SpotRefund

Who it's for

Solo AI developers and 2-10 person GPU teams using RunPod, Vast.ai, or Lambda spot GPUs; today they cope with provider web consoles, CSV exports, spreadsheets, and manual support tickets.

The problem

Payment: billed GPU minutes after preemption, host failure, or unreachable instances; Time: manual reconciliation of invoice line items to event logs and writing dispute tickets.

How to build it

Hosted web audit plus CLI: read-only API key or CSV upload, outputs CSV/PDF ledger and Markdown/PDF support-ticket drafts, optional weekly email/Slack summary.

How it makes money

GPU teams pay $49/month per workspace or $199 for a one-time audit because recovered credits can exceed the fee; free provider consoles cannot reconcile multi-provider interruption events to invoice lines or generate dispute packets.

Why it doesn't exist yet

Incumbents skip: GPU clouds expose raw metrics but have little incentive to package dispute-ready refunds, and FinOps tools focus general AWS/CPU spend. Indie gap: provider-specific interruption-to-invoice mapping and refund templates for two or three GPU clouds.

First users

First 10 users come from r/LocalLLaMA, GPU World/Computable GPU Index threads, and RunPod/Vast community channels via a free audit of last month's invoice with a public savings receipt.

Build size

2 people x 8 weeks; includes read-only RunPod and Vast.ai connectors, CSV invoice/event import, discrepancy rules, ledger, ticket templates; excludes Kubernetes scheduling, AWS/GCP/Azure connectors, automatic ticket submission, and legal collections.

Biggest risk

RunPod, Vast.ai, or Lambda ships automatic itemized interruption credits or blocks third-party access to billing/event APIs, removing the core reconciliation value.

Conditions for a hit (all 3 required)

• Given read-only credentials or CSV exports for one billing month from RunPod or Vast.ai, it produces a ledger listing instance ID, billed minutes, unavailable minutes, disputed amount, and total credit within 15 minutes.
• For each disputed instance, it outputs a provider-specific support-ticket draft containing invoice line ID, timestamps, requested credit amount, and copy-ready Markdown/PDF.
• A public demo accepts a synthetic sample dataset and returns a hash-stamped PDF report showing at least three disputed line items and a total credit, with no payment credentials required.

How it's judged (in 6 months)

GitHub repository reaches 750 stars or Product Hunt daily top 5(judgment date 2027-03-05)

AI self-confidence 55/100 — self-reported likelihood of meeting the criterion, not a business success rate