What is the difference between Modal and Salad Cloud?

Modal and Salad Cloud 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: Modal or Salad Cloud?

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 Modal and Salad Cloud?

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 48 different GPU models across both Modal and Salad Cloud, with 0 models available from both providers.

Modal vs Salad Cloud

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

Modal

Provider 1

GPUs Available

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Salad Cloud

Provider 2

GPUs Available

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Comparison Overview

Total GPU Models

Modal GPUs

Salad Cloud GPUs

Direct Comparisons

GPU Pricing Comparison

Total GPUs: 48Both available: 0Modal: 11Salad Cloud: 37

Showing 15 of 48 GPUs

Last updated: 10/30/2026, 1:00:47 PM

GPU Model ↑	Modal Price	Salad Cloud Price	Price Diff ↕	Sources
A10 24GB VRAM • Modal	$1.10/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Modal
A10 24GB VRAM • Modal $1.10/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Modal
A100 PCIE 40GB VRAM • Modal	$2.10/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Modal
A100 PCIE 40GB VRAM • Modal $2.10/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Modal
A100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Modal	$2.50/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Modal
A100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Modal $2.50/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Modal
B200 180GB VRAM • Modal	$6.25/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Modal
B200 180GB VRAM • Modal $6.25/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Modal
GTX 1050 Ti 4GB VRAM • Salad Cloud	Not Available	$0.01/hr★ Best	—	Salad API
GTX 1050 Ti 4GB VRAM • Not Available Salad Cloud $0.01/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Salad API
GTX 1060 6GB VRAM • Salad Cloud	Not Available	$0.02/hr★ Best	—	Salad API
GTX 1060 6GB VRAM • Not Available Salad Cloud $0.02/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Salad API
GTX 1650 4GB VRAM • Salad Cloud	Not Available	$0.01/hr★ Best	—	Salad API
GTX 1650 4GB VRAM • Not Available Salad Cloud $0.01/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Salad API
GTX 1660 6GB VRAM • Salad Cloud	Not Available	$0.02/hr★ Best	—	Salad API
GTX 1660 6GB VRAM • Not Available Salad Cloud $0.02/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Salad API
GTX 1660 SUPER 6GB VRAM • Salad Cloud	Not Available	$0.02/hr★ Best	—	Salad API
GTX 1660 SUPER 6GB VRAM • Not Available Salad Cloud $0.02/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Salad API
H100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Modal	$3.95/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Modal
H100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Modal $3.95/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Modal
H200 141GB VRAM • Modal	$4.54/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Modal
H200 141GB VRAM • Modal $4.54/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Modal
HGX B300 288GB VRAM • Modal	$7.10/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Modal
HGX B300 288GB VRAM • Modal $7.10/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Modal
L4 24GB VRAM • Modal	$0.80/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Modal
L4 24GB VRAM • Modal $0.80/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Modal
L40S 48GB VRAM • Modal	$1.95/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Modal
L40S 48GB VRAM • Modal $1.95/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Modal
RTX 2060 6GB VRAM • Salad Cloud	Not Available	$0.02/hr★ Best	—	Salad API
RTX 2060 6GB VRAM • Not Available Salad Cloud $0.02/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Salad API

A10 24GB VRAM • Modal	$1.10/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Modal
A10 24GB VRAM • Modal $1.10/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Modal
A100 PCIE 40GB VRAM • Modal	$2.10/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Modal
A100 PCIE 40GB VRAM • Modal $2.10/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Modal
A100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Modal	$2.50/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Modal
A100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Modal $2.50/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Modal
B200 180GB VRAM • Modal	$6.25/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Modal
B200 180GB VRAM • Modal $6.25/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Modal
GTX 1050 Ti 4GB VRAM • Salad Cloud	Not Available	$0.01/hr★ Best	—	Salad API
GTX 1050 Ti 4GB VRAM • Not Available Salad Cloud $0.01/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Salad API
GTX 1060 6GB VRAM • Salad Cloud	Not Available	$0.02/hr★ Best	—	Salad API
GTX 1060 6GB VRAM • Not Available Salad Cloud $0.02/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Salad API
GTX 1650 4GB VRAM • Salad Cloud	Not Available	$0.01/hr★ Best	—	Salad API
GTX 1650 4GB VRAM • Not Available Salad Cloud $0.01/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Salad API
GTX 1660 6GB VRAM • Salad Cloud	Not Available	$0.02/hr★ Best	—	Salad API
GTX 1660 6GB VRAM • Not Available Salad Cloud $0.02/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Salad API
GTX 1660 SUPER 6GB VRAM • Salad Cloud	Not Available	$0.02/hr★ Best	—	Salad API
GTX 1660 SUPER 6GB VRAM • Not Available Salad Cloud $0.02/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Salad API
H100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Modal	$3.95/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Modal
H100 SXM 80GB VRAM • Modal $3.95/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Modal
H200 141GB VRAM • Modal	$4.54/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Modal
H200 141GB VRAM • Modal $4.54/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Modal
HGX B300 288GB VRAM • Modal	$7.10/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Modal
HGX B300 288GB VRAM • Modal $7.10/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Modal
L4 24GB VRAM • Modal	$0.80/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Modal
L4 24GB VRAM • Modal $0.80/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Modal
L40S 48GB VRAM • Modal	$1.95/hr★ Best	Not Available	—	Modal
L40S 48GB VRAM • Modal $1.95/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Not Available Modal
RTX 2060 6GB VRAM • Salad Cloud	Not Available	$0.02/hr★ Best	—	Salad API
RTX 2060 6GB VRAM • Not Available Salad Cloud $0.02/hour Updated: 10/30/2026 ★Best Price Salad API

Features Comparison

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

Salad Cloud

Community Cloud
On-demand pool of idle consumer GPUs with nodes in 190+ countries, deployed onto through Salad Container Engine.
Salad Container Engine
Managed orchestration that schedules Docker containers onto nodes it does not control, isolates them behind a hypervisor, streams logs, and reallocates work when a node disappears.
Priority Tiers
High, Medium, Low, and Lowest tiers price the same GPU class differently so a workload can trade preemption risk for cost; High is never preempted by other workloads.
Salad Dedicated
Reserved bare metal and virtual machines on contract, starting with RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell, quoted per allocation and term.
Private Cloud
Salad's orchestration stack licensed per deployment on hardware you already own, pooling idle workstation and server GPUs into a private OpenAI-compatible token service.
Managed APIs and Tooling
AI Gateway (an OpenAI-compatible endpoint for open-weight models, in closed beta), Transcription API, Recipes deployment templates, S4 temporary storage, Gateway Service residential IPs, and a Virtual Kubelet for Kubernetes.

Pros & Cons

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

Salad Cloud

Advantages

Aggregating idle consumer hardware gives some of the lowest published per-GPU-hour rates available
Per-second billing with no contracts or minimums; allocation, image download, and cold start are not billed
vCPU and RAM are included with every GPU class at no additional charge
Four priority tiers make interruptibility an explicit, priced choice per container group

Considerations

On-demand catalog is consumer RTX GPUs only — data center accelerators are not offered outside the contracted Dedicated product
Published GPU classes top out at 32 GB of VRAM, limiting the size of a model that fits on a single GPU
Nodes are individually owned machines that can disconnect at any time, so workloads must be stateless or retryable

Compute Services

Modal

Salad Cloud

Salad Container Engine on Community Cloud

On-demand container orchestration across the distributed pool of idle consumer GPUs, with more than 40 GPU classes selectable by priority tier.

Salad Dedicated

Reserved bare metal and virtual machines on contract, separate from the on-demand community pool.

CPU-only container groups

Container groups with no GPU attached, billed per vCPU-hour and per GB of RAM per hour, running at the Lowest priority tier.

Pricing Options

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

Salad Cloud

Per-second on-demand billing

Published per-GPU-hour rates billed by the second for the time each replica spends running; allocation, image download, and cold start are not charged, and vCPU and RAM are included.

Priority tiers

High, Medium, Low, and Lowest tiers price each GPU class differently - lower tiers cost less and are more interruptible, with Lowest intended for retryable batch work.

CPU-only container groups

Billed per vCPU-hour plus per GB of RAM per hour for container groups that need no GPU.

Volume discounts

Large deployments, long-running jobs, and committed spend are priced below list by sales.

Salad Dedicated contracts

Reserved bare metal and virtual machines quoted separately per allocation and term.

Private Cloud licensing

Licensed per deployment to run the orchestration stack on hardware you already own.

Getting Started

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

Salad Cloud

Get Started

1
Create a SaladCloud account
Sign up at portal.salad.com to reach the dashboard, API keys, and deployment tools.
2
Pick a GPU class and priority tier
Compare published per-GPU-hour rates and live availability on the pricing page, then choose the tier that matches how interruptible the workload is.
3
Deploy a container group
Supply a Docker image, CPU/memory/GPU resources, and a replica count through the portal or the public API; Recipes provide ready-made templates for popular open models.
4
Monitor and scale
Track replicas in the portal and adjust GPU class, priority, or replica count; the container engine reallocates work as nodes join and leave the network.
5
Talk to sales for reserved or volume capacity
Large deployments, committed spend, and Salad Dedicated allocations are quoted directly rather than bought self-service.

Support & Global Availability

Modal

Global Regions

Multi-region availability across North America and Europe

Support

Documentation, community forum, and enterprise support for paid plans

Salad Cloud

Global Regions

Nodes in 190+ countries across the distributed network; capacity is chosen by GPU class and priority tier rather than by selectable region, and availability varies by class.

Support

Documentation at docs.salad.com, a developer hub and Recipes library, status page at cloud-status.salad.com, Trust Center, Discord and GitHub communities, and direct engineering and sales contact for volume and enterprise deployments.