[cmeacham98]

Yes, you're missing the part where that instance has

1. Garbage internet speeds (~20Mbps symmetrical)

2. 97% reliability (which, if I understand correctly, means a 3% chance of your task just randomly getting dropped part way through)

3. An ancient CPU (admittedly, it was really good in 2014)

The next cheapest 3090 is about 25% more expensive, and the next after that another 25% - presumably rentaflop has more than 1 customer at a time. Within about 10-15 GPUs on vast.ai the price is literally double. And of course, you're paying for the convenience of them just doing the render for you, rather than having to deal with getting dropped in a docker container.