RenderDay vs SheepIt
SheepIt is free: you render other members’ frames on your own machine to earn the points that render yours. RenderDay is paid, and runs on dedicated GPUs with a fixed price.
RenderDay
A Blender cloud render service with one fixed price, quoted before payment, after a free test render of your own scene. Frames render in parallel across demand-provisioned NVIDIA RTX 5090 and L40S GPUs, up to 48 GB VRAM per worker, with no subscription, no credits, and no minimum spend.
SheepIt
A free, volunteer-powered distributed render farm founded in 2007. You contribute your own computer’s rendering time to earn points, then spend those points to have your own frames rendered by other members’ machines. There is no payment for the final result.
Feature by feature
Cost
RenderDayPay-as-you-go with one fixed price, quoted before payment, after a free test render of your own scene. No subscription, no credits, no minimum spend; jobs start at €2.01.
SheepItFree, with no payment for the final result. Runs on a points system: rendering others’ frames earns points (38/minute on CPU, 684/minute on a 100% GPU), and ordering your own frame spends points (10/minute CPU, 180/minute GPU). A deeply negative balance soft-pauses your project.
Compute model
RenderDayDedicated cloud infrastructure. Frames render in parallel across demand-provisioned NVIDIA RTX 5090 and L40S GPUs, up to 48 GB VRAM per worker.
SheepItDistributed volunteer computers rather than an owned fleet. NVIDIA GPUs only; AMD GPU support was discontinued in January 2023.
File size limit
RenderDayUp to 5 GB per file.
SheepIt2,048 MB (2 GB) per project.
Render engines
RenderDayCycles and EEVEE.
SheepItCycles, EEVEE, and Workbench.
Blender version support
RenderDayBlender 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 5.0, 5.1, and 5.2.
SheepItEvery stable release from 3.0 to 5.2; new versions added within days of release. No beta or daily-build support.
Turnaround
RenderDayPreprocessing analyses your file in 1-2 minutes, then a quote, then frames render in parallel across workers.
SheepItDepends on volunteer availability. Limited to 3 concurrent rendering projects per user, dropping to 1 if the farm is flooded. No personal per-job wait estimate is published, only a live sitewide queue counter.
Privacy and security
RenderDayFiles are stored in an isolated environment and hard-deleted after the retention window; results available for 30 days.
SheepItProjects render on other members’ personal computers, not owned servers. SheepIt’s terms make no confidentiality guarantee about project content; NSFW uploads can get an account blocked without warning.
Submission method
RenderDayWeb upload only (.blend or .zip); no client software required.
SheepItWeb submission, plus the SheepIt client to contribute compute time (nothing extra on Windows, Java required on Linux/macOS). Blender itself is downloaded automatically.
Support and refunds
RenderDayFree re-render or full refund for RenderDay-caused failures, with a 7-day window to report.
SheepItSupport via forum, Discord, Reddit, and Twitter; Discord is the most active. No dedicated support team or published email address.
Competitor details from SheepIt’s own site and FAQ, retrieved 2026-07-31. Tell us if something has changed and we will correct it.
Which one fits your job
Both cases, on one screen. If the answer is the other one, that is a better outcome than a refund.
Pick SheepIt if
- The render has no hard deadline
- You are able and willing to contribute your own computer’s CPU or GPU time
- The job needs to cost literally nothing; SheepIt’s own FAQ states “everything will be free”
- You are working in an older Blender release (back to 3.0) that predates RenderDay’s 4.3 floor
- You are comfortable with your project being soft-paused if your point balance goes too far negative
Pick RenderDay if
- You need a fixed, guaranteed price before you pay
- Your project is larger than SheepIt’s 2 GB per-project limit
- You want the render to run on dedicated infrastructure rather than other people’s home computers
- You are not able or willing to contribute your own CPU or GPU time
- Confidentiality matters, and you would rather your file never touch a volunteer’s machine
- Preprocessing. We analyse your scene in 1-2 minutes, extracting render settings and detecting cameras before rendering begins.
- No client software. Upload through the browser, with no points to manage and no client to install.
- Refunds for our errors. A free re-render or full refund if a render fails on our side, with a 7-day window to report it.
Settle it with your own scene
Upload the file and we will render real test frames of it, then send one exact fixed price. If the number does not work, you have paid nothing.
Median wait for a price is 6 minutes, and nine jobs in ten are priced within 16.