Three ways a render farm can work
Most farms that render Blender follow one of three models. The model shapes your experience more than the hardware does, so it is the first thing worth knowing about any farm.
Metered farms
You buy credits, points or a prepaid balance, submit through the farm's desktop client or Blender plugin, and the cost is deducted as the machines work. The unit is usually GHz-hours for CPU and OctaneBench-hours (OBh) for GPU, often with a multiplier if you ask for higher priority. A few run the same idea as a monthly subscription with a quota of GPU minutes. It is the oldest and most common model, and farms built on it usually render many applications besides Blender.
Examples: RebusFarm, GarageFarm.NET, Fox Renderfarm.
Rented machines
You rent a remote GPU workstation by the hour, connect to it over remote desktop, install Blender and render as you would at home. Nothing is managed for you, and that is the point: your exact Blender build, your add-ons, your settings. The meter runs for as long as the machine is on, setup and idle time included.
Example: iRender.
Quoted farms
The farm looks at your project first and gives you a fixed price before anything is charged. How that price is reached varies from farm to farm. We evaluate your own project on the farm, so the price comes from your scene rather than from a rate card, and four test frames come back with it for you to check. Either way, you agree to a number, not a rate.
Examples: Blendergrid, and BoltRenders, the farm that publishes this guide.
What to expect, stage by stage
Here is one job taken through each model, from a finished scene on your machine to frames on your disk.
No column wins every row. A metered farm hands you frames as they finish, inside a client that knows every major application. A rented machine gives you complete control. What we trade away for a fixed price is the watching: frames arrive together at the end. By the final render the testing is over, and what matters is when it will be done and what it will cost.
Which one fits your work
Start from what the project needs, not from a list of farms. Where another model serves you better, we say so.
- Your pipeline mixes Blender with Maya, Cinema 4D, Houdini or 3ds Max
- A metered farm
One account and one client for every application. We only render Blender.
- You need a custom Blender build, or want to drive the machine yourself
- A rented machine
Full control, as long as you are happy to manage the session and the meter.
- You are learning, and the budget is zero
- A community farm
Volunteer farms such as SheepIt render for free in exchange for your own machine's time. Slower and without a deadline, but free.
- You need a fast turnaround at a fair price, with the cost and time settled up front
- BoltRenders
A free evaluation of your scene sets a fixed price and render time you can budget and quote on. Days of rendering come back in hours: the 360-frame job below rendered in about an hour, for $22.99.
Questions to ask any farm before you upload
Whichever farm you are considering, these are the answers that decide whether the job ends the way you planned.
- Will I see real frames of my own scene before I pay? A calculator's estimate is not your scene rendered on their hardware.
- Can the price change after I approve the job? On a metered bill it can. Find out how far.
- What unit am I paying in? GHz-hours, OBh, points and credits all need converting before you can compare them with anything.
- What happens if a texture is missing? Either the farm catches it before the job, or you pay for the frames it ruined.
- Does it support my Blender version and my add-ons? Old projects and third-party add-ons are where farms differ most.
- What happens to my files afterwards? Where the project is stored, who can reach it and when it is deleted.
- How long are the finished frames kept? Every farm deletes output eventually. Plan the download around it.
- What happens if the render fails or runs late? Whether you still pay for a failed job, and whether anyone tells you before a deadline slips.
Our own answers, for the record. Four real frames before you pay. The price is fixed once you approve it, in money rather than units. The evaluation catches a broken file before the job starts. Every Blender version is supported, and LaunchControl packs the add-ons your render depends on. Files never persist on the render nodes. Frames are kept for 7 days, then everything is deleted with the job, sooner if you delete it. A failed render is refunded to your balance automatically, and if a render starts short of machines, the delivery time is updated, part of the price comes back to your balance and we email you.
What a quote looks like here
Lynxdesign is one of the real jobs on our pricing page: 360 frames of Cycles animation at 1920 x 1080, saved in Blender 4.1. Before anything was charged, its evaluation returned this quote, along with four test frames to check.
Blender 4.1 · Cycles · 1920 x 1080 · 360 frames · PNG
- Economy
- $17.09
- Standard
- $22.99
- Express
- $29.51
On a desktop RTX 4090, one frame of this scene takes 1m 46s, so the whole animation is more than ten hours of a workstation you cannot use for anything else. Here it was about four hours on Economy, an hour on Standard, or under half that on Express for $6.52 more, with all three prices set before the render began. The job rendered in the time it was quoted.
Express costs more because the render runs on more of the farm, not because it jumps a queue: nobody else's job waits behind it. And this is the difference the table above describes. On a metered farm, the same job starts with an estimate and ends with a bill.
Questions about choosing a render farm
What is the best render farm for Blender?
The one whose model fits your project. For a Blender-only pipeline with a deadline and a budget, a farm that quotes from a test render removes the most uncertainty. For a pipeline that mixes applications, a large metered farm is the better fit.
Why doesn't this guide list other farms' prices?
They change, and most are quoted in units such as GHz-hours or OctaneBench-hours that only turn into money once your scene has rendered. The fair comparison is your own project on each farm's free trial.
How accurate is a render farm cost estimate?
An estimate is a projection, and a metered bill follows what the render actually uses. Complex scenes are where the two drift apart. A fixed quote moves that risk from you to the farm.
Is a render farm faster than a rented GPU?
For an animation, usually. A farm spreads the frames across many machines at once, while a rented workstation renders them one after another on the GPUs it has.
Is my project safe on a render farm?
Ask each farm where your files are stored, who can reach them and when they are deleted. On BoltRenders a project is isolated for its whole lifecycle, never persists on the render nodes, and is deleted with the job, 7 days after it completes or sooner if you delete it.
Do I need to install anything to use a render farm?
It depends on the model. Metered farms usually need their own desktop client or plugin, and a rented machine needs Blender set up on it. On BoltRenders you can upload in the browser, or use the free LaunchControl add-on if you prefer to submit from inside Blender.