Top 4 render farms for After Effects in 2024
In this article, we will review and introduce you to the top 4 ideal render farms for After Effects. We will see if the render farms support After Effects fully with the latest version, and with any plug-ins.
Adobe After Effects is one of the tools along with Premiere Pro and Photoshop in the Adobe editing suite. It’s a product designed for editors, animators, visual effects artists, and filmmakers to achieve cinema-quality visual effects for their video projects. Due to its easy learning curve and support, it’s a good choice for basic animators and General VFX artists.
After Effects can run on Windows and macOS.
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Why use render farms for After Effects?
Render farm is a group of networked computers, used for rendering images, animations. There are two types of render farms – SaaS and IaaS. We have introduced them to you in our series of overview of render farms.
After Effects mostly uses CPU for rendering. Although they develop the GPU acceleration, the CPU still makes a big impact on overall performance. Until now, clock speed still is the most important factor when you want to render faster on After Effects.
Normally, one person will have one PC with one CPU. But sometimes, your After Effects project can be so big that you will need more power than that. You will need a render farm then. Using render farms can save you time (a lot of time), money for building a powerful workstation, extra fees for electricity, cooling, maintenance, etc. Therefore, we select some render farms which support After Effects rendering below for you to refer.
Top 4 ideal render farms for After Effects in 2024
This list is not a ranking. We only introduce them in alphabet order. We will try to list the version of After Effects they support, the 3D software and other plug-ins you can use, and some advantages and disadvantages.
AnimaRender
AnimaRender is a render farm from Russia, established in 2016. Like many other render farms, they are SaaS and also provide CPU as well as GPU rendering. You will download their plug-in and integrate it into your After Effects, then you can start your render from the interface of your software.
Interestingly, they have GPU Rental service, where you can rent their rig (5x1080Ti and 5x2080Ti) for at least 3 days. You will connect to their GPU server through Anydesk/VNC. So you can install another version of After Effects on their instance and control it remotely.
- Hardware: Dual Xeon 64-128 Gb RAM and Threadripper 3970x 256 Gb RAM for CPU. GTX1080Ti and RTX2080Ti for GPU.
- Pricing: pricing starts at $0.5/hour/server.
- After Effects support: AnimaRender supports some recent versions of Adobe After Effects, and many plug-ins.
| After Effects version | Plug-ins |
| After Effects 2018 After Effects 2019 | Duik 15.2 Element 3D GenArts Sapphire AE 10 Mettle 22.04.2017 CE Neat Video Pro 4.1.1 Plexus 3.0.12 Real Glow 1.0.0 Red Giant Effects Suite 11.1.12 Red Giant Keying Suite 11.1.11 Red Giant Link 1.9.13.1 Red Giant Magic Bullet Suite 13.0.11 Red Giant Shooter Suite 13.1.8 Red Giant TrapCode Suite 15.0.0 Red Giant Universe 3.3.0 Red Giant VFX Suite 1.5.1 Saber 1.0.39 Twitch 1.1 Twixtor Pro 6.0.4 VC Optical Flares 1.3.5 VCReflect |
Note:
- Many plug-ins supported
- Support Windows and macOS
- You can use their GPU rental service if you want to use renderer or plug-in that they don’t support. But you will need to rent the server for at least 3 days with a price starting from $249.
Garage Farm
Garage is a rendering farm from the United Kingdom, which has a history of 12 years in this industry. It’s also a SaaS render farm with their own app to help you work with their farm directly from your own desk. You can download their app renderBeamer to upload and render your jobs.
- Hardware: Tesla K80 12GB vRAM and Tesla P100 16GB vRAM for Garage’s GPU
- Pricing: free trial $25 credits, with discount for students. Price starts at $0.015 per GHz per hour and $0.0025 per OB hour
- After Effects support: Below is the list we have collected:
| After Effects version | Plug-ins |
| After Effects 2019-2022+ CC After Effects 16-22+ | Red Giant complete suite (only CPU compatible plugins) Trapcode, Magic Bullet, Shooter, Keying, Effects Video Copilot Twitch, Saber, Optical Flares |
Note:
- Support many versions of After Effects
- Windows, MAC supported
- Support many famous plug-in suites.
iRender
iRender is a render farm from Vietnam, established in 2019. It’s kind of new and still needs some more time for recognition of big names in the industry. However, its approach and development are really impressive.
The platform of iRender is IaaS, which means you can control and use their remote servers as your computer. Therefore, you can install any versions of Redshift (which run on Windows 10 or Linux …), and any 3D software.
- Hardware: RTX3090/RTX 4090 GPU and AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3955WX CPU/AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ PRO 5975WX
- Pricing: pricing starts at $5.76/hour/node to $33.6/hour/node. 50% bonus for students and educational purposes.
- After Effects support:
| After Effects version | Plug-ins |
| After Effects CC 2018-2022+ After Effects 16-22+ | All |
Note:
- Support all plug-ins
- No macOS remote server. You will need to use your macOS to connect to their Windows remote server for using
- Need to install your app and transfer your license to their servers.
Pixel Plow
Pixel Plow is a render farm from America, established in 2012. In June 2017, it began to support GPU rendering. Pixel Plow keeps a low profile like GridMarkets, and has a SaaS approach. You will need to install a plug-in called Agent to integrate to your 3D software, then submit your job through it. They will analyze then render your jobs, and deliver your frames to the output path you have set up.
- Hardware: Nvidia GTX 1060, GTX 1070, or RTX 2060 Super GPU
- Pricing: pricing starts at $0.005 to $0.06 per GHz-hr for CPU rendering and $0.0015 to $0.018 per Octbnchpts-hr for GPU rendering.
- After Effects support: unlike many other render farms that support many versions of Adobe After Effects, Pixel Plow only supports one version of it.
| After Effects version | Plug-ins |
| After Effects 2018.3 | no |
Note:
- Low cost
- Support Windows and macOS
- Support a limited version of After Effects
- No plug-in supported
- No GPU rendering for After Effects, only CPU.
Final words
After Effects is not a popular software which is supported by many render farms. We only see some well-known farms that can support it. The fact that After Effects render mainly on CPU with high clock speed, and it’s something you can buy much easier than a powerful GPU make people tend to render After Effects on their own PC. That’s why render farm for After Effects is not a popular choice.
However, sometimes we will need extra rendering service, and we hope that the list above will help you. Personally, we think Garage Render Farm is the most convenient one with support for many versions of After Effects (older and newer versions), many popular plug-ins, and with SaaS platform which will not require you to re-install your software, add-ons, plug-ins, etc.
If you find any flaws in Garage Renderfarm, you can also refer to other farms we have introduced. Of course, you can come to their websites and try their service before making any decisions.
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