Rent or trade hashrate on the spot and forward market.
Short answer: A hashrate market rents you exposure period by period at a floating price; a contract locks a term against a hidden difficulty forecast. Spot is the honest structure - keep positions small enough to exit without regret, and verify every worker at the pool.
providers on this page: 12 · status active: 75% · facts verified by us: 75% · publish independent proof: 0%
quick picks
Longest-running Bitcoin pool (2010) plus a Beta hashrate order book and fixed-premium hashrate contracts; BTC-only, low fees.
Pool only: 13-year-old multi-coin mining pool (FPPS 4% / PPLNS 2%); it does NOT sell hashrate, cloud mining or futures.
Public order-book hashrate marketplace plus OTC deals; Swiss entity, KYC required and fees paid per order.
Mining pool (FPPS/PPS+/PPLNS) plus wallet, savings and P2P; pools only, it does not sell cloud hashrate contracts.
Institutional hashrate forward/derivatives desk, miner financier and publisher of the Hashrate Index; KYC + ISDA required.
Large 2014-era mining pool that also sells fixed-term cloud hashrate and hosted mining (buy the ASIC, no up-front power), plus an ASIC shop.
World-leading ASIC OEM - turnkey hosting for owners of hardware; NO retail hashrate product (HashNest dead)
Pool only: 2016-launched all-in-one mining pool (PPS+ 4% / PPLNS 2%, hourly payouts); it does NOT sell hashrate or cloud mining.
KuCoin's live mining products: KuPool (LTC/DOGE/ZEC/BTC mining pool, top-4 LTC globally) and KuMining (cloud-mining contracts, 7-360 days, daily output, mine-first-pay-later).
Spot marketplace renting individual mining rigs across 100+ algorithms with a 3% platform fee and escrow-style mediation.
Desktop miner + PPS+ pool for your own hardware: 1-3% fees, clear withdrawal table, but no disclosed legal entity and payout complaints.
Montreal-based OTC desk buying, selling and structuring physically delivered Bitcoin hashrate; a principal counterparty, not a retail product.
A hashrate market and a cloud mining contract look identical on a marketing page and behave completely differently in your wallet. A market rents you hashrate per period at a price that floats; a contract locks a term. The spot market is the honest structure: prices track hashprice with a spread, and when the underlying moves against you, you just stop renting. The option to walk away is exactly what you are paying a market for - and exactly what a 12-month contract takes away.
The two structures price risk differently [1]:
The forward market exists and is legitimate - hashprice derivatives are the institutional version of it [1] - but consumer-facing "1-year forward contracts at a discount" deserve the skepticism you would give any other locked product with invisible assumptions.
Same coin, same hashrate, two platforms - and the payout method alone can move your effective result by 10-20%:
What does this mean for a renter? If a marketplace charges FPPS-equivalent pricing on the sell side but pays you PPLNS on the buy side, the platform is harvesting variance from both ends. Ask three questions before renting: which pool does the hashrate point at, can I see my worker there, and what happens to shares if the platform drops mid-window.
| Provider | From | Unit | Billing | Access | Proof | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Braiins (Braiins Pool / Braiins Hashpower / Braiins OS) | $8.33 pool 2.5% FPPS (0% with BraiinsOS); Hashpower spot 0% during beta | pool 2.5% FPPS (0% with BraiinsOS); Hashpower spot 0% during beta | n/a | n/a | partial | 7.8 |
| F2Pool | n/a | pool fee 4% FPPS / 2% PPLNS (BTC); no hashrate sold | n/a | n/a | partial | 7.5 |
| NiceHash | $0.502 BTC per EH/day best ask (live order book) | BTC per EH/day best ask (live order book) | n/a | n/a | partial | 7.2 |
| EMCD | n/a | pool fee 1.5% (BTC 4%); no hashrate sold - own-hardware pool | n/a | n/a | partial | 6.6 |
| Luxor Technology (Hashrate Derivatives + Hashrate Index) | $39.76 per-counterparty quotes; no published fee/minimum (derivatives desk) | per-counterparty quotes; no published fee/minimum (derivatives desk) | n/a | n/a | partial | 6.6 |
| AntPool | n/a | pool fee BTC PPLNS 2% / FPPS 4% (live API); no hashrate sold | hour | n/a | partial | 6.5 |
| Bitmain (hashrate products) | n/a | per TH/s/day | n/a | n/a | no | 6.5 |
| ViaBTC | n/a | pool fee 4% PPS+ / 2% PPLNS; no hashrate sold | hour | n/a | partial | 6.1 |
| KuCoin (pool / hashrate products) | n/a | pool fee 3% FPPS on LTC (operator dashboard); KuMining cloud from single-digit-USDT minimums | hour | n/a | partial | 5.7 |
| MiningRigRentals | n/a | 3% fee to rig owners on rental proceeds (renters pay listing price) | n/a | n/a | partial | 5.6 |
| Kryptex | n/a | pool fee 1-3% PPS+ (1% PROP, 1% SOLO); no hashrate sold | n/a | n/a | partial | 5.1 |
| POW.RE | n/a | USD or BTC per PH-day (bilateral quotes; spot from 1 PH-day) | n/a | n/a | partial | 4.7 |
Live from our database - caveats and sources in each linked review.
Renting hashrate usually means the platform's pool relationship, not yours. That creates three failure surfaces, and each has a body count in this market:
BTC hashprice sits at n/a per TH/day in our feed; LTC at n/a, DOGE at n/a [3]. The window matters for sizing: a market position that looked fair on a rising hashprice becomes a loser when the trend turns - which is the whole argument for keeping positions small enough to exit without regret.
Notice how little of the chart is in your control. Difficulty growth, block subsidy, price - none are influenced by your rental. What you control: the spread you pay, the term you lock, and the exit speed when the trend turns. That is why the ranking weighs transparency and terms as heavily as economics.
For the contract side of the same mechanics - fees, proof, custody - see the mining hub. The hashprice guide explains how the number is built; the calculator prices it per position.
A market rents you hashrate per period at a floating price, so your worst case is one period's rent. A contract locks a term, which trades your flexibility for the operator's difficulty forecast - priced into the rate whether or not you agree with it.
FPPS if you can get it - the platform carries pool luck and the transaction-fee share. PPLNS shifts both back to you, so price those rentals accordingly. The payout column in the table above says what each platform documents.
On platforms that support it, yes - and it is the strongest verification available: your worker, your address, your rejected-share count. Check the access column per platform before renting.
Sample your own pool-side worker at different times of day. A worker that shows 4 TH at peak and 2 TH at 3am is intermittent capacity regardless of what the dashboard claims.
Listed price minus live hashprice per TH/day is the platform's cut. Under 10 percent is tight pricing; above 25 percent you should ask what the extra fee is buying.
It moves market risk off their books onto yours. If the token has thin exit liquidity, the advertised rate overstates your real yield - the same red flag as token-paid contracts.
Read the terms. Decent platforms credit downtime; poor ones bill it. It is a contract detail with a real answer on better platforms - and silence on the bad ones.
The mechanics are identical but the economics are not: two reward streams, two difficulty paths. Size those positions on their own hashprice, not on BTC numbers.
One minimum rental. Verify the loop end to end - order, worker, payout - then scale. The first TH is the cheapest scam filter this market offers.
For flexibility, yes - no term lock, no operator-default risk beyond one period, price transparency. For a known total cost and zero operational surface, contracts still win. Model both in the calculator before choosing.