Helium vs Filecoin vs Render Compared

Introduction

Helium, Filecoin and Render are three networks in the group known as DePIN, decentralised physical infrastructure networks. Each one pays its own token to people who supply a real resource: radio coverage, disk space or graphics processing. Each one also sells that resource, or says it does, to customers who pay in some form of money. The token sits between the two, issued to suppliers on one side and, on two of the three networks, bought or burned on behalf of customers on the other.

That shared shape makes the three easy to describe together and hard to compare honestly. They buy different resources, check the work in different ways, run on different chains and publish different numbers. A figure that looks like demand on one network can mean something else on the next. This page puts the three side by side in one table, with every cell sourced and dated, and then explains what each row does and does not show.

Our DePIN explained guide sets out how these networks work as a model. This comparison is narrower. It asks, for each network, what it buys, how it checks the work, what its supply rules are, what a customer pays in, which demand figure can be read, how a reader can take part, and what has gone wrong so far. It does not rank the three or say which to buy. Where a figure could not be read from a primary source on the day, the table says so rather than filling the gap.

Two ways of taking part run through the whole page. Holding the token exposes you to price movements and requires decisions about custody and the trading route. Or you can run the hardware, which adds the cost of a device, the cost of running it and the network's reward rules to the token's price. The table has a row for each, because the three networks differ more on the second than on the first.

All figures come from the networks' own documentation and proposals, from Filfox's Filecoin explorer, and from DefiLlama's dashboards and price API, read on 3 and 4 November 2026 with our verification client. Each sentence that carries a figure says where it came from and when. Some of these networks change their rules often, so a figure here is a reading on a date, not a description of how things will stay.

The Three Networks in One Table

The table below is the core of this page. Each row is one question. Each cell names its source, and the caption gives the read date, 3 November 2026, unless the cell gives a later one. A cell that says not read means no primary figure could be found on that date; it does not mean the figure is zero.

Read across a row before reading down a column. The rows are where the networks differ, and a column read on its own can look complete when it is not. The Render column reports gross job spend and no current emission amount. The Helium column reports scheduled issuance and a Mobile-funded HNT buyback series; it does not report Data Credit burn. Neither column is better; each is missing a different part of the same comparison.

Two rows hold figures computed for this page rather than published by the network. Helium's issuance is our arithmetic from the schedule in HIP 20, and Filecoin's dollar issuance multiplies Filfox's daily figure by Filfox's price. Every other figure in the table is quoted from the source named in its cell.

What Each Network Buys and How It Checks

A DePIN network has to check that the resource it pays for is real, because it pays automatically and anyone could claim to have supplied a service. How a network checks the work tells you what its rewards are tied to, and so what a contributor has to keep doing to keep earning.

Helium: coverage, rewarded by the data it carries

Helium buys wireless coverage in two forms: LoRaWAN coverage for Internet of Things devices, and Wi-Fi coverage for mobile subscribers, according to its documentation read on 3 November 2026. The same documentation now ties a Hotspot's rewards to the eligible data it passes, and says Proof of Coverage, the radio-beacon check the network used to rely on, was removed as of 6 July 2026.

The consequence for a contributor is that a Hotspot earns for traffic, not for existing. A radio placed where few devices connect has little to carry, however well it works. When assessing a site, check the eligible traffic it is expected to carry.

Filecoin: storage, proven every day

Filecoin buys data storage from storage providers, and its documentation, read on 3 November 2026, says each storage sector of 32 GiB or 64 GiB is proven once in every 24-hour period, inside one of a day's 30-minute deadlines. The check is cryptographic, and it repeats for as long as the data is held.

Missing a proof can cost money. The documentation describes fault fees while a sector is offline, a sector penalty once a fault is detected, termination fees when a sector leaves the network, and slashing for consensus faults; for providers with a history of acting honestly, it lists exceptions, including no penalty in the current proving period after a missed proof and no fees if the sector is recovered in a later proving period. A Filecoin provider is paid for storage it can keep proving, and can be charged when it cannot.

Render: GPU work, settled from a log

Render buys GPU work for rendering and AI jobs. Its knowledge base, read on 3 November 2026, says the protocol keeps a log of completed work, which forms the basis of each contributor's rewards at the end of an epoch, and that an epoch typically spans a week, a length governance can change.

Of the three checks, Render's sits closest to the customer, because the job reward rests on work that was submitted and finished. A node with no jobs has nothing in the log for that epoch. Render's proposal RNP-015 adds availability rewards for uptime, which it describes as a stipend that can help offset some earnings volatility (read 4 November 2026), so a node's earnings still move with the flow of customer work.

Chains, Supply and Issuance

The supply rules decide how much new token reaches contributors, and so how much selling pressure arrives each day from people who pay their costs in ordinary money. The three networks publish these rules in very different levels of detail.

Where each token lives

Helium and Render both run on Solana now. Helium's documentation says it operated its own blockchain until it completed a migration to Solana on 18 April 2023. Render's token is a Solana SPL token, upgraded from the Ethereum-based RNDR under the proposal RNP-006, created on 2 November 2023. Our Solana guide covers the chain they share. Filecoin runs its own network, and its documentation describes FIL as the native currency of that network (read 3 November 2026).

Helium: a fixed cap and a halving schedule

Helium Improvement Proposal 20 sets a maximum supply of 223 million HNT and halves net issuance every two years on the 1 August anniversary, the first halving falling on 1 August 2021 (read 3 November 2026). Our arithmetic from HIP 20's 2.5 million HNT monthly issuance from August 2021 and two-year halving interval gives 625,000 HNT a month from August 2025 (read 3 November 2026). This is our calculation from the published schedule, not a figure Helium publishes, and it leaves out the HNT the protocol mints back under its Net Emissions mechanism, which Helium's token documentation caps at 1,643.83561643 HNT per 24-hour epoch (read 3 November 2026).

Filecoin: a cap reached only with growth

Filecoin's documentation says no more than 2 billion FIL will ever exist, and splits block-reward minting in two: up to 770 million FIL by baseline minting, released according to network performance, and 330 million FIL by simple minting on a six-year half-life, and it holds a further 300 million FIL in a mining reserve for future mining models (read 3 November 2026). Filfox's explorer reported 52,843 FIL mined in the day before its read on 4 November 2026, which our arithmetic puts at about $45,300 at Filfox's own price of $0.858.

Render: rules without a published amount here

Render's supply runs on a burn-mint equilibrium: creators burn RENDER for credits of equivalent US dollar value, and emissions are allocated per epoch under the schedules in RNP-006 and RNP-018, revised by RNP-013 and RNP-015 (read 3 and 4 November 2026). This page did not read a current emission amount or a supply cap for RENDER, so the table leaves that cell unfilled rather than estimating it.

What Customers Pay, and What Can Be Read

Issuance is half of the picture. The other half is what customers pay, and whether that payment reaches the token. On paper, all three networks connect customer spending to their tokens; in public data, only part of that spending can be read, and the parts that can be read measure different things. Our guide to how DePIN tokens earn and who pays works through each network's demand figure in full; the table carries one cell for each.

Helium: a fixed price and an unreadable total

Helium bills its customers in Data Credits, fixed at $0.00001 each. Its documentation, read on 3 November 2026, says the Mobile network charges $0.10 per GB and bills IoT data in 24-byte increments. The weekly burn of Data Credits, the obvious demand figure, was not in the text of Helium's page that our client read. The demand row identifies DefiLlama's series of HNT bought and burned with Mobile subscriber revenue (read 4 November 2026). Its methodology excludes Data Credit burns from revenue and states a $0.50/GB protocol peg (read 4 November 2026); Helium's documentation states a Mobile charge of $0.10/GB (read 3 November 2026). These reads do not resolve that rate discrepancy.

Filecoin: a fee figure that is not storage spending

Filecoin's customers pay through storage deals agreed with providers, and a second channel, Filecoin Plus, lets verified deals carry a 10x quality multiplier, with DataCap that its documentation says cannot be sold (read 3 November 2026). DefiLlama's Filecoin demand entry counts fees paid by users of the chain (read 4 November 2026). It is not a measure of what clients pay for storage, which this page could not read.

Render: the clearest figure of the three

Render's knowledge base says rendering and AI jobs can be priced in fiat currency, and that creators burn RENDER for Render Credits of equivalent US dollar value (read 3 November 2026). DefiLlama's Render entry is gross job spend, derived from the observed burn value divided by 0.95, with a 5% off-chain service-fee allocation (read 4 November 2026).

Put together, the demand row cannot rank the networks. It holds a buyback series with nothing recorded after 31 December 2025, a chain transaction-fee total and a job-spend total, which are three different measures. The most a reader can take from it is that Render's customer spending is the most visible, and that visibility is not the same thing as size.

Joining Through the Token or the Hardware

The question most readers start with is how to take part, and the answer splits into two routes with very different costs and risks. Neither route is recommended here; the point is to see what each one involves on each network, using what the networks themselves say.

Through the token

Holding HNT, FIL or RENDER exposes you to price movements and requires decisions about custody and execution. On 3 November 2026, DefiLlama's price API put HNT at $0.338, FIL at $0.859 and RENDER at $1.48. Those unit prices say nothing about value or about which token is cheaper in any useful sense; a lower unit price only means more units for the same money. The token route needs no device, no electricity and no setup; how quickly and at what cost it can be sold depends on the trading route and its liquidity on the day. Decide who will control custody and any wallet keys before choosing where to hold tokens.

Through hardware

The hardware route adds a device, its running costs and the network's reward rules to the token's price, and the three networks describe very different hardware:

• Helium. Its documentation describes Mobile Wi-Fi Hotspots as low-cost, easy-to-deploy Wi-Fi radios, points buyers to helium.com, and lists an onboarding fee of $20 indoors or $30 outdoors, included with the Hotspot, or $2 to convert an existing Passpoint Wi-Fi network (read 3 November 2026).
• Filecoin. Its documentation says a provider needs at least 10 TiB of storage power to be eligible for block rewards, commits FIL as collateral, and faces hardware and collateral costs that will likely require financing from investors, venture capitalists or banks. It also says 75% of block rewards vest over 180 days and 25% is immediately accessible, with that accessible share automatically paying any fee debt (read 3 November 2026).
• Render. Its knowledge base says operators for Dispersed, its AI-workload network, join a waitlist with a benchmark, and lists a GPU at or above an RTX 3050's compute score, 64 GB or more of RAM and SSD capacity listed as 2 TB in the requirements and 1 TB per node in the FAQ (read 4 November 2026).

The Render page adds two warnings in its own words: "This is a call for existing hardware. We strongly advise against purchasing new hardware." It also says joining the waitlist does not promise a place, and that the network makes no promise about the amount of work assigned to nodes. That is the network itself telling a would-be operator not to buy a device in order to earn.

A hardware route is a bet on a token price and a reward schedule you do not control. Our guide to DePIN hardware economics works through the payback arithmetic for a device, including what happens when the reward rate or the token price halves. If a seller offers hardware through a route the network's documentation does not point to, our crypto scam protection guide covers the warning signs.

The Record So Far

The last row of the table is the record: the dated changes and price falls a holder or an operator has already lived through. It is one row here; the dated table in our DePIN explained guide sets it out in more detail.

Rule changes

Helium's record has the most entries. Its issuance has halved on a two-year schedule since 1 August 2021, it moved its whole network to Solana on 18 April 2023, and its documentation says Proof of Coverage was removed as of 6 July 2026 (read 3 November 2026). Each change altered what a Hotspot is paid for or how much new HNT exists to pay it. RNP-006 provides for gas for one transfer per eligible wallet for three months, with holders paying afterwards (read 4 November 2026). Filecoin's entry is of a different kind, a standing set of penalties for providers that miss their proofs, from fault fees to slashing.

Prices

On DefiLlama's price API, read on 3 November 2026, HNT was $29.11 on 1 November 2021 and $0.338 on 3 November 2026, which our arithmetic puts at 1.2% of the earlier price. FIL fell from $62.80 to $0.859 over the same dates, 1.4% of the earlier price. RENDER's earlier date is 18 April 2023, the day Helium completed its move to Solana, and RENDER went from $2.02 then to $1.48, 73.3% of the earlier price. The dates are not the same for all three, so the three shares should not be ranked against each other.

None of this says what the prices will do next. It says that a holder on those earlier dates lost most of the token's value on two of the three networks, and that an operator paid in those tokens saw the same fall in what each reward was worth.

How to Check These Figures Yourself

Every figure in the table will go out of date, some of them within weeks. Before relying on any of them, read the current value from the same kind of source, and note the date you read it. These are the places this page read, in the order worth checking:

• The network's own documentation. Helium's documentation, Filecoin's documentation and Render's knowledge base state the current reward rules and what customers pay in. Read the rules before any figure, because a figure measured under old rules says little about new ones.
• The proposals. Helium's improvement proposals and Render's network proposals record when a rule changed and what it changed to. A proposal's status matters: a proposed change is not yet a rule.
• An explorer for issuance. Filfox publishes Filecoin's daily issuance, collateral and active providers. For Helium, this page worked from the issuance schedule in HIP 20.
• A dashboard for customer spending. DefiLlama's dashboards carry the fee and spending series used here; read each series' own methodology note before comparing it with another.
• A price source with history. A token's price on the day you read it, and on a dated earlier day, shows how far it has already moved.

A figure that you cannot trace to one of these sources, with a date, belongs in the same place as a seller's projection: a claim to test, not a fact to rely on. Our risk management guide covers how to size a position in a token this volatile.

What This Comparison Cannot Tell You

A table with every cell sourced and dated looks complete, and that is its risk. Three of its cells say not read, and each of those gaps sits exactly where a holder would most want a number. Knowing where the gaps are is part of reading the table correctly.

The three missing figures

The first gap is Helium's Data Credit burn. The table reports Helium's scheduled issuance and a dated Mobile-funded HNT buyback series; it does not report Data Credit burn for the same period. The second gap is what Filecoin's clients pay for storage. The chain-fee figure that can be read is real, but it measures the cost of using the chain, not the price of the service the network sells. The third gap is Render's current emissions. Render's customer spending is the most visible of the three, but without the issuance figure beside it, the ratio a holder would want, how much new token is issued for each dollar customers spend, cannot be worked out here.

The table reports scheduled HNT issuance and DefiLlama's aggregated series of Mobile-funded HNT buybacks from 21 October to 31 December 2025, with no Data Credit burn figure. It reports Render gross job spend without current emissions. It reports Filecoin issuance and chain fees; storage-deal payments were not read. A network can be scored on the question that matters most to a holder, customer payments against the value of new tokens issued over the same period, only for a period in which both are read.

Why a single date matters

Every figure here is a reading on 3 or 4 November 2026. A 30-day spending total, a day's issuance and a token price can all look very different a month later, and the rules behind them can change by proposal or by governance vote. A comparison of these three networks is only as current as its oldest cell, so the useful thing to keep from this page is the list of questions in the table, not the answers in it.

The table also cannot tell you how any of the three will do next. It describes what each network buys, how it pays and what has already happened. Whether customers arrive in larger numbers, whether a network changes its rules in a holder's favour or against it, and where the token's price goes are questions no dated table can answer.

Conclusion

Helium, Filecoin and Render share a shape: each pays its own token to people who supply a real resource, and each sells that resource to customers. Under the shared shape they differ on almost every row that matters to a holder. Helium buys coverage and rewards the data it carries, Filecoin buys storage and proves it every 24 hours, and Render buys GPU work and settles it from a log of finished jobs, according to each network's documentation read on 3 November 2026.

The supply side is clearest where the rules are written as numbers. Helium has a cap of 223 million HNT and a halving schedule, and Filecoin has a cap of 2 billion FIL with most of it released only as the network grows. Render's rules exist, but this page read no emission amount for it, and the table says so rather than guessing.

The demand side is where the comparison stops. The demand row contains a Helium buyback series, Filecoin chain fees and Render gross job spend (DefiLlama, read 4 November 2026). Storage-deal payments and Helium's Data Credit burn were not read. Interpret each figure using its stated payment flow.

On joining, the token route is the same on all three: a price, an exchange and nothing else to run. The hardware route is not. Helium describes consumer devices, Filecoin a financed professional operation, and Render a waitlist for existing hardware with an explicit warning against buying new. Each hardware route is a bet on a token price and a reward schedule you do not control, and the record row shows those schedules and prices moving against the people who bought in.

If you take one habit from this comparison, make it reading the row before the column. A network that looks strong in one column can be missing the figure that would test it, and the missing figure is usually the one that matters most.

Sources

Network documentation, Helium's improvement proposals and DefiLlama's prices were read on 3 November 2026; Render's proposals and waitlist page, Filfox and DefiLlama's dashboards on 4 November 2026, all with our verification client. Figures marked as our arithmetic are calculated from the sources named beside them.

• Helium Documentation, The Mobile Network — Wi-Fi Hotspots, rewards for data transfer and where buyers are pointed. docs.helium.com
• Helium Documentation, LoRaWAN on Helium — the Internet of Things network and how Hotspots are credited. docs.helium.com
• Helium Documentation, Data Credit — the $0.00001 credit, the Mobile rate, IoT billing and the onboarding fees. docs.helium.com
• Helium Documentation, Helium Oracle Data — the removal of Proof of Coverage as of 6 July 2026. docs.helium.com
• Helium Documentation, Legacy Blockchain Data — the migration to Solana completed on 18 April 2023. docs.helium.com
• Helium Improvement Proposal 20, HNT Max Supply — the 223 million cap and the two-year halving schedule. github.com
• Filecoin Docs, Crypto-economics — FIL as the native currency, the 2 billion cap, the two minting models, the mining reserve and reward vesting. docs.filecoin.io
• Filecoin Docs, Storage proving — the 24-hour proving period and its 30-minute deadlines. docs.filecoin.io
• Filecoin Docs, Slashing — fault fees, sector penalties, termination fees and consensus fault slashing. docs.filecoin.io
• Filecoin Docs, Verified deals — DataCap, which cannot be sold, and the 10x quality multiplier. docs.filecoin.io
• Filecoin Docs, Block rewards — the 10 TiB of storage power needed to be eligible. docs.filecoin.io
• Filecoin Docs, Return-on-investment — hardware and collateral costs and the financing they are expected to need. docs.filecoin.io
• Filecoin Docs, Charging for data — providers advised to charge customers for most client deals, while some programmes may require free deals. docs.filecoin.io
• Render Network Knowledge Base, Burn Mint Equilibrium — fiat-priced jobs, the burn, and epoch-based allocation. know.rendernetwork.com
• Render Network Knowledge Base, The RENDER SPL Token — Render Credits and the upgrade from the ERC-20 RNDR. know.rendernetwork.com
• Render Network Knowledge Base, Render Compute Network GPU Compute Node Waitlist FAQ — the Dispersed waitlist, its requirements and its warning on new hardware. know.rendernetwork.com
• Render Network Proposal RNP-006, Solana Upgrade and Emission Schedule, created 2 November 2023 — the token upgrade and the gas subsidy. github.com
• Render Network Proposal RNP-013, Year 1 Emissions Rebalancing — a revision to the emission schedule. github.com
• Render Network Proposal RNP-015, Availability Rewards — a further revision to how emissions are paid. github.com
• Filfox, Filecoin explorer overview API — daily FIL mined and the FIL price at the read. filfox.info
• DefiLlama, helium-network fees series and methodology — HNT bought and burned with Mobile subscriber revenue. api.llama.fi
• DefiLlama, fees overview and methodology — Filecoin's 30-day transaction fees. api.llama.fi
• DefiLlama, render-network-bme fees series and methodology — user-paid job spend. api.llama.fi
• DefiLlama, price API — HNT, FIL and RENDER prices on 3 November 2026. coins.llama.fi
• DefiLlama, price API — HNT and FIL prices at 12:00 UTC on 1 November 2021. coins.llama.fi
• DefiLlama, price API — HNT and RENDER prices at 12:00 UTC on 18 April 2023. coins.llama.fi

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is cheapest to join?

It depends on whether you join through the token or through hardware, and neither answer is a recommendation. Through the token, each network costs whatever amount you choose to buy plus the exchange's fees; a token's unit price, $0.338 for HNT, $0.859 for FIL and $1.48 for RENDER on DefiLlama's price API on 3 November 2026, says nothing about its value. Through hardware, Helium's documentation is the only one of the three to describe its devices as low-cost, with the onboarding fee included in a Mobile Wi-Fi Hotspot. Filecoin's describes collateral and outside financing, and Render's AI-workload waitlist asks for hardware you already own.

What does each network pay its contributors for?

Helium pays for wireless coverage, rewarding Hotspots for the eligible data they pass. Filecoin pays storage providers for storage they prove every 24 hours. Render pays node operators for GPU work, from a log of completed jobs settled at the end of each epoch, which its knowledge base says typically lasts a week. Each network's documentation was read on 3 or 4 November 2026.

Which network has the most customer demand?

The table identifies a Helium buyback series, Filecoin chain fees and Render gross job spend, with the source and read date of each. Storage-deal payments and Helium's Data Credit burn were not read. Each figure must be interpreted using its stated scope.

Are Helium and Render on the same blockchain?

Yes, both now run on Solana. Helium's documentation says it completed its migration from its own blockchain on 18 April 2023, and Render's token is a Solana SPL token, upgraded from the Ethereum-based RNDR under the proposal RNP-006, created on 2 November 2023. Filecoin is different: FIL is the native currency of the Filecoin network itself.

What is the maximum supply of HNT, FIL and RENDER?

Helium Improvement Proposal 20 gives a maximum of 223 million HNT, and Filecoin's documentation says no more than 2 billion FIL will ever exist (both read 3 November 2026). Render's knowledge base describes emissions allocated per epoch under its burn-mint equilibrium, set by RNP-006 and RNP-018 and revised by RNP-013 and RNP-015; this page did not read a current emission amount or a supply cap for RENDER.

Can I run a Render node at home?

The source read here describes Dispersed, Render's AI-workload subnet, and advises applicants to use hardware they already own. Render's knowledge base, read on 4 November 2026, says operators for Dispersed, its AI-workload network, join through a waitlist with a benchmark, and lists a GPU at or above an RTX 3050's compute score, 64 GB or more of RAM and SSD capacity listed as 2 TB in the requirements and 1 TB per node in the FAQ. The same page calls this a call for existing hardware, strongly advises against buying new hardware, and says joining the waitlist does not promise a place or any amount of work.

What has happened to the three token prices?

All three were lower on 3 November 2026 than on the earlier dates this page uses, according to DefiLlama's price API. HNT fell from $29.11 on 1 November 2021 to $0.338, FIL from $62.80 on 1 November 2021 to $0.859, and RENDER from $2.02 on 18 April 2023 to $1.48. Past prices do not predict future ones, in either direction.

Why is Bittensor not in this comparison?

This comparison did not read a customer-price or customer-payment series for Bittensor's subnets. Helium bills data in Data Credits, Filecoin's clients pay through storage deals, and Render prices jobs in fiat currency. Bittensor's documentation describes stake swaps through subnet pools (read 4 November 2026). Our DePIN explained guide covers it alongside these three.

Financial Disclaimer

This content is not financial advice. All information provided is for educational purposes only. Cryptocurrency investments carry significant investment risk, and past performance does not guarantee future results. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial adviser before making investment decisions.