On-Demand Instances

On-demand instances provide GPUs and CPU configurations billed in credits. Choose an available profile and review its price before launching.

Launching an instance

From your dashboard, switch to the On-Demand tab to see available GPU and CPU profiles. Each profile shows its pricing in credits per minute and a capacity tag indicating current availability: High, Medium, or Low. Profiles tagged No Capacity cannot be launched until resources free up. A profile without a tag has no current capacity data.

Click Launch next to any available profile to start an instance.

On-demand CPU and GPU profiles with credit rates, capacity labels, and the minimum-credit launch notice

The On-Demand tab shows each profile’s rate and whether the current balance permits launch.

The default balance tiers allow up to 5 concurrent on-demand instances. Your account configuration can impose different limits. See pricing for how to check current rates.

Accessing your instance

Once an instance is running, it appears under your My Instances tab.

Running and stopped instances in My Instances

The instance row has two actions:

Select the Arrow icon to open the instance in JupyterLab.
Select the Pencil (Edit) icon to open the instance details and choose a browser connection:
- JupyterLab opens notebooks for interactive computing.
- VS Code provides an IDE with extensions and debugging.
- Terminal provides shell access to the instance.

JupyterLab, VS Code, and terminal connection options

You can also connect to running instances remotely via SSH using the qBraid CLI.

Instance lifecycle

On-demand instances have three states you control: Running, Stopped, and Terminated.

Launch → Running → Stop → Stopped → Resume → Running
                      │                  │
                      └── Terminate ◄────┘

Running

Your instance is active and accessible. Compute is billed at the credits-per-minute rate shown on the instance tile. Storage is billed separately based on retained disk capacity and the applicable per-GB-hour rate.

Stopped

Stopping releases compute and preserves your instance’s disk, including files and installed packages. Storage charges continue while the instance is stopped. The rate is per GB-hour and depends on the retained disk capacity.

You can resume a stopped instance at any time. When you do, your files will be exactly as you left them.

Terminated

The instance and its disk are permanently deleted. All files on the instance are lost and cannot be recovered. Billing stops completely.

Stop vs terminate

	Stop	Terminate
Compute	Released (no compute charges)	Deleted
Disk / Files	Preserved	Permanently deleted
Billing	Storage billed per GB-hour of retained disk	No further charges
Resumable	Yes; resume anytime	No; launch a new instance

Stop the instance when you want to return to the same environment later. Your files, packages, and configuration stay intact.

Terminate the instance when you are done and do not need its data. Terminating frees the storage slot and stops all billing.

Some instance types only support termination. Stop and resume are unavailable. For these instances, the Stop button will not appear; only Terminate is shown.

Terminating an instance permanently deletes all files on it. Download or export any important work before terminating. When the provider supports it, stop the instance to keep its disk for resumption.

File persistence

On-demand instances handle files differently from subscription instances:

On-demand instances do not sync files from cloud storage at launch. Each instance has its own disk.
Use the Files tab to download files from cloud storage into an instance. Changes do not sync back to cloud storage.
Stopping preserves the disk. Your files remain available when you resume.
Terminating permanently deletes the disk and all its files.

If you’re working on important files in an on-demand instance, download them to your local machine or push them to a Git repository before terminating.

Billing

On-demand instances are billed per minute in qBraid credits (100 credits = $1 USD).

State	What you are charged
Running	The displayed compute and storage rate
Stopped	Storage for the retained disk
Terminated	No further instance charges

Compute rates vary by instance type. See pricing for how to check current rates. Storage charges depend on retained disk capacity and the applicable rate. Check the instance details instead of assuming a fixed storage price.

The default credit-balance tiers determine how many instances you can provision or resume:

Credit Balance	Concurrent Instances
100+ credits ($1+)	1
1,000+ credits ($10+)	2
2,500+ credits ($25+)	5

An administrator can configure different thresholds or a lower cap. Stopped instances do not use running slots, but still count toward the total instance limit. A balance drop does not immediately remove an already-running instance; continued operation depends on payment renewal.

Manage instances from the CLI

The current CLI provides the same lifecycle through qbraid compute instances:

qbraid compute instances list
qbraid compute instances availability
qbraid compute instances show INSTANCE_ID

Run qbraid compute instances --help to find launch, resume, stop, terminate, and SSH commands for your installed version.