Sign In
homemodelsimagesvideospostsarticlesbountieschallengeseventsupdatesshop

Insider's Cloud GPU How-to

27

insidertrading's Avatar

insidertrading

Soaring Nerd Badge

Oct 15, 2025

resource guide
vastnsfw workaroundexit strategycloud gpu
Insider's Cloud GPU How-to

Graphics cards are expensive.

Really expensive. I'm hard stuck on a 3080 right now, both fortunate enough to even get that far and just behind enough to struggle running cutting edge stuff. With CivitAI's recent suicide attempt, I felt compelled to share a trick that I use when I need to do a lot of work really fast. Some ground rules first, though.

  1. THIS IS NOT FREE. IT IS NOT EXPENSIVE, BUT IT COSTS VASTLY LESS THAN A GRAPHICS CARD.

  2. You will require basic (I really do mean basic) technical know-how.

  3. This guide is for the scenario I use only. This does not include a how-to on the process of actually USING one of the webuis. For those of you who are unfamiliar, there are tons of guides by people that are better than me.

Let's get started.

Vast.ai

Vast is basically GPU Airbnb. You rent other people’s graphics cards by the hour. You don’t need to beg for invites or pay monthly fees. You pick a card, run your task, and shut it down when you’re done.

Step 1: Make an account and add credit. This should be straightforward. I started with five dollars to get a feel for this myself.

image.png

(Here's a breakdown of when my graphics card is 'Active.' $3.62 will last me 21 hours. The same amount will last 16 days when the VM is off (storage costs money as well, though it is very cheap in small amounts.) You’re paying only for compute time, not setup.)

Step 2: Pick a template

Under the 'Search' Tab in the sidebar, there is a template selection menu. There's a bunch of cool stuff in here, but I'm going to focus on the premade Forge installation. I generate on my own PC using Forge, feel free to use Fooocus, Comfy or basic SD if you'd like.

image.png

You don’t need to manually install anything.

Set your cost filters on the sidebar to ~$.26/hr. This gives you mostly single card machines. Pick a graphics card you like or need, for local generations we're looking mainly for VRAM, 3090s, and most of the 40 or 50 series is great.

Step 3: Pick a card.

image.png

Click rent, and your instance will immediately spin up in the instances tab. If it doesn't, just hit run. After install navigate to (THIS IS FOR FORGE AND A111) extensions, available, and click 'load from' with the default URL in there. Search CIVIT, select CivitAI Browser+.

Install it, and reboot the UI with the button in extensions. That gives you a tab to pull in Civitai Resources.

Congratulations, you can now generate whatever the hell you want without any bank, out of touch site management, or governmental entity telling you that you can first.

FINAL NOTE, PLEASE BE SURE TO 'STOP' YOUR INSTANCE IN VAST WHEN YOU ARE DONE, IT STOPS CHARGING YOU FOR THE GPU

Love you all, enjoy.

27