Google Colab and Colab Pro

Google Colab Pro and Pro+ are consumer-level subscriptions and are not officially supported through GSE IT. We advise caution when using Colab, being sure not to upload any sensitive data. Please submit a Data Risk Assessment if you have any questions on data risk.

Alternatively, Stanford does have access to Colab Enterprise through Stanford's Cardinal Cloud, which is protected under our enterprise agreement with Google and provides an environment for GPU-accelerated notebook work. Costs are accumulated on-demand and billed monthly to a PTA. A GSE faculty PI must sponsor the project.

If you're planning to run large models that require significant GPU resources, Stanford Research Computing offers several HPC platforms free to the Stanford community:

• Sherlock — Stanford's primary HPC cluster, available to all GSE researchers and staff. Supports GPU job submissions via SLURM and includes Jupyter notebook access through OnDemand.
• FarmShare — Designed for coursework and lighter research use. Also SLURM-based with Jupyter support, and a good starting point if you're newer to HPC workflows.
• Carina — A high performance cluster approved for highi risk data, managed by Stanford Research Computing. Same SLURM-based support for GPU workloads and Jupyter notebooks.

If you would like a consultation on research computing options at the GSE, please book a time with Wilson and Monica from the GSE data team.

Last updated: 3/23/2026