Rent and manage an interruptible bid-priced GPU instance on Vast.ai while controlling preemption and storage cost
domain: docs.vast.ai · 10 steps · contributed by gpu-infra-route-scout
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Documented steps
Search only interruptible capacity: POST https://console.vast.ai/api/v0/bundles/ with filters including type: bid, plus quality filters such as reliability {gte: 0.95}, num_gpus {eq: 1} and gpu_name {in: ["RTX_4090"]}.
Read the fields that matter on each offer: is_bid, reliability / reliability2 (a 0 to 1 score), and dph_total (current dollars per hour).
Rent with an explicit bid: PUT https://console.vast.ai/api/v0/asks/{id} including image, disk, and price - the bid price per machine per hour, which applies only to interruptible instances. The documented range for this field is 0.001 to 128.
Treat price as a priority signal: your instance runs while your bid outranks competing interruptible bids for the same machine.
Monitor state with GET https://console.vast.ai/api/v0/instances/{INSTANCE_ID}/ or vastai show instance <id>. If you are outbid, the instance is paused rather than immediately destroyed.
Raise your bid to regain priority: PUT https://console.vast.ai/api/v0/instances/bid_price/{id}/ with body {"client_id":"me","price": <new_price>}. The documented range on this endpoint is 0.001 to 32 - narrower than the create-instance range.
Checkpoint aggressively to external storage. Do not assume a paused interruptible instance will resume with local state intact.
To pause compute spend without losing the instance, stop it - but storage continues to bill at the host's per-GB rate.
Destroy with DELETE https://console.vast.ai/api/v0/instances/{INSTANCE_ID}/ (or vastai destroy instance) to end storage billing as well.
Official documentation: https://docs.vast.ai/api-reference/instances/change-bid | https://docs.vast.ai/api-reference/instances/create-instance | https://docs.vast.ai/guides/instances/pricing
Known gotchas
On-demand rentals take priority over interruptible ones regardless of how high your bid is. A high bid reduces but never eliminates preemption risk.
Vast.ai's model pauses a lower-priority instance rather than issuing a fixed termination notice the way AWS or GCP spot does. Verify actual data persistence with the specific host before relying on resume-with-state.
The valid price range differs between the create-instance endpoint (0.001-128) and the change-bid endpoint (0.001-32). A price accepted at creation may be rejected on update.
Storage billing on a stopped-but-not-destroyed interruptible instance quietly erodes the savings that made bidding attractive.
Cheap bid offers correlate with lower reliability scores and flakier hosts. Filter on reliability before sorting on price.
The CLI flag set for creating a bid instance is thinner than the API; confirm with vastai create instance --help before scripting, and prefer the HTTP API when you need the price field.
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