Superluminal vs Blendergrid
By Superluminal Engineering
Blendergrid completed three Cycles render pipelines in 3,747.6 to 5,123.7 seconds. Its three-scene Overall Score was 42.1 against Superluminal's 182.0.
Published 2026-08-04 · Updated 2026-08-07
Superluminal recorded the shorter render pipeline in each shared Cycles scene. Blendergrid took 3,747.6 to 5,123.7 render-pipeline seconds after upload and before download.
Superluminal and Blendergrid in the benchmark ranking
Both services are selected. The other six farms stay visible but muted for context.
Three Blendergrid runs set its score
Blendergrid ranks ninth at 42.1. Its Time Score is 22.9, and its Price Score is 80.6 across the three tested scenes.
Blendergrid has no Fox (EEVEE) run. The benchmark method discloses the missing scene but does not apply a numeric penalty.
| Scene | Superluminal render pipeline | Blendergrid render pipeline | Blendergrid displayed two-hour quote |
|---|---|---|---|
 Classroom | 90.5 s, 30 nodes | 5,123.7 s | $11.73 |
 Junk Shop | 64.5 s, 30 nodes | 4,452.9 s | $7.30 |
 Monster Under the Bed | 59.9 s, 30 nodes | 3,747.6 s | $4.10 |
The Blendergrid recordings show the selected quote totals. They do not show a final debit or invoice.
Required setup took 170.8 to 493.1 seconds
Each run passed through upload, checking, settings review, price benchmarking, and quote selection before render submission.
| Scene | Upload | Required setup and analysis | Submit to first completed batch | Finalization | Download setup and transfer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Classroom | 23.1 s | 325.0 s | 196.0 s | 102.8 s | 42.5 s |
| Junk Shop | 84.6 s | 493.1 s | 185.6 s | 95.5 s | 24.5 s |
| Monster | 14.2 s | 170.8 s | 242.3 s | 40.0 s | 22.3 s |
These phase values retain provider analysis, benchmarking, checking, loading, queueing, rendering, and finalization. They exclude only the documented operator intervals between required actions.
Superluminal has none of those stages. The add-on checks the project inside Blender, the upload starts the job, and there is no quote to select because the rate for your chosen node count is visible before you submit. Between pressing Submit and the first frame rendering, nothing needs you.
Blendergrid does not expose worker-start time, hardware, or node allocation. The queue value ends at the first visible completed-frame batch, not physical compute start.
An hour of frames arriving two at a time
The recordings show what that opacity feels like. Every run passed a mandatory double preprocessing stage, checking and then price benchmarking, before a render could start. After submission, completed frames arrived in one sequential stream, normally advancing in two-frame batches, with no worker counter and no hardware named anywhere.
That stream is why the benchmark infers about one worker equivalent for Blendergrid. One machine working through 145 frames is an accurate mental model for the 85-minute Classroom wait. After the last frame, a finalization stage held the output for another 40.0 to 102.8 seconds before download setup began.
The same submission on Superluminal starts from the opposite premise. You choose 5, 10, or 30 nodes and see the rate before you commit. The job page shows every frame's state and the machine rendering it, and finished frames stream to local disk while the rest render. The 90.5-second Classroom time in the table above is that system at 30 nodes. The interface guide walks the same visibility.
Rendering dominated each workflow
The observed first-batch-to-all-frames spans were 4,500.0 seconds for Classroom, 3,678.8 seconds for Junk Shop, and 3,294.5 seconds for Monster.
All 337 expected PNG files passed archive checks. The output inventories also verified contiguous frame names and decoded the first, middle, and last images.
