Signing up without an email
Lium can create an account in one click — no email, no password, no wallet. Instead of a password you get a fingerprint: one 32-character string that is both your login and the only way back into the account.
Use it when:
- You want to rent a GPU right now and don't want to hand over an email address.
- An AI agent or a script is signing up on your behalf, headless, with no mailbox to confirm.
- You're trying Lium out and will decide about a real account later.
If you want password resets, receipts and balance alerts in your inbox, sign up with an email instead — see Quickstart.
What a fingerprint is
A fingerprint is a 32-character random string, for example:
9lbcaReNipAqVExn7VJXpHMm5IFNZRae
It carries 192 bits of randomness, so it can't be guessed. Lium stores only a hash of it, the same way passwords are stored. That has one consequence worth repeating:
Nobody at Lium can look it up, resend it or reset it — not support, not the founders. Lose the fingerprint and the account is gone, along with any balance on it.
A fingerprint is not an API key. The fingerprint signs you in to the dashboard; an API key authenticates requests to the API. Signup mints one of each, and you can create more API keys later on the Access page.
Sign up
- Go to lium.io/register.
- Press Register with fingerprint. There is nothing to fill in — Lium names the account for
you (
lium_a1b2c3). - Save the fingerprint from the screen that follows — copy it into your password manager, or use Download as .txt. Then tick the confirmation box and continue.
New accounts get $5 in free credits, one grant per IP address. If someone already claimed the credit from your address, the account is still created — just without the bonus.
Sign in
- Go to lium.io/login.
- Scroll to or sign in with your fingerprint.
- Paste the fingerprint and press LOGIN WITH FINGERPRINT.
Wrong fingerprints all get the same answer — Invalid fingerprint — whether the account exists or not. Per IP address, sign-in is limited to 10 attempts per minute and signup to 5 per minute and 20 per day; past that, wait and try again.
What you give up without an email
| Email account | Fingerprint account | |
|---|---|---|
| Sign in with | Email + password | Fingerprint |
| Forgot the credential | Reset by email | Account is lost |
| Email notifications (receipts, low balance) | Yes | Not delivered |
| Rent pods, use the API and CLI | Yes | Yes |
| $5 signup credit | Yes | Yes |
Everything about renting works the same: pods, volumes, backups, templates, the CLI and the API behave identically for both kinds of account.
Storing it safely
- Put it in a password manager as you would a password.
- Treat it like a bearer token: anyone who has the string is you, and can spend your balance.
- Don't paste it into a pod, a screenshot, a support ticket or a public repository. Lium support will never ask for it — see Official support and scams.
- Keep a second copy somewhere offline. There is no recovery path.