Superluminal vs Render Network
By Superluminal Engineering
Render Network completed one of three recorded jobs and delivered no Junk Shop frames. Its score was 45.7 against Superluminal's 182.0.
Published 2026-08-04 · Updated 2026-08-07
Superluminal completed all four scenes and reached local disk first. Render Network completed Classroom, then two paid Junk Shop attempts returned no downloadable output.
Superluminal and Render Network in the benchmark ranking
Both services are selected. The other six farms stay visible but muted for context.
Render Network ranked eighth overall at 45.7. Its Time Score was 49.7 from the completed Classroom run. Its Price Score was 37.7 after all $119.49 in recorded Junk Shop charges were added to the completed Classroom charge. The benchmark method does not invent completion times for failed attempts or penalize untested scenes.
Preparing the job
Render Network accepted a package prepared outside the service. You collect the textures, libraries, and caches yourself, and a file you forget becomes a render error. We uploaded the finished package through the browser at 3.5 MB/s.
Superluminal packages the project for you. The add-on traces every dependency inside Blender, names anything missing or unreadable before upload, and sends the package in parallel chunks. Preparation is the part of the job it does not let you get wrong.
Watching Classroom render
The interface reported up to 100 frames in progress, but no physical node count or GPU model. Active rendering took 1,157.9 seconds. Displayed progress reached 90 percent, then the last 10 percent consumed about 62 percent of the render wall time. A progress bar that spends most of its life at the end is a schedule you cannot plan around.
The Superluminal job page counts differently. Every frame shows as finished, active, or queued on a named machine, with its own preview, render time, and log. Progress is a list of real frames, not an aggregate percentage, so what you see at 90 percent is 90 percent of the work.
 Classroom result | Superluminal, 30 nodes | Render Network |
|---|---|---|
| Verified frames | 145 | 145 |
| Render pipeline | 90.5 s | 1,186.6 s |
| Recorded charge | $1.90 | 14.65 RNDR Credits |
Getting the frames back
Browser downloads opened a separate prompt for each file. We switched to Render Network's standalone downloader, which retrieved the complete set about 245 seconds after completion.
Superluminal starts delivery during the render. Background workers upload each finished frame while other nodes keep rendering, and the add-on streams the files to local disk as they appear. On this scene the frames were arriving before the job was done.
Superluminal recorded workflow
Render Network recorded workflow
Junk Shop failed twice
Neither attempt produced downloadable output.
The first recording ended at 45 percent with zero complete frames and 12.64 RNDR Credits on the meter. A later dashboard entry showed the job as canceled.
The retry is the recording worth watching. At 54 percent progress with zero completed frames, the meter already showed 53.46 credits. Progress then froze at 54 percent for a measured 130 seconds while the spend rose by another 42.18 credits. The balance went negative, and the job kept metering against it. Nothing stopped until we canceled by hand at 106.85 credits. The canceled state showed one failed frame and no complete frames.
What a failure costs on each service
Both Render Network attempts kept their full charge, because its meter runs on failed work.
Superluminal bills the measured render seconds of each finished frame and nothing else. A failed frame, a canceled frame, and a stalled job produce no charge, and the live cost on the job page only moves when a frame actually lands. The same Junk Shop scene rendered for $0.48.
That difference is the whole verdict of this comparison. One service charges for outcomes. The other charged for two attempts at nothing.