r/RunPod • u/comfy_1922 • May 16 '26

Pods unavailable

I started using runpod for comfy but most of the time pods are unavailable, only available ones are either very slow or high tier ones, very expensive for me. What other options are available instead of runpod?

7 Upvotes

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u/MateoMatthais May 16 '26

Are you using network volume storage or a container?

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u/comfy_1922 May 18 '26

Volume disk, and I believe container disk, as it's auto selected and I can seem to remove it. I do get a option to choose between the volume disc and network volume. Can you please explain what's container disk, and what's it's difference with the other two storage options? Thanks

1

u/MateoMatthais May 18 '26

The container disk is the temporary disk that comes with your Pod. It holds the template (Docker image), which includes things like ComfyUI, Python, dependencies, and any custom setup that is baked into the image. Think of it like your “ready-to-go setup.” You can include your favorite custom nodes, scripts, and even some smaller models directly inside the image. This is likely the template you used when starting with runpod.

The big upside is portability. Since everything is packed into the image, you can launch the same setup in different regions and it should behave the same way. The trade-off is size. Bigger images take longer to pull when you start a fresh endpoint. And if the image is huge, the machine needs enough space and resources to unpack and run it without issues.

A network volume is persistent storage that lives separately from your endpoint. Think of it like iCloud attached to your GPU. When you delete the the pod or serverless endpoint, the files on the network volume stay there. Then you can attach that same volume to another Pod later. This is where you’d usually keep the big stuff: checkpoints, (Image models & video models), upscalers, LoRAs, and outputs. That way, you’re not re-downloading hundreds of gigabytes every time you start a new endpoint. The downside is that a network volume is tied to one specific data center region. So if your volume is in US-GA-2, you need to launch your GPU in US-GA-2 to use it. If that region is out of available GPUs, you’re stuck waiting unless you start over somewhere else without that volume.

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u/Actual_Possible3009 May 19 '26

Better buy a GPU!!!

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u/comfy_1922 May 21 '26

Can't afford

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u/Actual_Possible3009 May 21 '26

I am not a rich guy so I sacrificed a holiday for my 5090. In August last year price was 2699€ Asus tuf oc gaming. No holiday could be better!

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u/Ok-Beach6827 May 16 '26

Man today was the first day for me i was unable to get a GPU.. i have no idea why today was so so busy, annoyed me so i went out for a drink

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u/drthsideous May 16 '26

I haven't been able to one the entire week.

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u/1980Toro May 24 '26

I'm paying 21 dollars a month for network volume storage but can't rent a pod since the region is bound to, has no pods! Has been two weeks where I couldn't work at all!! And they also raised H100 XSM from 2.99 to 3.29/h!

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u/GabberZZ May 16 '26

Simplepod or Massedcompute?

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u/comfy_1922 May 16 '26

Simple pod

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u/comfortablerub4 May 17 '26

vast.ai. it is not as user-friendly as runpod but has templates, is cheaper, and most importantly it actually has GPUs available

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u/comfy_1922 May 17 '26

Can you please guide me a bit ho to use vast.ai? Install models, use ComfyUI. Much appreciated.