What is the difference between Beam and Modal?

Beam and Modal are both cloud GPU providers offering different pricing models, features, and GPU availability. Use our comparison tool to see real-time pricing and feature differences.

Which is cheaper: Beam or Modal?

Pricing varies by GPU model and usage requirements. Check our real-time comparison table to find the best deals for your specific needs.

Can I switch between Beam and Modal?

Yes, both providers offer flexible cloud GPU services. However, consider factors like data transfer costs, setup time, and specific features when switching between providers.

How many GPU models are available for comparison?

We track pricing for 13 different GPU models across both Beam and Modal, with 0 models available from both providers.

Beam vs Modal

Compare GPU pricing between Beam and Modal. Find the best rates for AI training, inference, and ML workloads.

Beam

Provider 1

GPUs Available

Visit Website

Modal

Provider 2

GPUs Available

Visit Website

Comparison Overview

Total GPU Models

Beam GPUs

Modal GPUs

Direct Comparisons

Average Price Difference: $0.45/hour between comparable GPUs

GPU Pricing Comparison

Total GPUs: 13Both available: 1Beam: 3Modal: 11

Showing 13 of 13 GPUs

Last updated: 10/5/2026, 9:59:05 PM

GPU Model ↑	Beam Price	Modal Price	Price Diff ↕	Sources
A10 24GB VRAM • Modal	Not Available	$1.10/hr★ Best	—	Modal
A10 24GB VRAM • Not Available Modal $1.10/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price Modal
A100 PCIE 40GB VRAM • Modal	Not Available	$2.10/hr★ Best	—	Modal
A100 PCIE 40GB VRAM • Not Available Modal $2.10/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price Modal
A100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Modal	Not Available	$2.50/hr★ Best	—	Modal
A100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Not Available Modal $2.50/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price Modal
B200 180GB VRAM • Modal	Not Available	$6.25/hr★ Best	—	Modal
B200 180GB VRAM • Not Available Modal $6.25/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price Modal
H100 SXM 80GB VRAM • BeamModal	$3.50/hr★ Best	$3.95/hr	↓$0.45(11.4%)	Beam Modal
H100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Beam $3.50/hour Updated: 10/1/2026 ★Best Price Modal $3.95/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 Price Difference:↓$0.45(11.4%) Beam Modal
H200 141GB VRAM • Modal	Not Available	$4.54/hr★ Best	—	Modal
H200 141GB VRAM • Not Available Modal $4.54/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price Modal
HGX B300 288GB VRAM • Modal	Not Available	$7.10/hr★ Best	—	Modal
HGX B300 288GB VRAM • Not Available Modal $7.10/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price Modal
L4 24GB VRAM • Modal	Not Available	$0.80/hr★ Best	—	Modal
L4 24GB VRAM • Not Available Modal $0.80/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price Modal
L40S 48GB VRAM • Modal	Not Available	$1.95/hr★ Best	—	Modal
L40S 48GB VRAM • Not Available Modal $1.95/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price Modal
RTX 4090 24GB VRAM • Beam	$0.69/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Beam
RTX 4090 24GB VRAM • Beam $0.69/hour Updated: 10/1/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Beam
RTX 5090 32GB VRAM • Beam	$1.09/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Beam
RTX 5090 32GB VRAM • Beam $1.09/hour Updated: 10/1/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Beam
RTX PRO 6000 96GB VRAM • Modal	Not Available	$3.03/hr★ Best	—	Modal
RTX PRO 6000 96GB VRAM • Not Available Modal $3.03/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price Modal
Tesla T4 16GB VRAM • Modal	Not Available	$0.59/hr★ Best	—	Modal
Tesla T4 16GB VRAM • Not Available Modal $0.59/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price Modal

A10 24GB VRAM • Modal	Not Available	$1.10/hr★ Best	—	Modal
A10 24GB VRAM • Not Available Modal $1.10/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price Modal
A100 PCIE 40GB VRAM • Modal	Not Available	$2.10/hr★ Best	—	Modal
A100 PCIE 40GB VRAM • Not Available Modal $2.10/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price Modal
A100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Modal	Not Available	$2.50/hr★ Best	—	Modal
A100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Not Available Modal $2.50/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price Modal
B200 180GB VRAM • Modal	Not Available	$6.25/hr★ Best	—	Modal
B200 180GB VRAM • Not Available Modal $6.25/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price Modal
H100 SXM 80GB VRAM • BeamModal	$3.50/hr★ Best	$3.95/hr	↓$0.45(11.4%)	Beam Modal
H100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Beam $3.50/hour Updated: 10/1/2026 ★Best Price Modal $3.95/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 Price Difference:↓$0.45(11.4%) Beam Modal
H200 141GB VRAM • Modal	Not Available	$4.54/hr★ Best	—	Modal
H200 141GB VRAM • Not Available Modal $4.54/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price Modal
HGX B300 288GB VRAM • Modal	Not Available	$7.10/hr★ Best	—	Modal
HGX B300 288GB VRAM • Not Available Modal $7.10/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price Modal
L4 24GB VRAM • Modal	Not Available	$0.80/hr★ Best	—	Modal
L4 24GB VRAM • Not Available Modal $0.80/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price Modal
L40S 48GB VRAM • Modal	Not Available	$1.95/hr★ Best	—	Modal
L40S 48GB VRAM • Not Available Modal $1.95/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price Modal
RTX 4090 24GB VRAM • Beam	$0.69/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Beam
RTX 4090 24GB VRAM • Beam $0.69/hour Updated: 10/1/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Beam
RTX 5090 32GB VRAM • Beam	$1.09/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Beam
RTX 5090 32GB VRAM • Beam $1.09/hour Updated: 10/1/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Beam
RTX PRO 6000 96GB VRAM • Modal	Not Available	$3.03/hr★ Best	—	Modal
RTX PRO 6000 96GB VRAM • Not Available Modal $3.03/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price Modal
Tesla T4 16GB VRAM • Modal	Not Available	$0.59/hr★ Best	—	Modal
Tesla T4 16GB VRAM • Not Available Modal $0.59/hour Updated: 10/5/2026 ★Best Price Modal

Features Comparison

Beam

Pay-per-millisecond Billing
Only charged when your code runs, no charges for cold starts or server spin-up
Sub-second Cold Starts
Memory snapshots and GPU checkpoint restore bring containers back in seconds, which Beam reports as up to 35x faster than a traditional cold boot
Secure Sandbox Environments
Run untrusted code safely in isolated environments for AI agents and code interpreters
Stateful, Persistent Runtimes
Pause and resume sessions while maintaining filesystem, memory, and running processes
Elastic GPU Scaling
Scale to zero when idle, burst to thousands of containers in seconds
Custom Docker Images
Bring your own Docker images for full environment control, including running the Docker daemon inside containers

Modal

Serverless GPUs
Run Python functions on NVIDIA GPUs without provisioning instances; cold starts in seconds
Per-Second Billing
Pay for actual GPU runtime at sub-minute granularity, with scale-to-zero by default
Container-Native
Define environments in code, with automatic image building and caching
Wide GPU Catalog
From T4 and L4 through A100, L40S, H100, H200 and B200

Pros & Cons

Beam

Advantages

Pay-per-millisecond billing with no charges for cold starts
Ultrafast boot times with sub-second cold starts via memory snapshots
GPU selection spanning RTX 4090 through B200, plus InfiniBand cluster nodes
On-demand machines priced flat per machine, including vCPU, RAM, and NVMe storage

Considerations

Serverless GPUs other than the RTX 4090 require a committed-spend agreement
GPU container concurrency is capped on the lower plan tiers
Multi-node InfiniBand clusters are sales-only with no published pricing

Modal

Advantages

Serverless model removes idle-instance costs
Per-second billing across the full GPU range
Strong fit for inference, batch jobs and ML pipelines

Considerations

Long-running, fixed-instance training is not the primary use case
Cold starts and storage limits require some application design
No bare-metal access; workloads run inside Modal's runtime

Compute Services

Beam

Inference Endpoints

Deploy high-performance inference endpoints with custom models

Custom model hosting on GPU or CPU
Pre-loading models for fast response times

Sandboxes

Secure code execution environments for AI agents

Run untrusted LLM-generated code safely
Snapshot and restore complete system state

Task Queues

Run large-scale workloads with distributed processing

Audio processing pipelines
Data processing at scale

Modal

Pricing Options

Beam

Pay-per-millisecond

Serverless GPU, CPU, and sandbox usage billed by the millisecond with no minimum charges

Committed Spend

Serverless access to GPUs beyond the RTX 4090 is arranged through a committed-spend agreement

On-Demand Machines

Flat hourly price per machine that already includes the vCPU, RAM, and NVMe storage

Reserved Clusters

Multi-node InfiniBand clusters reserved monthly or yearly, quoted through sales

Bring Your Own Cloud

Per-vCPU and per-GB management fee on top of compute billed directly by your own cloud provider

Storage

Persistent volumes and snapshots included up to a capacity threshold, then billed per GB per month

Monthly Plans

Developer plan free with usage, Team plan with a monthly base fee plus usage, and a contact-sales Growth tier

Free Monthly Credits

All plans include monthly free credits that refresh each month

Volume Discounts

Discounts available for high monthly usage, arranged through sales

Modal

Per-Second GPU Billing

Charged per second of GPU runtime, with scale-to-zero when idle

Free Tier

Monthly free credits for experimentation and personal projects

Team and Enterprise Plans

Volume commitments and enterprise support for production deployments

Getting Started

Beam

Get Started

1
Create an account
Sign up on the Beam platform to receive monthly free credits
2
Set up Python environment
Create a virtual environment and install the Beam SDK
3
Authenticate with API token
Configure your API token to connect to Beam
4
Deploy your first app
Run a function locally, then deploy it as a web endpoint with the Beam CLI

Modal

Get Started

1
Install the SDK
Run `pip install modal` and authenticate via the CLI
2
Define a function
Decorate a Python function with the desired GPU and image specification
3
Run or deploy
Invoke locally or deploy as a long-lived endpoint or scheduled job

Support & Global Availability

Beam

Global Regions

30+ regions spanning the US, EU, Asia-Pacific, and Canada, with workloads routed across clouds and regions in real time

Support

Documentation, public Slack community, and a status page; live chat support on paid plans and a private Slack channel on the top tier

Modal

Global Regions

Multi-region availability across North America and Europe

Support

Documentation, community forum, and enterprise support for paid plans