Reselling GPU Time

Galadriel’s secondary market allows you to resell unused GPU time when you finish your workload early. This unique feature helps you recover costs and creates additional liquidity in the marketplace.

Why Resell?

Common Scenario:

You bought 7 days of GPU time for model training
Your model converged after 5 days
You have 2 days of unused time remaining
Terminating early gives you a refund, but reselling can earn you more

Benefits:

💰 Recover more money than just terminating
⏱️ Help other users get GPUs at discounted prices
🔄 Create market liquidity and efficiency
✅ Seamless transfer with zero downtime for buyer

How It Works

Overview

You (Original Buyer)          Marketplace          New Buyer
────────────────────          ───────────          ─────────

1. Buy 7 days @ $1.30/hr
   ↓
2. Use GPUs for 5 days
   ↓
3. List remaining 2 days
   @ $1.20/hr              →  Order added to
                               orderbook
                                    ↓
4. Buyer purchases                  ← Match occurs
   at $1.20/hr
   ↓                                ↓
5. Transfer scheduled         Transfer time:
   Your access ends           2025-11-12 14:00
   ↓                                ↓
6. Receive:                   Buyer gets:
   - Original refund          - Full node access
   - Resale proceeds          - Your remaining time

Economics Example

Original Purchase:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
- Duration: 168h (7 days)
- GPUs: 16 H100
- Rate: $1.30/GPU/hr
- Total: 168h × 16 × $1.30 = $3,494.40

After 5 Days (120h used):
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
- Remaining: 48h (2 days)
- Without reselling: Terminate and get refund

Option A: Just Terminate
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Refund: 48h × 16 × $1.30 = $998.40
Total recovered: $998.40

Option B: Resell at $1.20/GPU/hr
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Original refund:    48h × 16 × $1.30 = $998.40
Resale revenue:     48h × 16 × $1.20 = $460.80
Platform fee (10%):                    -$46.08
Net from resale:                       $414.72
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Total recovered: $998.40 + $414.72 = $1,413.12

Extra recovered by reselling: $414.72 ✨

Creating a Resell Order

CLI

Basic resell:

galadriel lease resell lse_xyz123 --price 3.00

With specific transfer time:

galadriel lease resell lse_xyz123 \
  --price 3.00 \
  --from "2025-11-12T14:00:00Z"

Transfer immediately (terminate your access now):

galadriel lease resell lse_xyz123 \
  --price 3.00 \
  --transfer-now

API

POST /api/v1/leases/lse_xyz123/resell
Authorization: Bearer <token>
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "limit_price": 3.00,
  "available_from": "2025-11-12T14:00:00Z",
  "available_until": null,
  "transfer_immediately": false
}

SDK (Python)

from galadriel import Client

client = Client(api_token="your_token")

# Resell unused time
resell_order = client.leases.resell(
    lease_id="lse_xyz123",
    limit_price=3.00,
    available_from="2025-11-12T14:00:00Z"
)

print(f"Resell order ID: {resell_order.order_id}")
print(f"Potential recovery: ${resell_order.potential_recovery}")
print(f"Net recovery: ${resell_order.net_recovery} (after 10% fee)")

Resell Order Responses

Pending (Waiting for Buyer)

💰 Creating resell order for unused GPU time...
✓ Order ID: ord_resell123
✓ Lease: lse_xyz123 (16x H100 GPUs)
✓ Original price: $1.30/GPU/hr
✓ Resell price: $1.20/GPU/hr
✓ Time remaining: 48 hours (2 days)
✓ Potential recovery: $2,304.00
✓ After 10% platform fee: $1,958.40

📊 Your lease timeline:
  Now ────────────> 2025-11-12 14:00 ────────────> 2025-11-14 14:00
  │                 │                              │
  You keep using    Transfer to buyer             Original end
                    (if matched)

💡 Next steps:
  - Your order is live in the marketplace
  - Continue using GPUs until transfer time
  - You'll be notified when a buyer is matched
  - Check status: galadriel order get ord_resell123

Immediately Matched

💰 Creating resell order for unused GPU time...
✓ Matched instantly!
✓ Buyer: ord_buyer789
✓ Sale amount: $2,304.00 (16 GPUs × 48h × $1.20)
✓ Platform fee (10%): -$345.60
✓ Net recovery: $1,958.40
✓ Original refund: $2,649.60 (from Galadriel)
✓ Total recovered: $4,608.00

🎉 Your unused GPU time has been sold!

⏰ Transfer scheduled for: 2025-11-12 14:00 UTC
   - Your access will be terminated at that time
   - Buyer will receive kubeconfig and SSH access
   - Funds will be credited to your account

📧 You'll receive:
   1. Confirmation email now
   2. Reminder 1 hour before transfer
   3. Transfer completion notification

Transfer Process

What Happens at Transfer Time

1 Hour Before Transfer:

⏰ Lease Transfer Reminder

Your lease lse_xyz123 will transfer in 1 hour:
- Transfer time: 2025-11-12 14:00 UTC
- New owner: Customer ord_buyer789
- Your access will be terminated

Action required:
- Save any important data
- Stop running jobs
- Your pods will be deleted at transfer time

At Transfer Time (Automated):

Step 1: Your access terminated
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
- All your pods deleted
- Kubeconfig invalidated
- SSH access revoked
- Namespace cleaned up

Step 2: Buyer access granted
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
- New namespace created
- Fresh kubeconfig generated
- SSH keys set up
- Full access to same nodes

Step 3: Financial settlement
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
- Original refund: $2,649.60 credited
- Resale proceeds: $1,958.40 credited
- Total: $4,608.00 in your account

Pricing Strategies

Pricing at Market Rate

List at current market price for quick sale:

# Check current market price
galadriel orderbook --gpu-type h100 --zone us-west-1

# List at best ask price
galadriel lease resell lse_xyz123 --price 1.40

Pros:

✅ Quick sale (usually under 1 hour)
✅ Maximum recovery
✅ Less risk of not selling

Cons:

⚠️ May not sell if market drops

Pricing Below Market (Discount)

List below market for guaranteed sale:

# List 10% below market
galadriel lease resell lse_xyz123 --price 1.20  # if market is $1.30

Pros:

✅ Very quick sale (under 30 min)
✅ Still better than just terminating
✅ Helps market liquidity

Cons:

⚠️ Less total recovery

Pricing Above Original Cost

List higher than what you paid (if market went up):

# You paid $1.30, now market is $1.50
galadriel lease resell lse_xyz123 --price 1.45

Pros:

✅ Profit on resale
✅ Recover original cost + extra

Cons:

⚠️ May take longer to sell
⚠️ Risk market drops before sale

Managing Resell Orders

Check Resell Order Status

galadriel order get ord_resell123

Output:

ORDER ID:       ord_resell123
TYPE:           limit (resell)
SIDE:           sell
LEASE ID:       lse_xyz123
GPU TYPE:       h100
GPU COUNT:      16
LIMIT PRICE:    $1.20/hr
STATUS:         pending
CREATED:        2h ago
TRANSFER TIME:  2025-11-12 14:00 UTC

POTENTIAL RECOVERY:
  Resale revenue:     $2,304.00
  Platform fee (10%): -$345.60
  Net recovery:       $1,958.40
  Original refund:    $2,649.60
  Total recovery:     $4,608.00

CURRENT MARKET:
  Best bid: $2.95/hr (close to your price!)
  Best ask: $3.70/hr

Cancel Resell Order

If you change your mind before it’s matched:

galadriel order cancel ord_resell123

You can only cancel if the order hasn’t been matched yet. Once matched, the transfer will proceed as scheduled.

Update Resell Price

Cancel and create a new order with different price:

# Cancel existing
galadriel order cancel ord_resell123

# Create new with different price
galadriel lease resell lse_xyz123 --price 3.20

Edge Cases & FAQs

What if my resell order doesn't match before transfer time?

If your resell order doesn’t match by the transfer time (available_from), it will be automatically cancelled. Your lease continues until the original end time. You keep using the GPUs as normal.You can:

Create a new resell order with different pricing
Continue using until original lease end
Terminate early for a refund

Can I continue using GPUs while listed for resale?

Yes! You maintain full access until the transfer time. The resell order just makes your unused time available for future purchase.Your timeline:

Now ──────────────> Transfer Time ─────────> Original End
│                   │                         │
Full access         Transfer happens         Would have ended
(working normally)  (if matched)

What happens to my running pods at transfer?

At transfer time, all your pods are automatically deleted. The buyer gets clean nodes.Best practice:

Save checkpoints before transfer time
Set available_from to when you’re actually done
Don’t schedule critical jobs near transfer time

Can I cancel after the order is matched?

No. Once matched, the transfer is committed. The buyer has already paid, and the transaction cannot be reversed.You will receive:

1 hour warning before transfer
Final notification at transfer

Make sure you’re ready to give up access before creating the resell order.

What if I want to transfer immediately?

Use the --transfer-now flag:

galadriel lease resell lse_xyz123 --price 3.00 --transfer-now

This sets available_from to NOW, meaning if a buyer matches, the transfer happens immediately. Your access is terminated right away.Use this when:

You’re completely done with the GPUs
Want to maximize recovery ASAP
Don’t need gradual transition

Do I get the original refund AND resale proceeds?

Yes! This is the key benefit of reselling.You receive:

Original refund from Galadriel for unused time at your purchase price
Net resale proceeds from the buyer (their payment minus 15% fee)

Total recovery = Original refund + Net resale proceeds

What if market price drops below my listing?

Your order won’t match until:

Market price rises to your listing price, OR
You cancel and relist at a lower price

If it doesn’t match by transfer time, the order is automatically cancelled and you keep the GPUs until original lease end.

Can the buyer see my data or workloads?

No. At transfer time:

All your pods are deleted
Namespace is destroyed
Nodes are cleaned (tmp files removed)
Buyer gets fresh, clean nodes

However, if you stored data in persistent volumes or node-local directories, you should clean those up yourself before transfer.

Best Practices

1. Price Competitively

Check the orderbook before listing:

galadriel orderbook --gpu-type h100 --zone us-west-1

List at or slightly below best ask for quick sale.

2. Set Realistic Transfer Times

Don’t set available_from too soon if you’re still working:

# Good: Giving yourself buffer
galadriel lease resell lse_xyz123 \
  --price 3.00 \
  --from "2025-11-12T14:00:00Z"  # 6 hours from now

# Risky: Too soon, might still be working
galadriel lease resell lse_xyz123 \
  --price 3.00 \
  --from "2025-11-12T08:30:00Z"  # 30 min from now

3. Save Checkpoints

Before transfer time:

Save model checkpoints
Export important data
Document your setup (for future reference)

4. Monitor Market Conditions

If listing for a while:

# Check if market moved
galadriel prices --gpu-type h100 --zone us-west-1 --days 1

# Adjust price if needed
galadriel order cancel ord_resell123
galadriel lease resell lse_xyz123 --price 3.20  # new price

5. Plan Transfer Time

Choose transfer times strategically:

Peak hours (9am-6pm): More buyers, better chance of matching
Off-peak (nights): Fewer buyers, but lower competition
Weekends: Moderate activity

Real-World Example

Scenario: Training a 70B LLM

# Day 1: Purchase GPUs
galadriel order buy \
  --gpu-type h100 \
  --gpus 16 \
  --duration 168h \
  --price 3.45 \
  --zone us-west-1

# Cost: 168h × 16 × $1.30 = $9,273.60

# Days 1-5: Training
kubectl apply -f llm-training.yaml
# ... training runs ...

# Day 5: Model converged! 🎉
# Check remaining time
galadriel get lse_xyz123
# Shows: 48h remaining (2 days)

# Day 5: List unused time for resale
galadriel lease resell lse_xyz123 \
  --price 3.00 \
  --from "2025-11-12T18:00:00Z"  # 2 hours from now

# Hour later: Matched!
# Transfer at 18:00 UTC
# Pods automatically cleaned up
# Buyer gets access

# Final accounting:
# - Used: 120h × 16 × $1.30 = $6,624.00 (actual cost)
# - Original refund: $2,649.60
# - Resale recovery: $1,958.40
# - Total back: $4,608.00
# - Net cost: $6,624.00 - $4,608.00 = $2,016.00
#
# Effective rate: $2,016 ÷ (120h × 16) = $1.05/GPU/hr
# Saved: $4,608.00 compared to no reselling! 💰

Next Steps

Pricing Guide

Learn more cost optimization strategies

How the Marketplace Works

Understand orderbooks and matching

API Reference

Resell API documentation

Examples

See real-world reselling examples

Getting Started

Marketplace

Tools

Advanced

Reselling GPU Time

Reselling GPU Time

Why Resell?

How It Works

Overview

Economics Example

Creating a Resell Order

CLI

API

SDK (Python)

Resell Order Responses

Pending (Waiting for Buyer)

Immediately Matched

Transfer Process

What Happens at Transfer Time

Pricing Strategies

Pricing at Market Rate

Pricing Below Market (Discount)

Pricing Above Original Cost

Managing Resell Orders

Check Resell Order Status

Cancel Resell Order

Update Resell Price

Edge Cases & FAQs

Best Practices

1. Price Competitively

2. Set Realistic Transfer Times

3. Save Checkpoints

4. Monitor Market Conditions

5. Plan Transfer Time

Real-World Example

Next Steps

Pricing Guide

How the Marketplace Works

API Reference

Examples

​Reselling GPU Time

​Why Resell?

​How It Works

​Overview

​Economics Example

​Creating a Resell Order

​CLI

​API

​SDK (Python)

​Resell Order Responses

​Pending (Waiting for Buyer)

​Immediately Matched

​Transfer Process

​What Happens at Transfer Time

​Pricing Strategies

​Pricing at Market Rate

​Pricing Below Market (Discount)

​Pricing Above Original Cost

​Managing Resell Orders

​Check Resell Order Status

​Cancel Resell Order

​Update Resell Price

​Edge Cases & FAQs

​Best Practices

​1. Price Competitively

​2. Set Realistic Transfer Times

​3. Save Checkpoints

​4. Monitor Market Conditions

​5. Plan Transfer Time

​Real-World Example

​Next Steps

Pricing Guide

How the Marketplace Works

API Reference

Examples

Reselling GPU Time

Why Resell?

How It Works

Overview

Economics Example

Creating a Resell Order

CLI

API

SDK (Python)

Resell Order Responses

Pending (Waiting for Buyer)

Immediately Matched

Transfer Process

What Happens at Transfer Time

Pricing Strategies

Pricing at Market Rate

Pricing Below Market (Discount)

Pricing Above Original Cost

Managing Resell Orders

Check Resell Order Status

Cancel Resell Order

Update Resell Price

Edge Cases & FAQs

Best Practices

1. Price Competitively

2. Set Realistic Transfer Times

3. Save Checkpoints

4. Monitor Market Conditions

5. Plan Transfer Time

Real-World Example

Next Steps