SkyPilot: Run AI/ML Anywhere, Cheapest
Intercloud broker that automatically selects the cheapest cloud for your GPU workload, handles spot instance failover, and accounts for data gravity. Covers Q48–Q50.
GPU prices vary dramatically between cloud providers, regions, and time of day. A4100 instance on GCP might be 30% cheaper than AWS at this moment, but that could flip tomorrow. SkyPilot solves this by acting as an intercloud broker: you describe what you need, it finds the cheapest option — transparently and automatically.
💡 SkyPilot's core value proposition
SkyPilot Intercloud Broker Architecture
SkyPilot sits between your application and the cloud providers, handling selection, provisioning, and execution. Built on Ray for distributed task execution.
Click any component to learn about its role.
SkyPilot acts as an intercloud broker: it abstracts away cloud-specific APIs and pricing, letting you describe what you need (e.g., “4× A100 GPUs, spot okay, budget $50”) and it finds the cheapest available option across all supported clouds.
Interactive Cost Optimizer
Configure your GPU type, count, and training duration. SkyPilot automatically selects the cheapest cloud option.
The Data Gravity Problem
Moving large training datasets between clouds can cost more than the compute savings. SkyPilot accounts for egress fees when comparing cloud options.
Data gravity in practice:
- Large datasets “attract” computation — moving data is expensive
- Inter-region egress costs can exceed compute savings from a cheaper cloud
- SkyPilot accounts for data gravity by penalizing cross-cloud/region jobs when the penalty exceeds the savings
- Solution: keep data and compute co-located, or use object stores with multi-cloud replication
Spot Instance Failover
Spot instances can be up to 90% cheaper than on-demand, but can be preempted with little warning. SkyPilot handles failover automatically — the user only needs to implement checkpointing.
Manual vs SkyPilot Cloud Management
| Task | Manual (you) | With SkyPilot |
|---|---|---|
| Find cheapest GPU | Check 3 cloud pricing pages, do math | Automatic (queries Service Catalog) |
| Provision instance | Cloud-specific CLI / console | sky launch — cloud-agnostic |
| Handle spot preemption | Write custom monitoring + retry logic | Automatic failover to next best option |
| Data gravity | Manual egress cost calculation | Factored into cost comparison |
| Multi-cloud portability | Rewrite config per cloud | Single YAML, any cloud |
| Cost tracking | Cloud billing dashboard (1 day lag) | sky cost-report — real-time |