Modal vs Railway Sandboxes

Modal costs $0.070956 per vCPU-hour and Railway Sandboxes costs $0.069444 per vCPU-hour. Modal runs gVisor, offers GPUs and limits a session to 24 hours. Railway Sandboxes runs full VMs.

Updated

Modal

Isolation
gVisor
Free tier
$30 credit every month
Max session
24 hours

Railway Sandboxes

Isolation
Full VM
Free tier
$5 trial credit for 30 days
Max session
Not listed

What is different

7 fields differ. The rest are the same or not listed.

Modal
Railway Sandboxes
vCPU, per hour
Modal: $0.070956
Railway Sandboxes: $0.069444
RAM, per GiB-hour
Modal: $0.024012
Railway Sandboxes: $0.069444
Free tier
Modal: $30 credit every month
Railway Sandboxes: $5 trial credit for 30 days
Paid plan from
Modal: Pay as you go
Railway Sandboxes: $5 / month
Billing
Modal: Per second
Railway Sandboxes: Active CPU time only
Isolation
Modal: gVisor
Railway Sandboxes: Full VM
SDKs
Modal: Python, JavaScript / TypeScript, Go
Railway Sandboxes: TypeScript

Full comparison

18 fields, at each provider's list price

Pricing

vCPU, per hour
Modal: $0.070956
Railway Sandboxes: $0.069444
RAM, per GiB-hour
Modal: $0.024012
Railway Sandboxes: $0.069444
Storage
Modal: Not listed
Railway Sandboxes: Not listed
Free tier
Modal: $30 credit every month
Railway Sandboxes: $5 trial credit for 30 days
Paid plan from
Modal: Pay as you go
Railway Sandboxes: $5 / month
Billing
Modal: Per second
Railway Sandboxes: Active CPU time only

Limits

Max session
Modal: 24 hours
Railway Sandboxes: Not listed
Idle stop
Modal: Not listed
Railway Sandboxes: After 30 minutes
Largest sandbox
Modal: Not listed
Railway Sandboxes: 32 vCPU · 32 GiB
Concurrent sandboxes
Modal: Not listed
Railway Sandboxes: Up to 100

Platform

Isolation
Modal: gVisor
Railway Sandboxes: Full VM
GPU
Modal:
Railway Sandboxes: Not listed
Snapshots
Modal:
Railway Sandboxes:
Pause and resume
Modal: Not listed
Railway Sandboxes: Not listed

Developer

SDKs
Modal: Python, JavaScript / TypeScript, Go
Railway Sandboxes: TypeScript
Integrations
Modal: Claude Agent SDK
Railway Sandboxes: Not listed

Trust

License
Modal: Not listed
Railway Sandboxes: Not listed
BYOC
Modal: Not listed
Railway Sandboxes: Not listed

Hourly cost

One sandbox running for one hour

Modal
Railway Sandboxes
1 vCPU · 2 GiB
Modal: $0.119
Railway Sandboxes: $0.208
2 vCPU · 4 GiB
Modal: $0.238
Railway Sandboxes: $0.417
4 vCPU · 8 GiB
Modal: $0.476
Railway Sandboxes: $0.833

Compute only, at list rates.

Open the calculator

Which one fits

Based on the fields above

Modal fits when

  • You need GPUs.
  • You want to pay only for usage, with no plan fee.
  • You use the Claude Agent SDK.
  • You want the lower list price: $0.238 against $0.417 an hour for 2 vCPU and 4 GiB.

Railway Sandboxes fits when

  • You want each sandbox to be a full VM.
  • Your code waits a lot: CPU is billed only while it is in use.

More comparisons

See all comparisons

Related