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General FAQs

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How is my compute usage calculated?

Every job you run is divided into one or more tasks. We track container usage throughout each task's lifecycle—not the total container time—to ensure a fair calculation of your job's price.

We measure actual usage statistics, such as CPU time and average RAM consumption within your container, rather than relying on the overall machine capacity. These metrics are then matched with the rates listed on our website to calculate the cost for each billable process across your job's lifecycle.

The following image illustrates what qualifies as billable process:

Unlike other services, we do not charge for idle container time or machine pre-warming. Each app you build includes guaranteed idle capacity, reducing cold starts and ensuring smooth execution. This means you only pay for the time your job is actively running—not before or after.

Why choose ByteNite over my current cloud provider?

With ByteNite, you can significantly improve your workload performance without writing additional code, all while saving money.

Traditional cloud platforms, designed as IaaS, often struggle to offer a seamless feature ecosystem that balances performance and ease of use / ByteNite accelerates workloads with turnkey built-in structures and functions.
Other serverless solutions may charge up to seven times their compute cost / ByteNite leverages a provider network to effectively arbitrate compute costs, passing on savings of up to 65% on compute rates directly to you.

What are ByteChips?

We use a simple metric called ByteChip to record computing usage. It's equivalent to one hour of compute on a unit container:

C1 = 1 hour computing on 1 vCPU + 1 GiB

This metric makes it easier to track compute time. For example, suppose a job using 0.45 vCPU-hours and 0.89 GiB-hours costs BYC 0.49351461. This would be the cost of running a job for half an hour on a container with 1 vCPU and 1 GiB of memory.

This is the current USD value of 1 ByteChip:

C1 = $

ByteChips charges accumulate in your wallet, allowing you to track total computing hours. Don't worry, dollar amounts are displayed on the billing page and invoices as well, so you can always see how much you're spending.

What happens if my wallet balance runs out?

We operate a post-paid billing system, which allows you to maintain a negative balance. This means that you will receive a single charge at the end of your billing cycle equating to your balance if negative. Typically, this charge occurs on the 1st of the month. However, if your usage exceeds a certain threshold during the cycle, we will issue a bill in the middle of the cycle. These thresholds are adjusted based on your past usage patterns.

You can always manually add ByteChips to your balance by doing a top-up or redeeming credits.

How can I keep track of my compute usage?

Navigate to your Billing Page from the Computing Platform to monitor your ByteChip usage. Through the billing overview section, you can track your monthly computing power usage and view the cost breakdown for each app. To inspect a specific charge, simply access the transaction history on your Billing Page and use filters to find the desired charge or transaction.

What types of applications can I run on ByteNite?

You can deploy any application that can run on a container, starting from your Docker container image of choice.

ByteNite works best with background jobs and worker processes. These applications may include data processing pipelines for ETL tasks, AI and machine learning model inference using frameworks like TensorFlow or PyTorch, and more.

Essentially, any custom application that can be packaged into a Docker container and that runs stateless jobs can leverage ByteNite's serverless computing capabilities, offering flexibility and scalability without the need for complex infrastructure setup.

Can I configure my own custom container image to use on ByteNite?

Currently, using the Developer SDK, you can pick any container image from Docker Hub and use it to spin up your serverless applications. Docker hub also allows you to import and publish your own container image.

How does distributed computing enhance modern computing processes?

Distributed computing is extensively utilized in modern computing processes, as it enables the division of larger workloads into smaller, more manageable chunks, thereby facilitating quicker and more efficient processing. In many scenarios—such as handling large data sets or training models—distributed computing is indispensable. Without it, applications would exceed the main memory capacity of a standard machine, and be unable to run.

Today, the complexity of distributed computing has been significantly reduced with tools like Kubernetes for container orchestration and frameworks like Ray for AI/ML applications. However, the expertise required to understand and implement these solutions often remains within the purview of larger teams that can afford the additional engineers needed to optimize their infrastructure.

Can I set usage limits to control my spending?

We're developing a usage threshold notification feature to keep you informed about your daily or monthly usage. This will give you peace of mind while running event-driven, scalable applications. If you're interested in this feature, let us know by giving it a thumbs up here: https://bytenite.canny.io/feature-requests

Are there any free-tier options or credits available?

We'd love to help you set up your app on ByteNite by offering a limited amount of free credits for testing. If you're interested, feel free to reach out to us to discuss your project. Talk to us