# Modal vs RunPod

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/modal-vs-runpod/

Every value below is read from Modal's and RunPod's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | Modal | RunPod |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Entry paid plan | $0 a month on Starter — the plan carries no fee at all, and $30 of monthly compute is included before anything is billed. The first plan with a monthly fee is Team at $250. | No plan tiers: a new account can start with as little as $10 in prepaid credits, and deploying a Pod requires at least one hour of credits for the chosen configuration. |
| Pricing model | A platform fee plus metered compute, and the fee buys a compute allowance rather than access. Starter is $0 a month and includes $30 of compute; Team is $250 a month and includes $100. Compute is billed per second on top of both. | Prepaid credit balance drawn down by usage: all compute and storage billed per second, with no data transfer fees and no monthly plan tiers. |
| H100 SXM, per GPU-hour | $3.95 per hour for an Nvidia H100 SXM5, published as $0.001097 per second. Modal's own worked example on the same page prices a fleet at $3.95 per GPU-hour. | $3.49 per hour for H100 SXM 80GB, single card. The PCIe variant is $2.89 and H100 NVL is $3.19. |
| Cheapest GPU, per hour | $0.59 per hour for an Nvidia T4, published as $0.000164 per second — the cheapest GPU on the resource table. | $0.27 per hour for an RTX A5000 with 24GB. RTX 3090 is $0.50, RTX 4090 $0.74, L40S $1.09. |
| Billing granularity | Per second, and per CPU core rather than per instance: a physical core is $0.0000131 per core per second with a minimum of 0.125 cores. | Per second, with per-hour rates shown for comparison. Clusters can be started with no commitment and scaled to 64 GPUs. |
| SOC 2 | SOC 2 compliance is listed as an Enterprise-plan feature on the pricing page, alongside HIPAA compatibility, audit logs, RBAC and SSO. No report or certificate is linked from the page itself. | SOC 2 Type II and SOC 3 examinations completed; reports are listed in the Runpod Trust Center and some require approved access before download. |
| HIPAA | HIPAA compatibility is listed as an Enterprise-plan feature, grouped with SOC 2 and audit logs. The page says compatibility rather than a signed BAA. | Maintains a HIPAA program; HIPAA sits among the Trust Center compliance resources, some of which require approved access before download. |

## Where they differ

### Entry paid plan

- Modal: $0 a month on Starter — the plan carries no fee at all, and $30 of monthly compute is included before anything is billed. The first plan with a monthly fee is Team at $250. ([source](https://modal.com/pricing))
- RunPod: No plan tiers: a new account can start with as little as $10 in prepaid credits, and deploying a Pod requires at least one hour of credits for the chosen configuration. ([source](https://docs.runpod.io/accounts-billing/billing))

### Pricing model

- Modal: A platform fee plus metered compute, and the fee buys a compute allowance rather than access. Starter is $0 a month and includes $30 of compute; Team is $250 a month and includes $100. Compute is billed per second on top of both. ([source](https://modal.com/pricing))
- RunPod: Prepaid credit balance drawn down by usage: all compute and storage billed per second, with no data transfer fees and no monthly plan tiers. ([source](https://docs.runpod.io/accounts-billing/billing))

### H100 SXM, per GPU-hour

- Modal: $3.95 per hour for an Nvidia H100 SXM5, published as $0.001097 per second. Modal's own worked example on the same page prices a fleet at $3.95 per GPU-hour. ([source](https://modal.com/pricing))
- RunPod: $3.49 per hour for H100 SXM 80GB, single card. The PCIe variant is $2.89 and H100 NVL is $3.19. ([source](https://www.runpod.io/pricing))

### Cheapest GPU, per hour

- Modal: $0.59 per hour for an Nvidia T4, published as $0.000164 per second — the cheapest GPU on the resource table. ([source](https://modal.com/pricing))
- RunPod: $0.27 per hour for an RTX A5000 with 24GB. RTX 3090 is $0.50, RTX 4090 $0.74, L40S $1.09. ([source](https://www.runpod.io/pricing))

### Billing granularity

- Modal: Per second, and per CPU core rather than per instance: a physical core is $0.0000131 per core per second with a minimum of 0.125 cores. ([source](https://modal.com/pricing))
- RunPod: Per second, with per-hour rates shown for comparison. Clusters can be started with no commitment and scaled to 64 GPUs. ([source](https://www.runpod.io/pricing))

### SOC 2

- Modal: SOC 2 compliance is listed as an Enterprise-plan feature on the pricing page, alongside HIPAA compatibility, audit logs, RBAC and SSO. No report or certificate is linked from the page itself. ([source](https://modal.com/pricing))
- RunPod: SOC 2 Type II and SOC 3 examinations completed; reports are listed in the Runpod Trust Center and some require approved access before download. ([source](https://www.runpod.io/legal/compliance))

### HIPAA

- Modal: HIPAA compatibility is listed as an Enterprise-plan feature, grouped with SOC 2 and audit logs. The page says compatibility rather than a signed BAA. ([source](https://modal.com/pricing))
- RunPod: Maintains a HIPAA program; HIPAA sits among the Trust Center compliance resources, some of which require approved access before download. ([source](https://www.runpod.io/legal/compliance))

## Which should you choose?

Pick Modal if Bursty, self-deployed inference where the bill should follow the work. Compute meters per second and per CPU core — a physical core is $0.0000131 per core-second with a 0.125-core minimum — and the H100 hour is $3.95, the cheapest of the four here that publishes one.

Pick RunPod if Short experiments and bursty inference — per-second billing and a $0.27 entry card mean an idle hour costs nothing and a small job is genuinely small.

Consider something else: Modal — You want a large GPU named with its memory before committing, or support without an Enterprise contract. The page lists B200 and B300 but states VRAM only for the A100 rows, so the ceiling is unpublished; SOC 2, HIPAA, RBAC and SSO are all Enterprise.

Consider something else: RunPod — The catalogue mixes community and secure capacity, so the cheapest quoted rate is not always the tier a production workload should sit on.

## Documented by only one

- Free tier: Modal: Yes
- Kind of free offer: Modal: Free credit — $30 of compute a month on Starter, recurring rather than one-off
- Regions: RunPod: 31 regions across the US, Europe, Asia and Australia for on-demand GPU instances.
- Uptime SLA: RunPod: SLA-backed uptime is offered on reserved clusters, which are sold by contract. No percentage is published on the pricing page, and on-demand pods carry no stated commitment.
- Storage price: RunPod: Persistent storage from $0.05 per GB per month, in standard and high-performance tiers.
- Largest GPU offered: RunPod: 288GB per GPU on B300; B200 at 180GB is $6.79 an hour and H200 at 141GB is $4.59.
- Reserved pricing: RunPod: Savings plans: a 3-month or 6-month upfront prepaid commitment discounts GPU compute costs; storage stays at standard rates and plans are non-refundable.
- Support on entry paid plan: Modal: A community Slack on the lower plans; private Slack support and embedded ML engineering services are Enterprise. Support is a plan feature here rather than something every tier carries.
- ISO 27001: RunPod: ISMS certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2022 by Sensiba LLP; certificate RUN-ISMS-20260827 valid 27 August 2026 through 26 August 2029. Scope limited to the ISMS supporting Runpod's services and platform, not individual products.
- GDPR / data residency: RunPod: Stated fully GDPR compliant for data processed in European data center regions, with documented EU procedures for collection, storage, processing and deletion.
- PCI DSS: RunPod: Claimed for Secure Cloud's vetted infrastructure partners, who meet enterprise standards including SOC 2, ISO 27001 and PCI DSS certifications. Stated of the data-centre partners behind Secure Cloud, not of Runpod Inc. itself.
- Encryption at rest: RunPod: Optional per-Pod volume encryption: the volume disk is encrypted at rest on the host machine, but container disk and network volumes cannot be encrypted.
- Customer-managed keys: RunPod: Not supported: Runpod stores the volume encryption key, which cannot be retrieved, and the docs state bring your own key is not supported.
- Role-based access control: RunPod: Four team roles — Basic, Billing, Dev and Admin — each with set permissions; Admin has unrestricted access to members, settings, billing and resources.
- Private networking / VPC: RunPod: Global networking gives each Pod a private IP reachable only by other Pods in the same account; NVIDIA GPU Pods only, in 17 data centers.
- Dedicated infrastructure: RunPod: Reserved Clusters: dedicated GPU clusters with guaranteed availability, custom configurations and SLA-backed uptime for enterprises scaling to 10,000+ GPUs.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Entry paid plan: Modal or RunPod?**

Modal: $0 a month on Starter — the plan carries no fee at all, and $30 of monthly compute is included before anything is billed. The first plan with a monthly fee is Team at $250.
RunPod: No plan tiers: a new account can start with as little as $10 in prepaid credits, and deploying a Pod requires at least one hour of credits for the chosen configuration.

**Should I choose Modal or RunPod?**

Pick Modal if Bursty, self-deployed inference where the bill should follow the work. Compute meters per second and per CPU core — a physical core is $0.0000131 per core-second with a 0.125-core minimum — and the H100 hour is $3.95, the cheapest of the four here that publishes one.
Pick RunPod if Short experiments and bursty inference — per-second billing and a $0.27 entry card mean an idle hour costs nothing and a small job is genuinely small.