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 ✓ |
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
- ✅ 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
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
# 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
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
- 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
galadriel lease resell lse_xyz123 --price 1.20
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)
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
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: [email protected]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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
galadriel billing usage
galadriel billing invoices
- ✅ 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)
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
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
