Compute for AI work, checked and dated
Pick the right machine before you spend a dollar.
Plain notes on VPS, GPU cloud, serverless, and sandboxes, plus the free credits that actually exist. One writer, official pages only, no hype.
Credit ledger
All credits| Product | Amount | Type | Expiry | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DigitalOcean | $5 | Signup credit | 90 days after signup | Last checked: |
| Modal | $30 per month | Monthly free tier | Monthly allowance on the Starter plan; rollover of unused credit is not stated officially | Last checked: |
Sections
Guides
Longer pieces on picking and using compute for AI work. Start with the VPS vs GPU cloud vs serverless vs sandbox guide.
CreditsFree credits and free tiers, each with amount, expiry, and payment rules read from official pages on a stated date.CompareHead-to-head provider comparisons. Verdicts are "choose A if, choose B if", never a winner declaration.AboutWho writes this, what gets tested, and where the numbers come from.
Latest updates
A VPS suits always-on small services, GPU clouds suit training and heavy inference, serverless suits bursty jobs, and sandboxes suit untrusted agent code. How to pick.
A developer-focused cloud known for VPS instances (Droplets), plus managed databases, Kubernetes, and app hosting.
A serverless compute platform where you deploy Python functions that can attach GPUs, billed at per-second rates.