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How-to: stop and start a pod to control spend without losing its disks

This is a worked task for the most common cost-control flow. The reference pages (rp doc pod stop, rp doc pod start, rp doc pod get) document the individual flags; this page shows them composed into a pause-and-resume cycle.

Goal: stop paying for a pod's GPU while keeping its disks and data, then bring it back exactly as it was.

Steps

  1. Find the pod. The verbs take the pod by id, so read it from the list first:

$ rp pod list

  1. Stop the pod. The GPU (or CPU) charge ceases; the disks are kept:

$ rp pod stop rp_abc123

Stopping is asynchronous — the command returns once the transition is accepted, not once the pod is stopped. Poll with:

$ rp pod get rp_abc123

  1. Start it again when you need it:

$ rp pod start rp_abc123

Starting is asynchronous too, and can fail later if the pod's GPU type is out of stock in its datacentre — poll rp pod get and check stock with rp stock gpu if the pod stays down.

Notes

  • A stopped pod still bills for its storage; only the compute charge ceases. Use rp pod delete <id> to stop paying entirely.
  • A locked pod refuses to stop. Unlock it first with rp pod update <id> --locked false.
  • rp pod restart <id> recreates the container in one step — anything written outside /workspace or a network volume is lost. A stop/start cycle preserves disk state; a restart does not promise to.
  • To tear everything down rather than pause, see Tear down endpoints, pods, and volumes in the right order.