# GPUsMarket vs Runpod

> Runpod scores 55.6 (C) to GPUsMarket's 39.6 (E) for gpu compute. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpusmarket-vs-runpod
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpusmarket-vs-runpod.md (~4,950 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-07

Runpod scores 55.6 (C) on agent readiness against GPUsMarket's 39.6 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. GPUsMarket leads on payments & pricing. Both do gpu compute.

- GPUsMarket: grade E, 39.6/100, rank #1337 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/gpusmarket.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/gpusmarket.json
- Runpod: grade C, 55.6/100, rank #864 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/runpod.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/runpod.json
- Best GPU and serverless compute for AI workloads: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/gpu-compute/index.md
- All 231 gpu compute comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpu-compute/index.md

## Which one, for what

### GPUsMarket (E)

Good for: Cheap, short GPU rentals for open models behind an Ollama or OpenAI endpoint, where data sensitivity is low.

Ahead on:
- Payments & pricing, 30 against 20

Watch for: Peer rentals send prompts and outputs through individuals' hardware, with only the terms as protection

### Runpod (C)

Good for: Cost-sensitive inference and batch work that wants the widest GPU choice, from consumer cards to B300, with an MCP control plane.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 57 against 33
- Schema & documentation, 81 against 52
- Agent ergonomics, 62 against 50
- Security & auth, 67 against 30
- Maintenance & community, 82 against 69
- Transparency & trust, 64 against 50

Watch for: Data-centre outages of 6 to 24 hours in each of July, August and September 2026, per the 1 October check


## Why the edge

### Security & auth: Runpod +37

- GPUsMarket (30): Account keys are all-powerful within the account, with no scopes, expiry or rotation documented, but each rental gets its own proxy token (15). The per-rental token limits inference access to one rental; no read-only key or confirmation for destructive calls (6). Peer rentals send prompts and outputs through individuals' machines, protected only by the terms, with no prompt-injection or untrusted-host guidance (2). Per-rental usage stats of requests, tokens and cost (5). No security.txt, disclosure policy, bug bounty or certification; a DPO address for breaches. The CLI and host packages are obfuscated, so they can't be audited (2). 15+6+2+5+2 = 30.
- Runpod (67): API keys can be All, Read Only or Restricted per serverless endpoint, and can be disabled or deleted; the hosted MCP signs in with OAuth. The GraphQL docs still show the key as `?api_key=` in the URL per 1 October, which costs 10 (20). Read-only keys and per-endpoint restrictions, and the REST v2 file names a read or write scope for each operation; no confirmation for destructive calls found (15). Runs your own containers and returns their output (10). REST v2 now lists `GET /v2/audit-logs` (scope `audit:read`), an account or organisation audit trail of who acted on which resource, with filters and a retention window; no per-call API request log (12). security.txt valid until 31 January 2027, and the trust centre lists SOC 2 Type 2, SOC 3, ISO 27001 and HIPAA, per 1 October; no bug bounty, and osv.dev lists no advisory for runpod (10). 20 + 15 + 10 + 12 + 10 = 67.

### Schema & documentation: Runpod +29

- GPUsMarket (52): API and MCP reading. No OpenAPI or other machine-readable contract was found, and the MCP tool schemas couldn't be read because the published package is obfuscated; the repository's history says 2.4.7 added output schemas to all 32 tools, which is the vendor's claim (8). llms.txt as a complete API reference (10). llms.txt says when to use peer or cloud rentals, the proxy or the relay, and which workload each listing type serves (12). Parameters are listed by name without types, enums or required markers, apart from instance and workload types (6). curl examples for each flow, an error code list and a sample deploy response (11). npm versions, but no public changelog (5). 8+10+12+6+11+5 = 52.
- Runpod (81): OpenAPI for REST v2 at api.runpod.io/v2/openapi.json, with v1 and GraphQL schemas also published (25). llms.txt with .md pages (10). Guides explain queue-based against load-balanced endpoints and sync against async calls, with result retention for each (14). Job statuses are a fixed set (`IN_QUEUE`, `IN_PROGRESS`, `COMPLETED`, `FAILED`) and payload limits are stated (20 MB sync, 10 MB async, 1 MB per stream chunk) (10). Examples throughout; no error responses documented for the serverless operations (7). Dated release notes and a versioned API (15).

### Reliability: Runpod +24

- GPUsMarket (33): Read with the hosted lines. No status page found; listing health is shown per listing only (0). No incident history to read (5). Rate limits published, 60 requests a minute per rental and 10 sign-ups an hour per IP (15). 429 is documented, but no Retry-After, backoff or idempotency guidance (3). The terms give no availability guarantee and put host outages on hosts (0). No beta label on the API (10). 0+5+15+3+0+10 = 33.
- Runpod (57): Better Stack page at uptime.runpod.io with per-service and per-region history, per the 1 October check, not re-read on 4 November (Runpod's terms bar automated access to runpod.io and its subdomains) (20). Incident line kept at 0. The 1 October reading counted several majors, among them US-IL-1 without power for 6 hours 10 minutes on 14 and 15 August and serverless API errors for 1 hour 25 minutes on 6 September. The window since 1 October is unread, so the recorded award stands (0). The REST v2 OpenAPI file, in the copy Runpod keeps in its MCP repository (synced with production on 27 October), says limits are per user across every `/v2` route, with minute, hour and day windows, and gives `"minute";q=180;w=60, "hour";q=3600;w=3600, "day";q=43200;w=86400` as the policy header (15). The same file documents 429 with `Retry-After` and `RateLimit` headers, and the Python SDK's error guide (2.1.0, 3 November) honours `Retry-After`, backs off with jitter and does not retry other errors because a failed response can follow a successful mutation. Safe-retry guidance with no idempotency keys (12). No SLA found (0). Serverless and REST v2 are GA; batch jobs are beta (10). 20 + 0 + 15 + 12 + 0 + 10 = 57.

### Transparency & trust: Runpod +14

- GPUsMarket (50): Closed, under Tyga.Cloud licences that are clear on use, but the docs call gpusmarket-host MIT open source while the package says otherwise (10). The privacy policy gives retention periods and names Stripe and MongoDB, while renter data on peer hosts falls outside its controls, which the terms disclaim (15). The terms promise 30 days' notice of material changes, with no deprecation policy or dated notices found (5). Processors partly named, with transfers under SCCs, and no host locations shown in the docs read (6). 10+15+5+6 = 36.
- Runpod (64): Per the 1 October check, not re-read on 4 November (terms bar automated access to runpod.io). Closed service under Delaware terms; the Python SDK is MIT (20). Sync results are kept 1 minute and async 30 minutes, and the docs claim GDPR compliance for EU regions, but no retention periods for pod disks or volumes after deletion and the DPA sits behind trust-centre access (15). Dated notices, REST v1 retiring on 15 November 2026 (announced 18 August) and GraphQL in early 2027; one model endpoint got two weeks' notice (15). 31 regions named with data-centre codes; subprocessor list not found (10).

### Maintenance & community: Runpod +13

- GPUsMarket (69): gpusmarket 2.5.1 on 16 October 2026, 21 days before this check (30). Releases 2.4.18 to 2.5.1 between 17 August and 16 October, and gpusmarket-host 1.5.3 and 1.6.0 (20). Support by chat widget; the repository, which holds only a README, server.json and a licence, has no open issues and one star (5). Published in the official MCP registry under the verified io.github.jyswee namespace, though the newest registry version, 2.4.16, trails npm (12). No dependencies, but an obfuscated build and no public CI (2). 30+20+5+12+2 = 69.
- Runpod (82): Latest release `runpod` 2.1.0 on 3 November 2026, and `@runpod/mcp-server` 4.9.1 on 2 November (30). In the window from 6 August, runpod-python tagged v1.12.0, v2.0.0 and v2.1.0, runpod-mcp thirteen releases from v3.3.0 (17 August) to 4.9.1, and flash v1.20.0 to v1.21.1, besides release candidates (20). Closed service with dated release notes and support; GitHub issue response times weren't readable (github.com refuses us) (12 of 25). Python and JavaScript SDKs, the Flash SDK and the MCP server are official; the standalone `runpod-flash` package was deprecated in October in favour of `runpod` (15). Package health not checked (5). 30 + 20 + 12 + 15 + 5 = 82.

### Agent ergonomics: Runpod +12

- GPUsMarket (50): API and MCP reading. The README counts 32 MCP tools, and the decoded package includes 16 operator admin tools besides the renter tools, with no toolsets (5). Marketplace search takes `limit`, `offset`, `sort` and filters for GPU, price, VRAM, model, instance and workload type (20). Status codes with a one-line meaning each, no error bodies documented (10). No idempotency key on rent or deploy; stop and destroy return a cost summary (5). Only a Node CLI, though every proxy speaks the Ollama and OpenAI formats so existing SDKs work (10). 5+20+10+5+10 = 50.
- Runpod (62): Results can be streamed in chunks of up to 1 MB and polled by job ID, and `include` sizes some REST v2 responses (12). REST v2 list calls take an opaque `cursor` with `limit` (1 to 1,000, 100 for builds, 200 for audit logs) and filters such as actor, action and time on audit logs, per the OpenAPI file in Runpod's MCP repository (20). No error codes or messages documented for serverless operations, per 1 October (5). `/retry`, `/cancel` and `/purge-queue` give safe recovery for jobs, and the MCP server marks destructive tools. No idempotency keys (10). FlashBoot on by default, Python and JavaScript SDKs, the Flash SDK and an official MCP server (15). 12 + 20 + 5 + 10 + 15 = 62.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | GPUsMarket | Runpod | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 33 | 57 | Runpod +24 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 52 | 81 | Runpod +29 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 50 | 62 | Runpod +12 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 30 | 67 | Runpod +37 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 20 | GPUsMarket +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 69 | 82 | Runpod +13 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 50 | 64 | Runpod +14 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -3 | -6 | |
| **Total** | | **39.6 · E** | **55.6 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | GPUsMarket | Runpod |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Tyga.Cloud Ltd | Runpod |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://gpusmarket.com/api/v1` | `https://api.runpod.ai/v2` |
| Transports | stdio, SSE (legacy) | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary. The gpusmarket CLI and gpusmarket-host packages ship under Tyga.Cloud Ltd licences that allow use only with the platform, as obfuscated JavaScript | MIT |
| Tools exposed | 32 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.github.jyswee/gpusmarket` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-10-16 | 2026-11-03 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-06-01 | 2026-03-24 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-03-01 | 2025-08-07 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | 1 stars, 79 npm/wk | 314 stars, 22k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (2) |

## How the scores have moved

### GPUsMarket

No score change since it was listed.

### Runpod

- +2.0 on 4 November 2026 (D to C): product, new evidence, negative event
- +0.1 on 27 October 2026: checklist
- -0.2 on 8 October 2026: checklist

## Verdicts

**GPUsMarket.** An agent can sign up with one API call, search priced GPUs without a key, rent a peer or cloud GPU as an Ollama or OpenAI-compatible endpoint and stop it, billed per second. Prompts on peer rentals pass through individuals' machines, the CLI is obfuscated, and there is no status page, security policy or free tier.

**Runpod.** Per-second billing across more than a dozen serverless GPU classes, with a REST v2 contract that documents rate limits, 429 handling and cursor pagination. Data-centre outages ran 6 to 24 hours in July, August and September 2026, and two minor releases in late October and early November changed CLI and MCP behaviour without notice.

## Before you call either

### GPUsMarket

1. Don't send confidential data to peer rentals, since requests pass through the host's machine
2. Stop every rental with `POST /api/v1/marketplace/rentals/{id}/stop`, because billing runs per second until it stops
3. Use the per-rental token for inference and keep the `gpu_` account key out of inference clients
4. Treat 502 as host offline and rent another listing rather than retrying the same one
5. Ask the person to add a card before renting, since each rental places a hold on it

### Runpod

1. Create a Restricted or Read Only key per endpoint for the agent, not an All key
2. Use REST v2 at api.runpod.io/v2 with a Bearer header; avoid GraphQL, which puts the key in the URL, and read quotas from the `RateLimit-Policy` header
3. Fetch `/run` results within 30 minutes and `/runsync` results within 1 minute, or they're gone
4. Call `/retry` on a failed job ID rather than submitting a duplicate job
5. Check `/health` before relying on an endpoint idle for a week, since max workers drop to 0
6. Set `RUNPOD_API_KEY` or pass `--api-key` when running `rp login` without a terminal; since `runpod` 2.1.0 it fails fast otherwise

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, GPUsMarket or Runpod?

Runpod scores 55.6 (C) on agent readiness against GPUsMarket's 39.6 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. GPUsMarket leads on payments & pricing.

### Do GPUsMarket and Runpod need an API key?

GPUsMarket needs an API key. Runpod takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call GPUsMarket and Runpod without installing anything?

Yes. GPUsMarket has a hosted endpoint at https://gpusmarket.com/api/v1 and Runpod at https://api.runpod.ai/v2.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpusmarket-vs-runpod.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpusmarket-vs-runpod.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "gpusmarket", "b": "runpod"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare gpusmarket runpod`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/gpusmarket.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/runpod.json

## Other comparisons with GPUsMarket or Runpod

- [Baseten vs GPUsMarket](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-gpusmarket.md)
- [Baseten vs Runpod](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-runpod.md)
- [Beam vs GPUsMarket](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/beam-vs-gpusmarket.md)
- [Beam vs Runpod](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/beam-vs-runpod.md)
- [Cerebrium vs GPUsMarket](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cerebrium-vs-gpusmarket.md)
- [Cerebrium vs Runpod](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cerebrium-vs-runpod.md)
- [Cloud Run GPUs vs GPUsMarket](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloud-run-gpus-vs-gpusmarket.md)
- [CoreWeave vs GPUsMarket](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/coreweave-vs-gpusmarket.md)
- [CoreWeave vs Runpod](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/coreweave-vs-runpod.md)
- [Crusoe Cloud vs GPUsMarket](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crusoe-cloud-vs-gpusmarket.md)
- [Crusoe Cloud vs Runpod](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crusoe-cloud-vs-runpod.md)
- [GPUsMarket vs Hugging Face Inference Endpoints](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpusmarket-vs-hugging-face-inference-endpoints.md)
- [GPUsMarket vs Hyperbolic](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpusmarket-vs-hyperbolic.md)
- [GPUsMarket vs Koyeb](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpusmarket-vs-koyeb.md)
- [GPUsMarket vs Lambda Cloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpusmarket-vs-lambda.md)
- [GPUsMarket vs Massed Compute](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpusmarket-vs-massed-compute.md)
- [GPUsMarket vs Modal](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpusmarket-vs-modal.md)
- [GPUsMarket vs Nebius AI Cloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpusmarket-vs-nebius-ai-cloud.md)
- [GPUsMarket vs Northflank](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpusmarket-vs-northflank.md)
- [GPUsMarket vs Replicate Deployments](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpusmarket-vs-replicate-deploy.md)
- [GPUsMarket vs Thunder Compute](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpusmarket-vs-thunder-compute.md)
- [GPUsMarket vs Together GPU Clusters](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpusmarket-vs-together-gpu-clusters.md)
- [GPUsMarket vs Vast.ai](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpusmarket-vs-vast-ai.md)
- [GPUsMarket vs Verda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpusmarket-vs-verda.md)
- [Hugging Face Inference Endpoints vs Runpod](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hugging-face-inference-endpoints-vs-runpod.md)
- [Hyperbolic vs Runpod](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hyperbolic-vs-runpod.md)
- [Koyeb vs Runpod](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/koyeb-vs-runpod.md)
- [Lambda Cloud vs Runpod](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-runpod.md)
- [Massed Compute vs Runpod](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/massed-compute-vs-runpod.md)
- [Modal vs Runpod](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/modal-vs-runpod.md)
- [Nebius AI Cloud vs Runpod](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nebius-ai-cloud-vs-runpod.md)
- [Northflank vs Runpod](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/northflank-vs-runpod.md)
- [Replicate Deployments vs Runpod](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/replicate-deploy-vs-runpod.md)
- [Runpod vs Thunder Compute](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/runpod-vs-thunder-compute.md)
- [Runpod vs Together GPU Clusters](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/runpod-vs-together-gpu-clusters.md)
- [Runpod vs Vast.ai](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/runpod-vs-vast-ai.md)
- [Runpod vs Verda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/runpod-vs-verda.md)
- [Cloud Run GPUs vs Runpod](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloud-run-gpus-vs-runpod.md)

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Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp