Modal vs Smol Machines
Modal costs $0.070956 per vCPU-hour and Smol Machines costs $0.05 per vCPU-hour. Modal runs gVisor, offers GPUs and limits a session to 24 hours. Smol Machines runs microVMs.
Updated
Smol Machines
- Isolation
- MicroVM
- Free tier
- $100 credit, one time
- Max session
- Not listed
What is different
8 fields differ. The rest are the same or not listed.
Modal
Smol Machines
- vCPU, per hour
- Modal: $0.070956
- Smol Machines: $0.05
- RAM, per GiB-hour
- Modal: $0.024012
- Smol Machines: $0.0162
- Free tier
- Modal: $30 credit every month
- Smol Machines: $100 credit, one time
- Billing
- Modal: Per second
- Smol Machines: Active CPU time only
- Isolation
- Modal: gVisor
- Smol Machines: MicroVM
- GPU
- Modal:
- Smol Machines: No
- Snapshots
- Modal:
- Smol Machines: No
- SDKs
- Modal: Python, JavaScript / TypeScript, Go
- Smol Machines: TypeScript, Python, Rust
Full comparison
18 fields, at each provider's list price
Modalmodal
Smol Machinessmolmachines
Pricing
- vCPU, per hour
- Modal: $0.070956
- Smol Machines: $0.05
- RAM, per GiB-hour
- Modal: $0.024012
- Smol Machines: $0.0162
- Storage
- Modal: Not listed
- Smol Machines: $0.0001 per GiB-hour
- Free tier
- Modal: $30 credit every month
- Smol Machines: $100 credit, one time
- Paid plan from
- Modal: Pay as you go
- Smol Machines: Pay as you go
- Billing
- Modal: Per second
- Smol Machines: Active CPU time only
Limits
- Max session
- Modal: 24 hours
- Smol Machines: Not listed
- Idle stop
- Modal: Not listed
- Smol Machines: Not listed
- Largest sandbox
- Modal: Not listed
- Smol Machines: 32 vCPU · 32 GiB
- Concurrent sandboxes
- Modal: Not listed
- Smol Machines: Up to 1,000
Platform
- Isolation
- Modal: gVisor
- Smol Machines: MicroVM
- GPU
- Modal:
- Smol Machines: No
- Snapshots
- Modal:
- Smol Machines: No
- Pause and resume
- Modal: Not listed
- Smol Machines:
Developer
- SDKs
- Modal: Python, JavaScript / TypeScript, Go
- Smol Machines: TypeScript, Python, Rust
- Integrations
- Modal: Claude Agent SDK, Claude Code
- Smol Machines: Not listed
Trust
- License
- Modal: Not listed
- Smol Machines: Apache-2.0
- BYOC
- Modal: Not listed
- Smol Machines: Not listed
Hourly cost
One sandbox running for one hour
Modal
Smol Machines
- 1 vCPU · 2 GiB
- Modal: $0.119
- Smol Machines: $0.082
- 2 vCPU · 4 GiB
- Modal: $0.238
- Smol Machines: $0.165
- 4 vCPU · 8 GiB
- Modal: $0.476
- Smol Machines: $0.330
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 Claude Code.
- You need snapshots.
- You need a desktop in the sandbox.
Smol Machines fits when
- You want each sandbox in its own microVM.
- You want an open-source platform (Apache-2.0) that you can self-host.
- You want the lower list price: $0.165 against $0.238 an hour for 2 vCPU and 4 GiB.
- You want the larger free credit: $100 against $30.
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