Modal vs Runtime
Modal costs $0.070956 per vCPU-hour and Runtime costs $0.025 per vCPU-hour. Modal runs gVisor, offers GPUs and limits a session to 24 hours. Runtime runs Firecracker microVMs and has no session limit.
Updated
Runtime
- Isolation
- Firecracker microVM
- Free tier
- 100 hours of a 1 GB machine in the first 30 days
- Max session
- No limit
What is different
9 fields differ. The rest are the same or not listed.
Modal
Runtime
- vCPU, per hour
- Modal: $0.070956
- Runtime: $0.025
- RAM, per GiB-hour
- Modal: $0.024012
- Runtime: $0.0075
- Free tier
- Modal: $30 credit every month
- Runtime: 100 hours of a 1 GB machine in the first 30 days
- Billing
- Modal: Per second
- Runtime: Active CPU time only
- Max session
- Modal: 24 hours
- Runtime: No limit
- Isolation
- Modal: gVisor
- Runtime: Firecracker microVM
- GPU
- Modal:
- Runtime: No
- SDKs
- Modal: Python, JavaScript / TypeScript, Go
- Runtime: JavaScript / TypeScript, Python, Go, Ruby, Java
- Integrations
- Modal: Claude Agent SDK, Claude Code, LangChain
- Runtime: OpenAI Agents SDK, Vercel AI SDK, Claude Agent SDK, LangChain, MCP, Claude Code
Full comparison
18 fields, at each provider's list price
Modalmodal
Runtimewithruntime
Pricing
- vCPU, per hour
- Modal: $0.070956
- Runtime: $0.025
- RAM, per GiB-hour
- Modal: $0.024012
- Runtime: $0.0075
- Storage
- Modal: Not listed
- Runtime: $0.000119 per GiB-hour after 10 free GiB
- Free tier
- Modal: $30 credit every month
- Runtime: 100 hours of a 1 GB machine in the first 30 days
- Paid plan from
- Modal: Pay as you go
- Runtime: Pay as you go
- Billing
- Modal: Per second
- Runtime: Active CPU time only
Limits
- Max session
- Modal: 24 hours
- Runtime: No limit
- Idle stop
- Modal: Not listed
- Runtime: After 5 minutes
- Largest sandbox
- Modal: Not listed
- Runtime: 16 vCPU · 64 GiB
- Concurrent sandboxes
- Modal: Not listed
- Runtime: Up to 200
Platform
- Isolation
- Modal: gVisor
- Runtime: Firecracker microVM
- GPU
- Modal:
- Runtime: No
- Snapshots
- Modal:
- Runtime:
- Pause and resume
- Modal: Not listed
- Runtime:
Developer
- SDKs
- Modal: Python, JavaScript / TypeScript, Go
- Runtime: JavaScript / TypeScript, Python, Go, Ruby, Java
- Integrations
- Modal: Claude Agent SDK, Claude Code, LangChain
- Runtime: OpenAI Agents SDK, Vercel AI SDK, Claude Agent SDK, LangChain, MCP, Claude Code
Trust
- License
- Modal: Not listed
- Runtime: Not listed
- BYOC
- Modal: Not listed
- Runtime: Not listed
Hourly cost
One sandbox running for one hour
Modal
Runtime
- 1 vCPU · 2 GiB
- Modal: $0.119
- Runtime: $0.040
- 2 vCPU · 4 GiB
- Modal: $0.238
- Runtime: $0.080
- 4 vCPU · 8 GiB
- Modal: $0.476
- Runtime: $0.160
Compute only, at list rates.
Open the calculatorWhich one fits
Based on the fields above
Modal fits when
- You need GPUs.
- You need SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA and GDPR.
Runtime fits when
- A session must run longer than 24 hours.
- You want each sandbox in its own microVM.
- You use the OpenAI Agents SDK, the Vercel AI SDK or MCP.
- You want the lower list price: $0.080 against $0.238 an hour for 2 vCPU and 4 GiB.
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