ECOS is a Bitcoin cloud mining company with a data center in Armenia's Free Economic Zone and an office in Yerevan. Its homepage is live and selling: cloud mining packages from $99, ASIC purchases from $1,299, ASIC rentals from $2,290, a marketplace for resold hosted machines, and a 30-day free trial on an Antminer S21 XP. Payouts are in BTC. The page claims a licence in Armenia and operations since 2017, but gives no licence number or issuing body, and electricity and service fees are left to the Terms of Use.
Two outside signals matter more than the marketing. France's market regulator lists ecos.am on its AMF crypto-currency blacklist, in an entry dated January 9, 2024, for offering financial services or products without being authorised. On Trustpilot, ECOS has 3.6 out of 5 from 2,014 reviews, with 54% five-star and 34% one-star, and Trustpilot flags the company as possibly linked to high-risk investments. One October 2026 reviewer says a BTC withdrawal stayed blocked about 148 days after sending KYC documents.
The homepage shows a "44% Annual ROI" figure next to its starter package, with a note that figures are not a guarantee. Treat any projected return on a mining contract with care: Bitcoin's price, network difficulty and the halving can turn it negative, and HashFlare's founders admitted in February 2025 to selling over $577 million in mining contracts their hardware could not cover. The seven picks below avoid that model and publish their fees up front.
Prices below are as of November 6, 2026. Our method is on How we review tools.
Quick comparison
| Tool | Best for | Price | Platforms |
|---|---|---|---|
| NiceHash | Buying or selling hashrate with fees posted in advance | 2% seller fee; packages priced per purchase | Web, Windows, Linux, ASICs |
| Bitaxe | A small open source Bitcoin miner you own at home | Hardware from resellers | Standalone device, 5V power |
| Kryptex | BTC from the PC you already have | Free; 1% pool fee | Windows, Android |
| 2Miners | A GPU pool that can pay in bitcoin | 1% pool, 1.5% solo | Any compatible miner |
| Salad | Earning from an idle GPU without crypto | Free app | Desktop app |
| Hive OS | Running your own rigs from a browser | Free for 2 workers | Linux-based OS |
| P2Pool | Monero mining with no operator holding your coins | 0% pool fee | Runs beside a Monero node |
NiceHash
ECOS asks you to trust a forecast. NiceHash runs an open market instead: hashrate has a visible price, and its public fee API lists the 2% seller fee and the 0.00003 BTC withdrawal fee from 0.001 BTC. Buyers can pick an EasyMining package for Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash with a fixed end; there is no monthly management fee running behind it.
Sellers connect a GPU, CPU or ASIC and earn bitcoin for the hashrate they supply. NiceHash also ships NiceHash OS for rigs, ASIC firmware and mobile apps to watch the account.
Best for: ECOS customers who want hashrate exposure on terms they can read before paying.
Pricing:
- Seller fee: 2%
- BTC withdrawal: 0.00003 BTC, from 0.001 BTC
- EasyMining: price shown per package, paid in BTC or USDT
Watch out for:
- Buying hashrate needs a KYC-verified account, and most solo EasyMining packages end without a block.
- Balances are custodial; NiceHash's 2017 hack took until December 2020 to repay, as CoinDesk covered.
Official site: NiceHash. Our listing: NiceHash.
Bitaxe
Bitaxe is the opposite of a remote contract: a palm-sized Bitcoin miner on your desk. The design is open source, hardware files and the ESP-Miner firmware included, and it mines to any Stratum pool or your own node, per the project site.
The Gamma model uses one BM1370 chip, the same one in Bitmain's Antminer S21 Pro, for about 1.2 TH/s. It runs on 5V DC and needs a supply of 25 to 30 W. The board design is licensed CERN-OHL-S-2.0.
Best for: Bitcoin fans who want to own and understand a miner instead of renting one.
Pricing:
- Open source design: free
- Units: sold by third-party resellers listed on the Bitaxe buy page; prices vary by seller
Watch out for:
- At about 1.2 TH/s it is a lottery ticket on solo pools and earns very little on shared ones. It will not repay itself the way an ECOS forecast suggests.
- Only 5V input is safe; the GitHub page warns anything else will damage the board.
Official site: Bitaxe.
Kryptex
Nothing to buy up front is the main contrast with ECOS. Kryptex mines on the CPU and GPU of a Windows PC, chooses the coin and can pay everything as bitcoin, with withdrawals from 0.00025 BTC.
Its pool supports PPS+, PROP and SOLO modes and also takes ASIC and GPU rigs running other software. Payout options include BTC, USDT and LTC wallets as well as Amazon gift cards.
Best for: People with a gaming GPU who want BTC without signing a contract.
Pricing:
- Software: free
- Pool fee: 1%
- Minimum withdrawal: 0.00025 BTC
Watch out for:
- Its homepage income examples, such as about $22 a month for an RTX 5090, ignore power costs, per the Kryptex site.
- Windows only on desktop.
Official site: Kryptex. Our listing: Kryptex.
2Miners
2Miners is a pool, not a product you invest in. Its homepage lists a 1.0% fee for pool mining and 1.5% for solo, with automatic payouts every 2 hours.
Several GPU coins on it, such as Kaspa, Ravencoin and Ethereum Classic, carry a "Paid in BTC" option, so a GPU owner can still end up holding bitcoin, the coin ECOS pays in.
Best for: GPU owners who want bitcoin payouts and a fee they can see on the front page.
Pricing:
- Pool: 1.0%
- Solo: 1.5%
- Minimum payouts by coin, such as 0.1 ETC or 10 RVN
Watch out for:
- You need your own mining software, such as lolMiner, and your own wallet address; 2Miners has no app, per the 2Miners homepage.
Official site: 2Miners.
Salad
Salad pays for idle GPU time with AI and container jobs, not mining. Its desktop app runs image generation, transcription and LLM inference workloads while the PC is idle.
Rewards collect as Salad Balance and can be redeemed for PayPal, games or gift cards, so there is no coin price to watch. Each GPU is benchmarked before it is accepted.
Best for: RTX owners who want side income with no crypto exposure at all.
Pricing:
- App: free
- Payout thresholds and Salad's share: not published on the homepage
Watch out for:
- Hardware is limited to recent cards, NVIDIA RTX 3060 to RTX 5090 plus some AMD, per the Salad homepage, and income depends on customer demand.
Official site: Salad.
Hive OS
ECOS's ASIC purchase and hosting deal leaves the machine in its building. If you would rather run hardware where you can see it, Hive OS is the control panel: a Linux-based system for GPU rigs and a dashboard that also manages ASICs.
Flight sheets bundle wallet, pool and miner into one profile, and remote reboots and overclocks happen from the browser.
Best for: Owners of their own rigs or ASICs who want remote monitoring.
Pricing:
- Free for 2 workers
- GPU rig: $0.50 per card per month, up to $3.00 for 6 or more cards
- ASIC: $2 per month, free with Hiveon firmware
Watch out for:
- Paid plans are crypto only, through CoinPayments, per the pricing page.
Official site: Hive OS.
P2Pool
The common thread in ECOS complaints is money held by the operator. P2Pool, a decentralized Monero pool, has no operator wallet: its project page says there is no pending balance, and each block it finds pays miners directly.
The fee is 0% and the minimum payout 0.00027 XMR. Low-hashrate miners can join the mini or nano sidechains to get shares more often.
Best for: CPU miners who never want a company to hold their earnings.
Pricing:
- Pool fee: 0%
- Minimum payout: 0.00027 XMR
- Free and open source
Watch out for:
- You must run a Monero node and about 2.6 GB of RAM for P2Pool, and pair it with a miner such as XMRig.
- It pays in Monero, not bitcoin.
Official site: P2Pool.
How to choose
| If you need | Pick |
|---|---|
| Hashrate on a market with posted fees | NiceHash |
| A Bitcoin miner you own and can hold in your hand | Bitaxe |
| BTC payouts from a Windows PC | Kryptex |
| GPU mining paid in bitcoin | 2Miners |
| Income from an idle GPU with no crypto | Salad |
| Remote control of your own machines | Hive OS |
| No company ever holding your coins | P2Pool |
When to stay with ECOS
Existing ECOS customers whose withdrawals arrive on time may choose to let a contract run out, since cancellation terms depend on the product and activation stage. Withdraw mined BTC as soon as it passes the threshold rather than letting it build up, and keep ticket numbers and transaction IDs. Before buying anything new, read the fee section of the Terms of Use and weigh the AMF blacklist entry. Our MinerGate alternatives page covers another mining service with a long trail of payout complaints.
Frequently asked questions
Is ECOS legit?
ECOS is a real company with a Yerevan address and a working site, and many reviewers say they were paid. It is also on the French AMF crypto-currency blacklist, and a third of its Trustpilot reviews are one-star, many about blocked withdrawals. Its homepage claims a licence in Armenia without naming the licence or the issuing body.
How much does ECOS cloud mining cost?
The homepage starts cloud mining at $99, ASIC rental at $2,290 and hosted ASIC purchases at $1,299. For enterprise deals, the consultation form lists a $500,000 minimum. Electricity and service fees are not published on the homepage; they sit in the Terms of Use. A reviewer in October 2026 says monthly fees took nearly all of a payout.
Is the ECOS 44% annual ROI real?
It is a projection, not a promise. The page itself says rewards may vary and the figures are not a guarantee of income or an investment recommendation. Mining revenue falls when difficulty rises or the Bitcoin price drops, and the next halving cuts block rewards in half.
Can I withdraw from ECOS?
ECOS says withdrawals go out within 24 hours once a minimum is reached, but does not publish the minimum. Several October 2026 Trustpilot reviews report withdrawals held during KYC checks. If you have a balance, withdraw it to a wallet you control and keep records of every request.
