The length of the Chaos Cloud rendering time depends on the complexity of the scene you wish to render and the hardware you use.
We aim to get every job done as fast as possible and we are constantly improving on that dimension. You can see the compute time displayed as the "render time" parameter when reviewing a job in Chaos Cloud. It includes starting up the software on the render machine, starting up V-Ray, loading the scene, pre- and post-scene-rendering steps, like global illumination calculation, geometry compilation, denoising, etc., the actual rendering of the scene, generating and making the output images available for download.
Additionally, Chaos Cloud uploads automatically exactly what it needs to render, meaning that whenever your scene is updated, it only re-syncs the data that's changed — keeping your upload times to the absolute minimum. Chaos Cloud stores your projects in the cloud, including assets, so you only need to upload them once. Note that the cost for upload, download and cloud storage of the scene is not charged.
If you are not sure how many credits you need for your next project, take a look at the list of sample scenes we have compiled at Chaos to provide an estimate of the render time and cloud credit cost for each: Chaos Cloud sample results.
Here's how you can use them:
Step 1: Download the original sample scene of choice and load it in your host application.
Step 2: Render the selected scene locally with either the Low Quality (LQ) settings or High Quality (HQ) settings.
Step 3: Compare your local render time to the Chaos Cloud render time shown on the page.
See also: Estimate Chaos Cloud credit consumption guide for more details on rendering animations.