Are ASICs the only profitable way to mine bitcoins?

[CryptoKeeper98]

Is it ever possible to be profitable with GPUs?

[-ck]

Is it ever possible to be profitable with GPUs?

If the GPUs are free and the electricity is free... even then you can't even earn small change with a year of mining with the highest end GPU.

[User365]

Is it ever possible to be profitable with GPUs?

NO !

But there is a workaround  
If you don´t have ASIC´s but GPU´s (maby a few rigs ?) you can sell your hashpower via nicehash and you get paid in BTC. (https://www.nicehash.com/)

[fanatic26]

If you don´t have ASIC´s but GPU´s (maby a few rigs ?) you can sell your hashpower via nicehash and you get paid in BTC. (https://www.nicehash.com/)

You will lose money this way. Nicehash takes advantage of people too lazy to handle their own mining revenue and manually convert it into other currencies.

[reflector]

Is it ever possible to be profitable with GPUs?

GPU and cloud mining will never give you profit as of seeing the current situation. If you get the free electricity then earnings will be your profit. I will suggest to try ASIC hardware miners like antminer or avalon series miners. You have to pick the higher end miner. If you wish to get high profit go with S9.

[QuintLeo]

ASIC-based miners took over Bitcoin (and all other SHA256 based coins) several years back.
They are SO MUCH MORE EFFICIENT than GPUs that a GPU would be LUCKY to ever earn dust, and WOULD die before it could earn back it's own cost even on free electric.

 Current top-end GPUs might get to a hashrate in the 2 Gigahash/sec ballpark - LOW END current ASIC models manage 3000 TIMES that on ballpark 5-6 times the power use.

 It's like trying to compete in Formula One or NASCAR racing with a foot-pedal type kiddie go-kart.

[sikkan]

as ppl already said. You cannot mine BTC directly with GPUs.. but, you can mine altcoins with GPU and trade it for BTC. Or hold the altcoin and hope for a swing up in price