Price checkMonthly
StarterFreeTeam$250/moEnterpriseCustom
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All Modal Plans & Pricing

Plan Monthly Annual Best For
View all features by plan (compare side-by-side)

Starter

  • $30/month free credits
  • 3 workspace seats
  • 100 containers + 10 GPU concurrency
  • Crons and web endpoints (limited)
  • Real-time metrics and logs
  • Region selection

Team

  • $100/month free credits
  • Unlimited seats
  • 1000 containers + 50 GPU concurrency
  • Unlimited crons and web endpoints
  • Custom domains
  • Static IP proxy
  • Deployment rollbacks

Enterprise

  • Volume-based discounts
  • Unlimited seats
  • Higher GPU concurrency
  • Embedded ML engineering services
  • Support via private Slack
  • Audit logs, Okta SSO, HIPAA
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What does Modal actually cost you?

Drag the slider. Pick a tier. Your projected spend updates as you go.

Tier
Billing
Your projected cost$6.3Kper month · $250/unit × 25units
Year 1 license$75K12 months at this rate
At a glance

List price by tier (annualized, per unit)

Per-unit list price across Modal's plans, annualized. Custom-priced tiers show a hatched bar.

StarterCustom
Team$3.0K/yr
EnterpriseCustom
Real-world benchmark

Buyers actually pay a median of $683/yr for Modal contracts (Vendr deal flow, n=110). That's a contract total — the more seats, the more leverage to negotiate down.

Quick Answer
Last verified:
Medium confidence

Modal costs Free to $250 per month as of September 2026, with 3 plans available including a free tier. Plans: Starter (free), and Team at $250/month. Custom pricing is available on request. The median contract is $683/year based on 110 verified purchases.

Use the interactive pricing calculator to estimate your exact cost based on team size and requirements.

  • Free tier: Yes

Modal offers 3 pricing tiers: Starter, Team, Enterprise. A free plan is available. Paid plans include Team at $250/user/month. The Team plan is startups and larger organizations scaling quickly.

Compared to other cloud infrastructure software, Modal is positioned at the mid-market price point.

  • Median contract: $683/yr from 110 purchases Precise
  • 9 documented hidden costs beyond list price
  • Contracts auto-renew
Last verified: | Sources: 1 pricing pages and reviews

How much does Modal cost?

Modal offers 3 pricing plans, starting with a free tier and scaling to custom enterprise pricing. Plans include Starter (free), Team at $250/month, Enterprise (custom pricing).

Modal Pricing Overview

Modal has 3 pricing plans, including a free tier. Paid plans range from $0 to $250/month. The Starter plan is free and is best for small teams and independent developers. The Team plan costs $250/month, best for startups and larger organizations scaling quickly. The Enterprise plan requires contacting sales for a custom quote and is designed for organizations prioritizing security, support, and compliance.

Modal contracts auto-renew.

The median Modal customer pays $683/year based on 110 verified purchases.

There are at least 9 documented hidden costs beyond Modal's list price, including implementation, training, and add-on fees.

This pricing was last verified in August 8, 2026 from 1 independent source.

Try Modal Free

Modal pricing starts at $0/month on the Starter plan, where you pay only for the GPU and CPU compute you actually use — community users report GPU costs from approximately $2/hr per GPU for standard instances up to $72/hr for large model serving configurations. For teams, the Team plan is $250/month plus usage-based compute charges. Enterprise pricing is custom-quoted. Compute costs are billed on top of any plan fee and can escalate quickly on intensive workloads.

How Modal Pricing Compares

Compare Modal pricing against top alternatives in Cloud Infrastructure.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) $0-$10000/month Compare → Microsoft Azure $1.0-$12.0/month Compare → DigitalOcean $4-$200/month Compare →

Compare Modal vs Alternatives

Before committing to Modal, compare pricing with these 3 alternatives in the same category.

VSAmazon Web Services (AWS)
Free

Developers learning AWS, small experiments, and proof-of-concept projects

Full comparison
VSMicrosoft Azure
From $1.0/month

Developers and startups exploring Azure or building initial prototypes

Full comparison
VSDigitalOcean
From $4/month

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All Modal alternatives & migration guides

What Companies Actually Pay for Modal

The median Modal buyer pays $683/year based on 110 verified purchase transactions.

What companies actually pay $683/yr Median across 110 community cost mentions Precise
Review scores
Third-party review aggregates, as of Aug 2026
Top pricing complaints
GPU compute costs escalate very quickly beyond the base plan feeRequires DIY configuration of inference stack (e.g., vLLM)Cold start latency must be self-managed
Source: Community cost mentions (Reddit, Hacker News) — aggregated from 110 distinct user reports. Indicative only — not contract-grade data.

Modal Year 1 Total Cost by Company Size

Real deployment costs including licenses, implementation, training, and admin — not just the sticker price.

Small Team: Periodic GPU Workloads $250 Year 1 total

A small team running occasional ML inference or batch jobs on the Team plan, using on-demand GPUs at approximately $2/hr per GPU. At 100 GPU-hours/month, compute cost alone would be ~$200/month on top of the $250/month plan fee.

Large Model Serving (70B+ Parameter Models) ~$72/hr for large model serving Year 1 total

Hosting and serving very large open-weight models (e.g., Kimi K2) on Modal requires multi-GPU configurations that run approximately $72/hr. This is economical when shared across many concurrent users but prohibitively expensive for individual use.

HN (sid-the-kid, 2025-04-24) + current tier data

How Modal Pricing Compares

Software Starting Price Top Price
Modal Free $250/month
Amazon Web Services (AWS) Free $50000/month
Microsoft Azure Custom Custom
DigitalOcean $4/month $131/month
Fly.io Custom Custom
Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Custom Custom

Detailed pricing comparisons:

Browse all Cloud Infrastructure pricing →

9 Modal Hidden Costs Beyond the List Price

Beyond the listed price, Modal has at least 9 documented hidden costs that can significantly increase total cost of ownership.

Watch for 9 hidden costs
  • Critical Cost Multipliers $1,768.50
    high 1 source
    industry "This means that 10,000 monthly CPU-hours, advertised at a base cost of $471.60, could actually cost $1,768.50 with these multipliers applied"
  • Sandbox Pricing Premium $685 monthly
    medium 1 source
    industry "Sandbox Pricing: Modal Sandboxes, designed for persistent agent workloads, force non-preemptible pricing at $0.00003942 per CPU core per second, which is a 3x premium over the base CPU rate of $0.0000131"
  • Unpredictable Usage Costs $400
    high 1 source
    industry "The per-second usage model can make estimating monthly bills challenging, as inefficient code or unexpected spikes in usage can significantly impact the final cost"
  • Developer Hours for AI Projects
    high 1 source
    industry "These include: * Developer Hours: Building and maintaining production-ready AI applications requires substantial time from specialized engineers"
  • Data Preparation Costs for AI Projects 15-35% of project costs
    high 1 source
    industry "Data Preparation: This can consume 50-70% of project time and 15-35% of project costs, including data labeling (ranging from $0.10-$5.00 per data point)"
  • AI Integration Complexity
    medium 1 source
    industry "Integration Complexity: Integrating AI solutions with existing systems can be more complex and costly than initially estimated"
  • Ongoing AI Model Maintenance 15-30% of infrastructure costs
    high 1 source
    industry "Ongoing Maintenance: AI models require annual maintenance, typically 15-30% of infrastructure costs, due to model drift and the need for retraining"
  • GPU Compute Costs Beyond the Plan Fee $2-$72/hour per GPU
    high 2 sources
    Hacker News "Pricing is about $2/hr per GPU (as a baseline of the costs). Long story short, things get VERY expensive quickly."
    Hacker News "On Modal, I think should cost about $72/hr to serve Kimi K2 https://modal.com/pricing"
  • DIY Infrastructure Configuration Overhead 5-15% of license costs
    medium 1 source
    Hacker News "cheap-but-DIY (Modal, RunPod — you configure vLLM yourself and deal with slow cold starts)"
Tip

Ask your Modal sales rep about these costs upfront. Getting them in writing before signing can save you from surprise charges later.

Full hidden costs breakdown →

Intelligence sourced from 2 independent sources
industry Hacker News Tech community
Key claims include inline source attribution. Data verified against multiple independent sources. 14 source citations total.

Modal Contract Terms

Modal contracts auto-renew. Changes require advance notice. These terms are sourced from verified buyer experiences.

Contract Terms
Auto-Renewal Yes
Based on 1 verified source

How to Negotiate Modal Pricing

Modal contracts are negotiable. These 2 tactics are sourced from real buyer experiences and procurement specialists.

Negotiation Playbook 2 tactics
Benchmark Costs on the Free Starter Plan Before Committing high success

Modal's Starter plan is free with no monthly fee — you pay only for compute consumed. Run representative production workloads on the Starter plan first to measure actual GPU hour consumption and project monthly costs before upgrading to the Team plan at $250/month.

HN community usage patterns (2025–2026)
Right-Size GPU Instances to Control Hourly Costs high success

Since Modal charges per GPU hour starting at approximately $2/hr, minimizing idle GPU time — through request batching, autoscaling, and choosing the smallest sufficient GPU instance — is the primary lever for reducing compute bills. This is especially critical for teams where compute costs dwarf the $250/month plan fee.

HN (sid-the-kid, 2025-04-24)
High success Medium Low / difficult

Full negotiation guide →

Modal Pricing FAQ

01 How does Modal pricing work - is it based on execution time or container uptime?

Based on user discussions, there are questions about whether Modal charges only for execution time or also for container uptime. The exact billing model requires clarification from Modal's official documentation.

02 Does Modal have a free plan?

Yes. Modal's Starter plan has no monthly fee — you pay only for the GPU and CPU compute you actually consume. This makes it a low-risk way to test workloads before committing to the Team plan at $250/month.

03 How much does GPU compute cost on Modal?

GPU compute on Modal is billed per hour. Community users report standard GPU instances starting at approximately $2/hr per GPU as a baseline. Serving large models (70B+ parameters, e.g., Kimi K2) can cost approximately $72/hr for the multi-GPU configuration required. These compute charges are billed in addition to any monthly plan fee.

04 Can costs on Modal get very expensive?

Yes — community users explicitly warn that costs escalate quickly. At $2/hr per GPU for standard workloads and up to $72/hr for large model serving, teams running continuous or high-throughput GPU workloads can accumulate hundreds to thousands of dollars per month in compute charges beyond their Starter ($0) or Team ($250/month) plan fee.

05 Does Modal require a lot of self-configuration?

Yes. Modal is a DIY-friendly platform — you configure your own inference stack (such as vLLM for LLM serving) and manage cold start behavior yourself. This is a deliberate tradeoff: lower compute costs and more flexibility in exchange for more engineering setup and maintenance work compared to fully managed inference providers.

06 When should I upgrade from Starter to Team?

The Team plan at $250/month is appropriate when you need team collaboration features, higher concurrency, or dedicated support for production workloads. If you are a solo developer running experimental or infrequent GPU workloads, the free Starter plan is sufficient.

Is this pricing incorrect? — we'll verify and update it.