(CHOPPING SINCE 2021)

my history with salad

TLDR: discovered salad from a tech content creator one day in 2021, got invested, joined salad, ran it for a while, then quitted it since i got concerned about temps, then rejoined but crypto started dying, then earnings shot up with the container beta, then earnings plummeted to less than a cent per day, then shot back up again after getting sgs, then plummeted again. Became a tester for a new sgs workload, and now I'm earning ~$1.2 per day more or less, consistently, and I'm happy with it.

It was on a Friday evening on June 18, 2021 (hard to believe it's been five years already); I was scrolling TikTok and stumbled across a video from a tech content creator, "tarantech". I was skeptical, but convinced by the rough words of "making money by doing nothing", so I went on getsalad.io (that was the old download link; now it redirects to the new one), and gave Salad a shot on my first-ever laptop with a GTX 1650 Ti. During this time, Salad was in its alpha phase (0.5.5) and was crypto-mining only. I can't recall exactly how much I earned during that time, but I remember it was a damn lot for a 50-watt 1650ti, and mining was super profitable at that time. I ran Salad 24/7 and let the mini stopwatch under the "START" button climb and climb (back when that existed. I kinda miss that gimmick lol). It was so profitable that I even ran Salad in the background, earning as I played Roblox. (You can't do that anymore today btw. Don't try it.)

Before I joined Salad, I would use these scammy, sketchy offerwall sites to get "free robux". They sucked, barely worked, took too much effort. I stopped using those sites after joining Salad, since my 50-watt 1650ti was the one earning me Robux now, which led to my first ever redemption on August 1, 2021: A $10 Roblox gift card, without me doing anything. Salad was everything I needed to fulfill my "free robux" wish: effortless, easy, safe, reputable, reliable.

After a while of using Salad, I, for whatever reason, got concerned about my GPU temperatures, even though they were perfectly fine, and decided to "quit Salad". I then rejoined, but I was too late: Cryptomining started becoming unprofitable. In mid 2022, Earnings went further down, as ETH was dying out. I still ran Salad, but not as consistently since there was no incentive to.

Salad then decided to shift their business model in October 2022 and released what was called by the senior chefs a "secret workload that pays $1 a day", which then wasn't so secret anymore when the download link in the state of salad contagiously spread to everyone and was then revealed to be a "container beta" lol. I downloaded it on my first-ever laptop and an old HP laptop. From there, I have earned the most Salad balance I have ever earned consistently: $1 per day x 2 machines, totaling $2/day for months, with zero resource usage. I earned over $200 just from this alone lol. Additionally, not too long after, I got Bandwidth sharing (sgs-client) to work for the first time in several months, so that gave me an even bigger boost.

Then came Q1-Q3 of 2023, when my earnings decided to go from $2 a day to less than a fraction of a cent per day. During this time, Salad gradually rolled out lower-paying containers, which include: $0.75/day, $0.5/day, $0.25/day, and $0.10/day. Over time, the CPU container was coming to a full, non-beta release. My earnings were still okay, but way weaker than before. Salad also, at this time, removed CPU mining because there were "enough CPU containers to go around for everyone", however, that did not play out well: CPU container demand, not too long after, plummeted to the core. My earnings were at record lows now, and just as I thought it couldn't get lower, my sgs-client disappeared for months, and Salad was starting to put less priority into their mining workloads, and as a result, my earnings plummeted to less than a cent per day. GPU containers were also released, but my 1650ti stood no chance at getting any demand.

With CPU mining removed, no GPU containers, GPU mining selecting a bad algorithm due to less outlook on these workloads, no sgs-client, and terrible 10-cent CPU containers that lasted no more than a few hours or even seconds at most, I decided to mine externally and manually to Salad balance. Even then, mining was basically dead long ago, so earnings stayed low for a while.

Q4 2023 came around, and my earnings decided to start climbing back up again. I got sgs-client back after months without it, and that would carry my salad earnings up to today. During this time, I also switched from my old, terrible ISP, to a new ISP with fiber. Bandwidth sharing earnings increased hugely with 500mbps, and I also earned a record high of $2.60 in December 2023.

Earnings would stay like this for a while until bandwidth sharing in the US started to deteriorate: the 10 cent static pay on the first-ever US gateway, Daffodil, was removed, and traffic started getting weaker towards 2024. Throughout 24-25, dead gateways with zero traffic completely flooded the US bandwidth sharing system (which unfortunately still resides today).

Then around the end of 2025, a new sgs customer in the US started testing their gateway, and I volunteered to be a part of the closed testing. It has two gateways that pay 48 cents per day.

Today, I still run those two testing gateways (hopefully they become successful), along with two more US gateways that are active, giving me ~$1.20 more or less per day. CPU containers are also a lot more reliable now, so in some cases, more. Electricity usage is super low at around 10ish cents per day more or less (i just guess it based off a constant 50w draw total lol). I now have almost 1000 dollars of lifetime balance racked up, and I mainly just get the Salad balance into my bank account now via paypal.

what'd i tell a new chef lol:

If you live in a bandwidth-supported country with good enough demand and a little bit of luck, you do not need a good computer to earn. Salads bandwidth sharing (despite there definitely being things in need of a reform, such as dead gateways), is still the best and safest option out there. Not in an "advertising Salad" way, but these other apps that offer bandwidth sharing SUCK (coming from experience), and no other app that offers bandwidth sharing except Salad meets all the criteria for being safe, a non-pay-per-time model, non-abusive, and strong earnings (depending on the gateway but in general), with PayPal transfers.

PC Specs: GPU: RTX 5090, Ryzen 9 9950X, 64 GB RAM, 500 GB SSD
Daily Earnings: Usually $4–$5 per day, occasionally $5–$7 depending on available workloads.
Chopping Hours: 313 hours at the time of posting, and still counting.
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I'm a gamer and freelancer. While searching for ways to earn extra income with my powerful PC, I came across Salad. I spent time researching how it works before I started using it. After seeing how it performs, I became a regular user, and now I'm building a second PC dedicated to running Salad.
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For New Chef:

Use a GPU with at least 16 GB of VRAM for better opportunities.
Don't expect earnings right away. It may take min to hrs before you start receiving jobs.
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How I Calculate Earnings:

( Earnings - Electricity Cost ) ______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Happy Chefing! 🍽️

GPU: RTX 4090 (single machine, runs 24/7)

Daily earnings: typically $1 to $5, averaging around $2.87/day net after power

Chopping since: February 2, 2025. Dashboard shows 9,058 total hours, some of that lost to downtime (more below)

My story

I was skeptical about Salad at first. The usual security worries, plus I figured I'd only make pocket change for games, and I didn't want to burn through the life of a 4090 I paid a lot of money for.

What changed my mind: I'd already bought the 4090 for AI work, so it was sitting idle a lot of the time anyway. Once I tried Salad, the security concerns didn't hold up, and the earnings turned out to be enough to cover real purchases on Amazon, not just games.

It hasn't been smooth the whole way. A Corsair Power Bridge adapter on my 4090 overheated and melted, which damaged the card's own power connector and caused random freezes and reboots whenever I launched a game. On top of that, unexpected Windows updates kept interrupting long runs. Both cut into my uptime and my earnings more than I expected.

Profit math (bonus)

• Average power draw: 263.28 W
• At BC Hydro's residential Tier 1 rate (11.87 cents per kWh), that works out to roughly $45 in electricity over 2 months
• Net profit after power: $172.38 per 2 months, or about $2.87/day

I also keep a day-by-day log of income against power use; here's a recent stretch:

What I'd tell a new Chef

Track your usage from day one so you know your real profit, not just your gross balance. And figure out an update and restart schedule that fits your setup, so Windows or driver updates don't catch you mid-run. I ended up writing down what worked for me after the restart issues; happy to share if anyone wants it.