How bidding works
You submit a bid from the reservation form for a specific deployment. The bid records the node count you want, the date range, and the price per GPU-hour you’re offering. The reserve form does not collect a payment method — the bid is created in the Pending deposit state. From there, a bid moves to Active and enters review one of two ways:- No down payment required — the bid transitions to Active automatically after submission and becomes visible to the Ornn team.
- Down payment required — the existing-bid checkout flow at
/checkout?bid=<bid-id>(whichornn exchange createopens) collects a required down payment. Once the payment settles, the bid transitions to Active and becomes visible to the Ornn team.
Accepting a bid is a status change — it does not charge you, create a reservation, consume the listing’s capacity, or generate an invoice. A confirmed reservation is created separately after acceptance, when you sign the reservation agreement with Ornn.
Bid lifecycle
A bid moves through four states. The web app renders each label from the underlying status (it replaces underscores with spaces and capitalizes the first letter). The raw values shown in the CLI and detail pages are listed for reference.
Bids you no longer want can be withdrawn while they are still Pending deposit or Active. Withdrawing removes the bid from the review queue.
What you submit in a bid
When you submit the reservation form, the bid captures:- Maximum node count: how many nodes you want to reserve at most. Ornn sells capacity in whole nodes; partial nodes are rejected with a
400. - Minimum node count: the smallest number of nodes you’d still accept. The reserve form collects this as a Min/Max range alongside the maximum. When the listing only has a single node available (or a fixed quantity), no range is offered and the bid is all-or-nothing for that count.
- Start date and end date: the term you want.
- Bid price per GPU-hour: your offered price, in USD.
min_node_count and node_count (the maximum). When the Ornn team accepts, they can fill any whole-node count between your minimum and maximum — the reservation is created for the filled count, not necessarily your full requested count.
When the bid is accepted, the accepted node count and an accepted_at timestamp are recorded. The accepted count falls within your Min/Max range.
Field reference
For scripted use, the bid record exposes these raw fields:Pricing your bid
The reservation form’s summary rail shows a Rate (Buy-now price) figure: the deployment’s buy-now price per GPU-hour. Use it as a reference — it is the fixed rate at which a buy-now purchase would settle. You can bid below, at, or above the buy-now price. Bids do not have a price ceiling, and a bid at or above the buy-now rate is not auto-converted into a reservation. Every bid lands as Pending deposit, advances to Active (immediately, or after the required down payment settles), and awaits review by the Ornn team. If you want a listing at its published rate with no review step, choose Buy now instead of submitting a bid. If the listing publishes a floor price, it sets the lowest bid the operator will consider. The reserve form checks your bid against the floor before it lets you continue: a bid below the floor is blocked with a message naming the minimum acceptable rate, so you catch it before submitting. The floor is displayed at the precision it’s compared at (up to four decimals). When a listing has no floor set, no lower bound applies. Some listings publish no buy-now price — the rate column shows a placeholder (”—”) instead of a number. Those listings are bid-only; there is no fixed rate to reference, and you set the price you’re offering.Updating or withdrawing a bid
You can update or withdraw a bid while it is Pending deposit or Active (that is, before it’s accepted or rejected).- Update: from the bid detail page, change the node count, dates, or price, then save. All bid fields are submitted together.
- Withdraw: from the bid detail page, click Withdraw bid to remove the bid from the review queue.
Once a bid is Accepted or Rejected, it can no longer be updated or withdrawn.
Managing bids from the CLI
All bid actions are available through the Ornn Compute CLI. Preferornn exchange (ornn bid is an alias). ornn exchange create submits the bid and opens the existing-bid checkout flow at /checkout?bid=<bid-id> in your browser, which may collect the required down payment before the bid becomes active:
The CLI still accepts legacy
--gpu-count and --min-gpu-count flags; they are converted to node counts using the listing’s GPUs per node. The reserve form submits node_count and min_node_count directly. Older bids may carry null min values or a value equal to node_count (all-or-nothing).ornn exchange withdraw is the CLI equivalent of Withdraw bid in the web app. See the Ornn Compute CLI for full syntax.
What’s next
Managing your bids
Track active bids, withdraw pending offers, and see what happens after acceptance.
Reserving compute
Browse Listings and open the reserve form to submit your bid.