Marketplaces and aggregators
One place to find, compare and rent capacity that belongs to many separate hosts or clouds.
Definition, not a sourced statistic
What it is
A marketplace lists capacity from many hosts, from individuals to data centres, and lets renters choose among them, sometimes with prices set by the hosts or by bids. An aggregator gives one console, one account or one API across several separate clouds or inference vendors, and routes your request to one of them.
Who it suits
- Users who want to compare offers across many hosts in one place.
- Work that can move between hosts and tolerate hosts of varying type and reliability.
- Teams that want one bill across several clouds instead of many accounts.
Common contract shapes
- On-demand rental. Rent a listed machine by time from whichever host offers it.
- Interruptible rental. A cheaper class of rental that the host can stop.
- Reserved through the platform. A commitment arranged by the marketplace with one or more underlying hosts.
- Routed API calls. Requests sent to one of several inference vendors behind a single API.
Providers use their own names for these shapes, so compare what is promised, not what it is called. The contract shapes guide explains each one.
What to ask
- Egress and data transfer. Does the marketplace or the underlying host charge for data out, and are both charges shown before you rent?
- Service levels. Who promises uptime, the platform or the host, and who pays a credit if a host fails?
- Data residency and access. Can you choose and pin the country of the host, and does the platform tell you who the host is?
- Security certifications. Do certifications apply to the platform only, or to each host your data reaches?
- Export controls and sanctions. How does the platform screen hosts and renters for sanctions and export controls?
- Exit. Is your data removed from a host when the rental ends, and can you leave the platform without losing reservations?
- Who is your contract with: the platform, the host, or both?
The full list is on the printable buyer's checklist. For rules on chips and where they can go, see export controls and compute thresholds.
On this site
Entries listed here because their own summary or checked facts on this site fit this type. An entry can fit more than one type, and a provider missing here may still offer it. This is a list, not a ranking, and in name order. We link to providers for prices.
Providers
- Hugging Face Inference Providers: A unified API that routes requests for hosted models to a range of partner inference providers. Dedicated Inference Endpoints are a separate service.
- Hyperbolic: A GPU access platform drawing on a network of compute suppliers. It offers on-demand GPUs, reserved clusters and private cloud, plus an OpenAI-compatible API for model serving.
- Prime Intellect: An AI development platform combining a post-training lab, inference API and a compute offering that sources GPUs from multiple cloud providers.
- RunPod: A GPU platform offering pods, serverless GPU endpoints and multi-node clusters from a shared catalogue in many regions.
- Shadeform: A single console and billing relationship for provisioning GPUs from many separate cloud providers.
- Vast.ai: A marketplace where hosts, from individuals to data centres, list GPUs and renters choose among them.
Related
- Glossary: On-demand, Spot, Egress, Data residency.
- Guide: How to get GPUs this week
- Provider directory
- Compare offer types
Other offer types: Hyperscale cloud instances · GPU clouds and bare metal · Decentralised and community networks · Regional and sovereign clouds · Managed inference and serverless GPU · Chip-maker and accelerator clouds · National and institutional HPC, and free or funded programmes · Colocation, wholesale, powered shell and build-to-suit · On-premises hardware, and leasing or financing it · Capacity brokers, reserved contracts, secondary and spot markets · Edge and telecom sites, and converted sites
Definitions and questions written in our own words, checked on 3 October 2026 and due for review by 3 January 2027. Sourced facts stay on the provider, programme and policy pages this page links to. This is general information to help you ask better questions. It is not legal, tax or procurement advice. For export controls, sanctions and contracts, check the primary rules and talk to a qualified adviser. Something wrong? Tell us.