Help for renters

Stopping and saving your work

What's kept when a rental stops, and how to keep what you need.

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When a rental stops, its machine's copy of the files is deleted, however it stops. While it runs, we save its files regularly, so another machine can take over if this one drops. When it stops, its last save is kept for a day: the rental's page then has Start again with these files. After that day it's deleted too. Saves can't be downloaded, and anything newer than the last save is lost, so save what you need while it's running.

How to save your work

Download it through the app, in your browser (or through km open, which shows the same app):

• Jupyter: right-click a file in the file list and choose Download. For a whole folder, zip it first, for example in a notebook cell: import shutil; shutil.make_archive("results", "zip", "outputs"), then download results.zip.
• ComfyUI: right-click a finished image to save it to your computer.
• Open WebUI: copy what you need from the chat, or export your chats from its settings.

From a terminal, km pull outputs copies a whole folder (here, /workspace/outputs) to your computer in one go, for any template. Using km

Menus vary a little between versions of each app. You can also send files from the rental to your own storage, such as a Git repository or Hugging Face. That needs a login token on the rental, which the host could see: use one that can do only that, and cancel it afterwards.

Stopping

Click Stop on the rental's page, or run km stop. You're charged to the second up to then, and the rest of the money set aside goes back to your balance. We ask once to make sure, then it stops straight away, so save first.

To carry on later, open the ended rental's page within a day and click Start again with these files. A new rental of the same app starts on a machine with an available card, its files put back as of the last save, and is billed as a new rental. Storing the save for that day costs nothing.

Every way a rental stops

• You stop it.
• It reaches the time limit you set. We email you 10 minutes before. Time limits
• It sits unused. After 30 minutes unused we email you; after 60 minutes we stop it. What counts as using it
• Your credit runs out. We email you when it covers 30 minutes or less, and the rental runs to the end of the time you've paid for. How billing works
• Its machine goes offline and no other can take over (below).
• It doesn't get ready within 20 minutes. You pay nothing.
• Its app keeps crashing. A crashed app starts again by itself and keeps its files; if it stops 4 times within an hour, we end the rental.
• You press "It's broken". What's refunded
• The host reports it for misuse, such as crypto mining. You're charged for the time it ran.
• Your account is suspended, for example after a disputed card payment.

Each time, the rental's page says it ended and why, and unused time goes back to your balance.

If the host's machine goes offline

Home PCs sometimes lose power or internet. Your rental saves its files to our storage regularly, so another machine can pick it up. If the machine running it stops answering us:

• You're not charged for the time it's out of contact.
• After 5 minutes, we move your rental to another machine with the same card model, at the price you booked, and email you. It starts from the last save that fully reached us, and billing starts again when it's ready.
• You don't pay for the work lost since that save. The host isn't paid for it either.
• What survives depends on the app. A chat carries on where it left off. ComfyUI keeps its workflows, models, finished images and queue, and loses the image being made. A notebook keeps the files in /workspace, but what was in memory is gone, so run your steps again. What each kind of work keeps
• If there's no complete save yet, a move can start fresh, with a notice. A restore that fails never starts empty. If no machine with the same card model is free within 10 minutes, the rental ends and we email you.
• It counts against the machine that failed. Machines that keep failing renters are taken off.

Updated October 8, 2026. Questions? Email support@kernelmachine.com.