Layer 2.5 · head to head
Akash Network vs io.net
Two decentralised models, and what token incentives do to your supply.
| Akash Network | io.net | |
|---|---|---|
| Can you leave | Movable with effort. Expect to redo images, storage wiring and networking. | Movable with effort. Expect to redo images, storage wiring and networking. |
| Counterparty | No company to sue and no SLA to invoke. That is the design, not a defect. | Token-incentivised supply behaves differently from contracted supply. Capacity can appear and vanish with the incentive schedule rather than with demand. |
| What it is | Brokers capacity somebody else owns. Cheapest headline rates, and the machine you get is not the machine you chose. | Brokers capacity somebody else owns. Cheapest headline rates, and the machine you get is not the machine you chose. |
| How you reach it | You push a container image and it runs. No cluster to operate. | You push a container image and it runs. No cluster to operate. |
| Accelerators | Aggregated, mostly consumer and older datacentre parts | Aggregated consumer and datacentre GPUs |
| Regions | Distributed | Distributed |
| Pricing model | Reverse auction, crypto-settled. | Marketplace, crypto-settled options. |
| Getting started | Low, but requires wallet mechanics. | Low. |
| Capacity | Small relative to the commercial market. | Aggregated, volatile. |
| Ownership | Decentralised protocol. | Private, token-linked. |
Akash Network
For: Teams with an explicit decentralisation requirement.
The catch: The operational overhead is real and the GPU supply is thin. Choose it for the principle, and know that you are.
Economics: Auction pricing can undercut everything. Availability of anything modern is the binding constraint.
io.net
For: Price-driven batch work by teams comfortable with the model.
The catch: The token layer is a real variable in your supply, not a payment detail.
Economics: Can be very cheap. Model the supply risk, not just the rate.
Neither table row is a price
Deliberately. Published on-demand rates at this layer move weekly, and essentially nobody signing a real contract pays them — every serious buyer pays less than every list figure either of these companies publishes. Quoting one here would date this page within a month.
The GPU rental price index carries dated, sourced figures instead, and the durable finding there is the spread: the identical H100 rents from roughly $1.38 to $12.29 an hour depending only on who you rent it from.
The layers underneath both
Whichever you pick is renting you chips in a building that needs power. In 2026 that is the constraint that binds: Microsoft has disclosed an Azure backlog it cannot fill for want of megawatts rather than accelerators, and the US interconnection queue exceeds 2,600 GW with roughly 80% of projects withdrawing before they energise.
Layer 2 — Silicon · Layer 1 — Energy · The interconnection queue