Modal vs RunPod
SEPT 2026 auditA comparison of Modal and RunPod built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.
The short answer
Choose 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.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Choose 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.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Consider something else if…
- 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 The page lists B200 and B300 but states VRAM only for the A100 rows, so the ceiling is unpublished; SOC 2, HIPAA, RBAC and SSO are all Enterprise.
- RunPod: The catalogue mixes community and secure capacity, so the cheapest quoted rate is not always the tier a production workload should sit on.
7 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.
Pick the criteria you care about. The chart counts how many of them lean toward each provider — the same read as scanning the bars below, just totalled for the ones you chose.
Modal 0
RunPod 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | Modal | RunPod |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| 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. |
| GPU | ||
| 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. |
| Compliance | ||
| 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.
- 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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Plans and Pricing — Modal ↗
“/ mo free PRICING PLANS Starter $0 + compute / month Built for small teams and independent developers looking to level up. Get started with”
Read 2026-09-17 · official pricing
- Billing overview - Runpod Documentation ↗
“To deploy a new Pod, your account must have at least one hour’s worth of credits for your selected configuration. [...] If you’re new to Runpod and want to evaluate the platform, you can start with as little as $10.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs
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.
- 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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Plans and Pricing — Modal ↗
“/ mo free PRICING PLANS Starter $0 + compute / month Built for small teams and independent developers looking to level up. Get started with”
Read 2026-09-17 · official pricing
- Billing overview - Runpod Documentation ↗
“Runpod uses a credit-based billing system where you add funds to your account and charges are deducted as you use resources. All compute and storage charges are billed per second, with no fees for data transfer.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs
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.
- RunPod
- $3.49 per hour for H100 SXM 80GB, single card. The PCIe variant is $2.89 and H100 NVL is $3.19.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Plans and Pricing — Modal ↗
“H200 SXM $0.001261 / sec Nvidia H100 SXM5 $0.001097 / sec Nvidia RTX PRO 6000 $0.000842 / sec Nvidia A100, 80 GB $0.000694 / sec Nvidia A100”
Read 2026-09-17 · official pricing
- Pricing — RunPod ↗
“H100 SXM 80 GB VRAM 125 GB RAM 20 vCPUs $ 3.49 /hr [...] H100 PCIe 80 GB VRAM 188 GB RAM 16 vCPUs $ 2.89 /hr [...] H100 NVL 94 GB VRAM 94 GB RAM 16 vCPUs $ 3.19 /hr”
Read 2026-09-06 · official 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.
- RunPod
- $0.27 per hour for an RTX A5000 with 24GB. RTX 3090 is $0.50, RTX 4090 $0.74, L40S $1.09.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Plans and Pricing — Modal ↗
“vidia L4 $0.000222 / sec Nvidia T4 $0.000164 / sec CPU Physical core (2 vCPU equivalent ) $0.0000131 / core / sec *minimum of 0.125 cores pe”
Read 2026-09-17 · official pricing
- Pricing — RunPod ↗
“RTX A5000 24 GB VRAM 25 GB RAM 9 vCPUs $ 0.27 /hr [...] RTX 3090 24 GB VRAM [...] $ 0.5 /hr [...] L40S 48 GB VRAM 94 GB RAM 16 vCPUs $ 1.09 /hr”
Read 2026-09-06 · official 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.
- RunPod
- Per second, with per-hour rates shown for comparison. Clusters can be started with no commitment and scaled to 64 GPUs.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Plans and Pricing — Modal ↗
“vidia L4 $0.000222 / sec Nvidia T4 $0.000164 / sec CPU Physical core (2 vCPU equivalent ) $0.0000131 / core / sec *minimum of 0.125 cores pe”
Read 2026-09-17 · official pricing
- Pricing — RunPod ↗
“Per hour Per second [...] GPU clusters in minutes with no commitments. Scale up to 64 GPUs, attach shared storage, and pay only for what you use”
Read 2026-09-06 · official 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.
- 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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Plans and Pricing — Modal ↗
“eering services Security SOC 2 compliance HIPAA compatibility Audit logs Static IP proxy RBAC SSO Frequently asked questions How does server”
Read 2026-09-17 · official pricing
- AI Infrastructure Security & Compliance | Runpod ↗
“Runpod has also completed SOC 2 Type II and SOC 3 examinations, and maintains HIPAA and GDPR programs. [...] The Runpod Trust Center lists current compliance resources, including the ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certificate, SOC 2 Type II, SOC 3, HIPAA, GDPR, and the SOC 2 Bridge Letter 2026. Some documents require approved access before download.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site
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.
- RunPod
- Maintains a HIPAA program; HIPAA sits among the Trust Center compliance resources, some of which require approved access before download.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Plans and Pricing — Modal ↗
“ecurity SOC 2 compliance HIPAA compatibility Audit logs Static IP proxy RBAC SSO Frequently asked questions How does serverless pricing diff”
Read 2026-09-17 · official pricing
- AI Infrastructure Security & Compliance | Runpod ↗
“Runpod has also completed SOC 2 Type II and SOC 3 examinations, and maintains HIPAA and GDPR programs. [...] Some documents require approved access before download.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site
When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.
Documented by only one.
These criteria are published by one provider and not the other. An absence here means we have not found a source, not that the feature is missing.
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.