Rent out a machine you also use yourself. A spot node rents at a discount, and you can take it back at any time: Available when it's free, Paused when you need it.

A spot node is for a machine that is only free some of the time: a gaming PC, a workstation you use during the day, the PCs of a gaming cafe after hours, or servers in your own data center that you keep in reserve for internal peaks. It earns while it's idle, and you take it back whenever you need it, without a mark on your reputation.

How spot works

It rents at a discount. A spot node's price is the platform default for its GPUs minus the spot discount. The card and the Rent page show the exact price. You can't set a custom price on a spot node.
You can take it back at any time. Set the node to Paused and Paralon stops placing work on it:
- a rental gets 2 minutes' notice (the renter sees a countdown and a notification), then it stops. The renter pays only until it stops.
- inference we run on it stops taking new requests and finishes what it's doing, within 2 minutes.
No reputation effect. Spot rentals are never counted toward your node's or your provider score. Renters see a "Spot · reclaimable" label instead of a score, so they know what they're getting.
You keep 80% of what the rental bills, as on any node. See Rewards & Earnings.
Spot nodes run rentals and inference, never render jobs.

Make a node spot

New node: in Add node, pick GPU and, under How it is rented, tick Spot instead of On-demand (the default). In Advanced options, leave Available ticked to start accepting work right away, or untick it to start Paused.
Existing node: on the node's card click Edit and tick Spot. Tick On-demand to switch it back.

Spot can't be switched on or off while the node is rented. Turning it on resets a custom price to the default.

Available and Paused

On a spot node the card shows its state and one button: Pause while it's Available, Resume while it's Paused. Right after you pause a rented node it shows Pausing… with the time left on the renter's notice.

	Rentals	Paralon workloads
Available	yes	yes
Paused	no	no

Pause it when you sit down to use the machine; resume it when you're done. While Paused it earns nothing and nothing new lands on it.

Many machines at once

If you run several spot machines, a bar above your node list shows how many are Available and how many Paused, with Pause all and Resume all. Tick the checkbox on specific cards to act on just those (Pause selected, Resume selected), for example one row of PCs in a cafe.

Data centers and your own infrastructure

If you run your own GPU servers (an on-premise cluster, a private cloud, a hosting business), spot is how you sell spare capacity without giving up control of it:

Connect only the GPUs you want to offer. On a multi-GPU server, start the agent with --gpus device=… to expose some cards and keep the rest for yourself (see Add a Node).
Mark those nodes spot and keep them Available between your own peaks; Pause them, one by one or as a group, when your workloads need the capacity back.
Capacity you dedicate to Paralon for the long term does better as a regular node: a stable machine builds reputation, and renters pay the full price for it.

Spot or regular?

	Regular node	Spot node
Price	Default or your custom price	Default minus the spot discount
Taking it back	Turn rentals off; a running rental continues to its end	Pause: rental ends after 2 minutes' notice
Reputation	Counts	Not counted
Render jobs	Yes	No

Choose regular for a machine that's dedicated to Paralon: renters pay more for one that won't be taken back, and a good reputation brings you more rentals. Choose spot for a machine you also need yourself.

See Add a Node to connect a machine and Node Pricing for how prices are set.