Lium runs a permissionless, agent-friendly peer-to-peer GPU marketplace where hardware reliability is backed by an on-chain staking-and-slashing system rather than a formal uptime SLA. Renters pay per second with no minimum commitment, choosing from consumer-grade cards for light workloads up to multi-GPU frontier clusters for large-scale training runs, all without a KYC check.
Lium is a decentralized, no-KYC GPU marketplace built on Bittensor. Its live node directory now spans 16 countries with over a hundred active machines, up from the 5 countries previously recorded, renting everything from entry-level consumer cards to frontier-scale GPU clusters, billed per second with no contract.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Lium cost in 2026?
Lium bills per second with no minimum commitment. Reference prices range from a few cents per hour for older consumer cards to several dollars per hour for the newest data-center GPUs. Providers set their own listed price within a platform-enforced band around Lium's reference price, so the exact rate for a given node varies with live supply and demand.
What GPUs are available on Lium?
Lium's catalog spans consumer and data-center GPUs sourced from independent providers rather than a single cloud vendor, from entry-level consumer cards up to multi-GPU Blackwell-generation clusters. Every listing is validated on-chain for GPU model, VRAM, and historical uptime before it can earn Bittensor emissions, which filters out misrepresented hardware. Renters filter by GPU model, region, and GPU count directly from the lium-cli command line or the web dashboard.
Is Lium free to use?
Lium does not offer a free tier or trial credits: every GPU pod is billed hourly from the moment it starts running. Creating an account and browsing the marketplace to compare GPU models and prices costs nothing. Because pricing is peer-to-peer, occasional promotional listings from individual providers can undercut the marketplace average, but these are not an official free tier. Teams who need a genuinely free sandbox for small models may be better served by a provider that offers dedicated free-tier hours before moving heavier workloads to Lium.
How do you get started with Lium?
Getting started with Lium takes three steps: create a free account at lium.io, add funds, and either browse GPU listings in the web dashboard or install lium-cli. From the CLI, a command like `lium up --gpu <model>` finds and rents the cheapest available pod automatically, and filters such as `--count` or `--country` target a specific region or cluster size. Once a pod is running, `lium ssh` connects directly to it, and the CLI also handles persistent storage volumes and cost tracking. Full command references and an OpenAPI spec are documented at docs.lium.io, with every page also fetchable as raw markdown for coding agents.
How does Lium compare to RunPod in 2026?
Lium and RunPod both rent GPUs by the hour with no long-term contract, but they differ in how supply is sourced and guaranteed. RunPod runs its own data centers and partner facilities, which gives it more predictable availability and a more polished managed dashboard. Lium sources GPUs from independent Bittensor providers instead, which keeps its data-center card pricing well below RunPod's list rates, though availability of any specific GPU model can vary as providers join and leave the network. Pick Lium if the lowest possible hourly price and no identity verification matter most; pick RunPod if dependable availability and a support contract matter more.