodes
✅ Kubernetes Access: Full kubectl access

No hidden fees. Just the 10% platform fee on compute.

Refund & Cancellation Policy

Early Termination by Customer

Scenario: Ordered 24h, terminated after 4.5h

Original order:
  16 GPUs × $1.30/hr × 24h = $499.20 + $49.92 fee = $549.12

Actual usage:
  16 GPUs × $1.30/hr × 4.5h = $93.60 + $9.36 fee = $102.96

Refund: $549.12 - $102.96 = $446.16 (credited immediately)

Cancellation Before Start

over 24 hours before: Full refund (100%)
1-24 hours before: 50% refund (provider gets 50% of 1hr cost)
under 1 hour before: No refund (provider gets 1hr minimum)

Rationale: Protects providers who blocked capacity

Hardware Failure (Platform Responsibility)

Job running 10 hours, GPU fails, 1 hour downtime

Full refund for downtime: 1hr × 16 GPUs × $1.30 × 1.10 = $22.88
Automatic credit to account
Provider still gets paid (platform absorbs cost)

Price Guarantees

For Customers

1. No Surprise Charges

Limit orders guarantee max price
Market orders show price before confirmation
No hidden fees beyond 10% platform fee

2. Price Lock

Once matched, price is fixed for entire duration
No surge pricing mid-job
Early termination gets prorated refund at matched price

3. Price History

All historical prices publicly visible
Can analyze trends before ordering
Algorithm recommendations based on patterns

For Providers

1. Minimum Price Guarantee

Your listing price is the minimum you’ll accept
Platform never matches below your min price
Can adjust prices anytime (for future orders)

2. Payment Guarantee

Platform holds customer payment upfront
You get paid even if customer cancels
Automatic payout after job completion

Advanced: Price Estimation

Get accurate price estimates before ordering:

# Estimate cost for market order
galadriel prices estimate --gpu-type h100 --gpus 16 --zone us-west-1

Output:

Price Estimate for Market Order
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
GPU Type: H100
Zone: us-west-1
Quantity: 16 GPUs

Estimated price: $1.38/hr (weighted average)
Best ask: $1.40/hr
Worst fill price: $1.45/hr
Total available: 48 GPUs
Sufficient liquidity: YES ✓

For 24h lease:
  Estimated cost: $530.88
  Platform fee: $53.09
  Total: $583.97

Next Steps

How the Marketplace Works

Understand orderbooks and order types

Cluster Specs

GPU types, system specs, and access model

Reselling Guide

Recover costs by reselling unused time

Examples

Real-world cost optimization examples

Getting Started

Marketplace

Tools

Advanced

Pricing Guide

Pricing Guide

Core Pricing Model

Market-Driven vs Fixed Pricing

Platform Fee

Typical Pricing Patterns

By Time of Day

Price History Example

Cost Optimization Strategies

1. Time-Shift Workloads (Save 30-40%)

2. Use Limit Orders (Save 10-25%)

3. Monitor the Orderbook

4. Resell Unused Time

Comparing Order Types

Cost Comparison Example

When to Use Each Order Type

Billing & Invoicing

How Billing Works

Monthly Invoice Example

What’s Included (No Extra Fees)

Refund & Cancellation Policy

Early Termination by Customer

Cancellation Before Start

Hardware Failure (Platform Responsibility)

Price Guarantees

For Customers

For Providers

Advanced: Price Estimation

Next Steps

How the Marketplace Works

Cluster Specs

Reselling Guide

Examples

​Pricing Guide

​Core Pricing Model

​Market-Driven vs Fixed Pricing

​Platform Fee

​Typical Pricing Patterns

​By Time of Day

​Price History Example

​Cost Optimization Strategies

​1. Time-Shift Workloads (Save 30-40%)

​2. Use Limit Orders (Save 10-25%)

​3. Monitor the Orderbook

​4. Resell Unused Time

​Comparing Order Types

​Cost Comparison Example

​When to Use Each Order Type

​Billing & Invoicing

​How Billing Works

​Monthly Invoice Example

​What’s Included (No Extra Fees)

​Refund & Cancellation Policy

​Early Termination by Customer

​Cancellation Before Start

​Hardware Failure (Platform Responsibility)

​Price Guarantees

​For Customers

​For Providers

​Advanced: Price Estimation

​Next Steps

How the Marketplace Works

Cluster Specs

Reselling Guide

Examples

Pricing Guide

Core Pricing Model

Market-Driven vs Fixed Pricing

Platform Fee

Typical Pricing Patterns

By Time of Day

Price History Example

Cost Optimization Strategies

1. Time-Shift Workloads (Save 30-40%)

2. Use Limit Orders (Save 10-25%)

3. Monitor the Orderbook

4. Resell Unused Time

Comparing Order Types

Cost Comparison Example

When to Use Each Order Type

Billing & Invoicing

How Billing Works

Monthly Invoice Example

What’s Included (No Extra Fees)

Refund & Cancellation Policy

Early Termination by Customer

Cancellation Before Start

Hardware Failure (Platform Responsibility)

Price Guarantees

For Customers

For Providers

Advanced: Price Estimation

Next Steps