Superluminal vs GarageFarm
By Superluminal Engineering
GarageFarm came second overall, and Superluminal still had the shorter render pipeline in every scene. Classroom: 90.5 against 163.6 seconds.
Published 2026-08-04 · Updated 2026-08-07
Across all four scenes, Superluminal put the complete output on disk first. It also recorded a shorter render pipeline than GarageFarm in every scene.
Superluminal and GarageFarm in the benchmark ranking
Both services are selected. The other six farms stay visible but muted for context.
GarageFarm ranked second overall at 126.2. Its Time Score was 138.2, and its Price Score was 102.2. The benchmark method scores render-pipeline time and price across the completed scenes.
Render pipeline by scene
| Scene | Fastest Superluminal render pipeline | GarageFarm render pipeline | GarageFarm charge |
|---|---|---|---|
 Classroom | 90.5 s | 163.6 s | $7.55 |
 Junk Shop | 64.5 s | 127.3 s | $3.92 |
 Monster Under the Bed | 59.9 s | 88.6 s | $2.73 |
 Fox (EEVEE) | 66.5 s, 10 nodes | 114.0 s | $1.12 |
Superluminal recorded workflow
GarageFarm recorded workflow
Upload, capacity, and billing
GarageFarm's desktop client compressed each package before transfer. Package size divided by transfer time produced an effective rate of 8.2 MB/s. Compression reduced the bytes sent, so this is not a raw network speed.
Submission and monitoring live in different places. The desktop client uploads, then hands off to a separate web manager for watching the job. On Junk Shop the manager's Done status lagged behind the last completed frame, so the job looked unfinished after it was not.
The client's background downloader also fell behind the farm. Classroom frames were still arriving on local disk while the next scene was already rendering, which is where GarageFarm's 16.2-to-301.3-second retrieval tails come from. One more quirk cost us a run setup: the client's test-job mode produces an auxiliary job, and the Fox (EEVEE) scene had to be resubmitted in full-job mode.
Superluminal keeps the whole loop in the tool you submitted from. The add-on uploads, the same add-on streams finished frames back while later frames render, and the web job page mirrors everything live. There is nothing to hand off and no second program to check.
The client submitted each job at High priority. GarageFarm advertised a 60-node cap, while the interface showed a peak of 29 active nodes.
GarageFarm charged a prepaid balance at $0.012 per OctaneBench-hour. The interface showed the final dollar charge after each job, so the price of a run is something you learn when it ends.
Superluminal shows the rate before you submit and the accruing charge while frames finish. Each job settles as an exact dollar amount, and the pricing page publishes the same rates the capacity control uses.
GarageFarm completed every scene without a defect and still finished behind in every scene. That is what the engineering gap looks like when hardware is not the problem.