Cudo Miner Alternatives That Still Work

Cudo Miner was a CPU and GPU mining app from Cudo Ventures, sold as an easy way to earn with a PC that was not a dedicated rig. Its status today is unclear, so start there. The company's main site, CUDO Compute, now describes a business that "designs, commissions and operates production AI infrastructure", is still run by Cudo Ventures, and does not mention mining. As of November 2026, cudominer.com is offline, and there is no dated announcement that Cudo Miner has closed.

Signs of neglect are easier to find. The last Cudo Miner release Softpedia tracks is version 1.6.4 from December 10, 2021. On Trustpilot the service scores 1.7 out of 5 from 94 reviews, a February 2026 review is titled "Withdraw is disabled all the time", and a September 21, 2026 reviewer says a 0.7 XMR balance vanished. Not every review is negative: a June 2026 five-star review says it still pays small earnings. The profile is unclaimed and shows no company replies. If you still hold a balance, deal with that first.

The picks below are software you run on your own PC or rigs. Mining income is never guaranteed and swings with coin prices, difficulty and your power bill. Avoid cloud mining offers that promise fixed returns: many are scams, and HashFlare's founders pleaded guilty in February 2025 after selling over $577 million in contracts they could not deliver, per the US Justice Department.

Prices below are as of November 6, 2026. Our method is on How we review tools.

Quick comparison

Kryptex

Kryptex does what most Cudo Miner users installed Cudo for. You install a Windows app, it detects the CPU and GPU, chooses a coin and starts mining, and you can convert everything to bitcoin. Withdrawals start at 0.00025 BTC and go to BTC, USDT, ETH, USDC, LTC, BNB or TRX wallets, or to Volet and Amazon gift cards.

It also has an Android miner and a phone app for monitoring. The pool behind it, Kryptex Pool, offers PPS+, PROP and SOLO modes. Kryptex's homepage cites a 4.8 Trustpilot score from more than 420 reviews. See our Kryptex alternatives page if it is not the right fit.

Best for: Windows PC owners who want the Cudo-style install-and-forget experience with BTC or gift card payouts.

Pricing:

• App: free
• Pool fee: 1% on the About Pool page; the homepage says only "a small pool fee"
• Minimum payout: 0.00025 BTC

Watch out for:

• Windows only for the desktop app; Cudo Miner users on Linux or macOS need another pick.
• The homepage's RTX 5090 estimate of roughly $22 a month leaves out your electricity bill.

Official site: Kryptex. Our listing: Kryptex.

Salad

Salad keeps the idle-PC idea and drops the crypto. Its homepage says "Salad Chefs run our desktop app when their PC is idle", and the work is AI and container jobs such as image generation, transcription and LLM inference. Mining is not mentioned.

You earn Salad Balance and redeem it for PayPal, games, gift cards and more. Hardware is the gate: the page lists NVIDIA RTX cards from the RTX 3060 to the RTX 5090, plus some AMD classes, and every GPU is benchmarked before it is accepted and scored on a trust rating afterwards.

Best for: Gamers with a recent RTX card who want rewards without holding or selling coins.

Pricing:

• App: free
• Payout thresholds and Salad's cut: not published

Watch out for:

• Older or low-end GPUs and CPU-only PCs do not qualify, which rules out many machines Cudo Miner accepted.
• Earnings depend on how much work customers send, which the app cannot promise.

Official site: Salad.

NiceHash

NiceHash is a marketplace rather than a pool: you sell your hardware's hashrate, buyers point it at the coin they want, and you get bitcoin.

Fees are public. The fee API lists a 2% seller fee and a 0.00003 BTC charge to withdraw to an outside wallet. NiceHash also offers its own OS, ASIC firmware and mobile apps. We compare more marketplaces on our NiceHash alternatives page.

Best for: Cudo users with a decent GPU who want bitcoin and a fee schedule they can read.

Pricing:

• Seller fee: 2%
• Withdrawal: 0.00003 BTC, from 0.001 BTC
• BTC deposits of 0.00005 BTC or more: free

Watch out for:

• Earnings sit in a custodial wallet; after its December 2017 hack, NiceHash took until December 2020 to refund 4,640 BTC.

Official site: NiceHash. Our listing: NiceHash.

XMRig

One Cudo reviewer on Trustpilot mentions an XMR balance. For Monero on a CPU, XMRig is the open source RandomX miner most people use, released under GPL-3.0 with binaries for Windows, Linux, macOS and FreeBSD.

You mine straight to a pool and into your own Monero wallet, so no app company holds your balance. The current build, v6.26.0, is dated March 28, 2026. It runs on x86, ARM and RISC-V chips, which covers Apple Silicon Macs and small ARM boards.

Best for: Former Cudo users who mined XMR on a CPU and want payouts to their own wallet.

Pricing:

• Free and open source (GPL-3.0)
• 1% default donation, editable

Watch out for:

• No graphical app: you edit a JSON config or pass command-line flags, per the README.
• You also need a Monero wallet and a pool account, two steps Cudo handled for you.

Official site: XMRig.

lolMiner

On the GPU side, lolMiner is still updated. Version 1.98a supports Autolykos V2 for Ergo, KarlsenhashV2, FishHash, Etchash for Ethereum Classic, Octopus for Conflux and Tari's Sha3x and Cuckaroo-29.

It runs on NVIDIA cards from GTX 1000 to RTX 5000 and AMD from RX 400 to RX 9000. Unlike Cudo, it does not pick a coin for you; you choose the algorithm and the pool.

Best for: GPU owners who are ready to pick their own coin and pool.

Pricing:

• Free
• Dev fee built in: 2% on Cuckaroo-29 and Octopus, 1% on Sha3x

Watch out for:

• Closed source binaries for 64-bit Windows and Linux only.

Official site: lolMiner.

GamerHash

GamerHash sits close to Salad. Its Windows app now runs AI tasks on idle NVIDIA GPUs, and the homepage no longer describes a mining app. The draw for Cudo users is the store: earnings in GUSD buy Steam, Spotify, Netflix or Paysafecard gift cards.

You can also swap GUSD 1:1 for USDC and withdraw to a crypto wallet, and transfers to Binance are fee-free. The site's earnings calculator is labeled as an estimate that assumes near-full use of your card.

Best for: Players who want gift cards from spare GPU time on an NVIDIA PC.

Pricing:

• App: free
• Commission and minimum payout: not published

Watch out for:

• NVIDIA only; AMD owners cannot use the Earn module.
• The homepage tells you to pause earning while you play, so a busy gaming PC earns little.

Official site: GamerHash.

Awesome Miner

Cudo also pitched remote control of devices from anywhere. Awesome Miner covers that job for bigger setups, with a Windows manager, Remote Agents for Windows and Linux machines and a web interface. The vendor says it scales to 200,000 ASIC and 25,000 GPU or CPU miners.

It is included at no extra cost with certain Antminer firmware, and a Cloud Services subscription adds hosted access.

Best for: Small farm owners who ran Cudo across many machines and need one dashboard.

Pricing:

• No public price; Awesome Miner quotes it once you enter licence details on its upgrade page
• Licences count computers, not GPUs

Watch out for:

• Overkill for one PC; it manages miners but does not replace the miner software itself.
• Without a price list, you cannot compare costs before you start the licence process.

Official site: Awesome Miner.

How to choose

Should you keep using Cudo Miner

The parent company's site has moved on to AI infrastructure, and the last tracked release dates from 2021. On Trustpilot, one February 2026 review reports disabled withdrawals, while a June 2026 review says small payouts still arrive. If you hold a balance, try to withdraw it and check that it arrives. If payouts keep coming and you want to stay, withdraw often and keep the balance small.

Frequently asked questions