Modal vs Shellbox
Modal costs $0.070956 per vCPU-hour and Shellbox costs $0.01 per vCPU-hour. Modal runs gVisor, offers GPUs and limits a session to 24 hours. Shellbox runs Firecracker microVMs and has no session limit.
Updated
Shellbox
- Isolation
- Firecracker microVM
- Free tier
- Not listed
- Max session
- No limit
What is different
6 fields differ. The rest are the same or not listed.
Modal
Shellbox
- vCPU, per hour
- Modal: $0.070956
- Shellbox: $0.01
- RAM, per GiB-hour
- Modal: $0.024012
- Shellbox: Included
- Billing
- Modal: Per second
- Shellbox: Bundled machine time
- Max session
- Modal: 24 hours
- Shellbox: No limit
- Isolation
- Modal: gVisor
- Shellbox: Firecracker microVM
- Integrations
- Modal: Claude Agent SDK, Claude Code, LangChain
- Shellbox: Claude Code
Full comparison
18 fields, at each provider's list price
Modalmodal
Shellboxshellbox
Pricing
- vCPU, per hour
- Modal: $0.070956
- Shellbox: $0.01
- RAM, per GiB-hour
- Modal: $0.024012
- Shellbox: Included
- Storage
- Modal: Not listed
- Shellbox: A stopped box costs $0.50 per x1 slot per month
- Free tier
- Modal: $30 credit every month
- Shellbox: Not listed
- Paid plan from
- Modal: Pay as you go
- Shellbox: Pay as you go
- Billing
- Modal: Per second
- Shellbox: Bundled machine time
Limits
- Max session
- Modal: 24 hours
- Shellbox: No limit
- Idle stop
- Modal: Not listed
- Shellbox: After 2 minutes
- Largest sandbox
- Modal: Not listed
- Shellbox: 16 vCPU · 32 GiB
- Concurrent sandboxes
- Modal: Not listed
- Shellbox: Up to 16
Platform
- Isolation
- Modal: gVisor
- Shellbox: Firecracker microVM
- GPU
- Modal:
- Shellbox: Not listed
- Snapshots
- Modal:
- Shellbox:
- Pause and resume
- Modal: Not listed
- Shellbox:
Developer
- SDKs
- Modal: Python, JavaScript / TypeScript, Go
- Shellbox: Not listed
- Integrations
- Modal: Claude Agent SDK, Claude Code, LangChain
- Shellbox: Claude Code
Trust
- License
- Modal: Not listed
- Shellbox: Not listed
- BYOC
- Modal: Not listed
- Shellbox: Not listed
Hourly cost
One sandbox running for one hour
Modal
Shellbox
- 1 vCPU · 2 GiB
- Modal: $0.119
- Shellbox: $0.010
- 2 vCPU · 4 GiB
- Modal: $0.238
- Shellbox: $0.020
- 4 vCPU · 8 GiB
- Modal: $0.476
- Shellbox: $0.040
Compute only, at list rates.
Open the calculatorWhich one fits
Based on the fields above
Modal fits when
- You need GPUs.
- You use the Claude Agent SDK or LangChain.
- You need a desktop in the sandbox.
- You need SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA and GDPR.
Shellbox fits when
- A session must run longer than 24 hours.
- You want each sandbox in its own microVM.
- You want the lower list price: $0.020 against $0.238 an hour for 2 vCPU and 4 GiB.
- You need pause and resume.
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