How Modal prices
Captured October 26, 2026 at 1440px wide. The page continues below the crop (10,230px in total).
Modal plans and prices
| Plan | Price | Billing |
|---|---|---|
| StarterHighlightedBuilt for small teams and independent developers looking to level up. | $0 | + compute / month |
| TeamBuilt for startups and larger organizations looking to scale quickly. | $250 | + compute / month |
| EnterpriseFor organizations prioritizing security, support, and everlasting confidence. | Custom |
As printed on the page captured October 26, 2026.
How does Modal pricing work?
The value metric is compute time at second granularity. Eleven GPUs run from Nvidia B300 at '$0.001972 / sec' to T4 at '$0.000164 / sec'. CPU bills on a 'Physical core (2 vCPU equivalent)' at '$0.0000131 / core / sec' with a 'minimum of 0.125 cores per container', memory separately at '$0.00000222 / GiB / sec', Volumes at '$0.09 / GiB / mo' with '1 TiB / mo free', and Network Egress at '$0.04 / GiB'. Two multipliers apply on every plan: region selection at '1.15 - 1.75x base prices' and non-preemptible execution at '3x base prices'. Plans sit on top as a platform fee, not a seat charge: Starter includes 3 workspace seats and Team unlimited seats, and the step from $0 to $250 buys containers, GPU concurrency, ten times the egress allowance and features such as custom domains, deployment rollbacks and environment-level budgets.
'Pricing as magical as our product' opens a page built for developers, with the positioning centered above a Per hour / Per second rate panel that ends on Network Egress. Plan cards follow, with Starter marked 'Popular' and its button reading 'Get started with $30 / month free credit', Team's 'Sign in to upgrade' and Enterprise's 'Get in touch'. 'Programs and purchasing options' groups startup credits, academic credits up to $10k and committed spend through the AWS and GCP marketplaces, each behind an 'Apply now' button. Modal Sandbox pricing gets its own rate panel, then 'Why serverless?' works the arithmetic with usage charts, a Compare features table maps the plans, and a twelve-question FAQ covers billing.
Under the hood, Modal prices utilization. 'Why serverless?' sets traditional cloud at '$5,400' for '75 GPUs × 24 hrs × $3 / GPU-hr' against Modal at '$4,740' for 'Avg 50 GPUs × 24 hrs × $3.95 / GPU-hr': a higher unit rate that totals less because idle capacity drops out of the bill. The plan structure follows the same logic, a platform fee with included allowances and usage on a published rate table beyond them. Sandboxes bill CPU at '$0.00003942 / core / sec' and memory at '$0.00000667 / GiB / sec', and the page names the mechanic: 'Sandboxes are billed at non-preemptible rates of 3x list price.' One base table and one multiplier drive both products. Egress follows the allowance pattern, a list rate plus a monthly inclusion that grows tenfold at each tier, which points to a network pass-through cost metered on its own line and offset by the plan. The marketplace card is worth borrowing: it turns an existing AWS or GCP commitment into budget a team can spend on Modal.
What does Modal's pricing page do well?
- The full resource rate card, now including Network Egress at '$0.04 / GiB', sits directly under the hero, so every unit rate is visible before the plans
- Surcharge multipliers are printed in the table: region selection at '1.15 - 1.75x base prices' and non-preemptible execution at '3x base prices'
- Each plan card lists its egress allowance, and the comparison table repeats it in an 'Included network egress' row beside 'Included compute'
- The serverless comparison works through a $3.95 GPU-hour against a $3 one, labels the result '12% lower cost', and makes the case on utilization
- The FAQ takes on real billing questions, including 'Why are Sandboxes and Functions billed at different CPU and memory rates?' and 'I'm on the Starter plan. Why am I being charged?'
What does Modal's pricing page reveal about its pricing strategy?
- A platform fee plus usage: Team's $250 includes $100 of credits and 10 TiB of egress, and the plan buys containers, concurrency and features
- Egress allowances step from 1 TiB to 10 TiB to 100 TiB, so data movement scales with the plan while the $0.04 / GiB list rate stays the same on every tier
- Sandbox CPU and memory rates are the standard rates at the 3x non-preemptible multiplier, so one rate table prices two products
- Multipliers on base prices for region and preemption keep one rate table while pricing placement and reliability
- Marketplace transactions let AWS and GCP committed spend flow to Modal, which opens budget a buyer already holds
Learn with Orb
- GuideMigrating from subscriptions to usage-based billing Per-second billing for GPU, CPU, memory and storage, with a serverless comparison built on utilization, matches Orb's guide to billing cloud products for compute and storage as consumption varies.
- ProductPrice modeling A platform fee plus per-second usage, with region and non-preemptible multipliers on one rate table, is the dimensional, hybrid logic Orb's price modeling represents.
- ProductSpend controls Team includes environment-level budgets and the FAQ explains what counts as billable time, two ways of keeping usage visible and predictable that Orb's spend controls are built around.
Questions about Modal pricing
How much does Modal cost?
Modal's pricing starts at $250 + compute/mo. The page shows 3 plans, including a free plan, with the top plan priced through sales.
What pricing model does Modal use?
Modal prices by usage, combined with flat-rate tiers. Buyers can sign up on their own or go through the sales team. Its plans are aimed mainly at developers.
Does Modal have a free plan?
Yes, Modal has a free plan. Paid plans start at $250 + compute/mo.
Does Modal offer an annual discount?
Modal offers monthly and annual billing; the page doesn't state the discount. The listed prices start at $250 + compute/mo. Terms for the plans priced through sales are set with the sales team.
How is Modal's pricing page laid out?
The page shows 3 plans, highlights Starter, and includes a comparison table and an FAQ. The breakdown above marks 14 points on it: 8 things it does well and 6 insights into the pricing.
How much does Modal charge for network egress?
Modal lists Network Egress at $0.04 / GiB on its resource rate card, with a note to "See plan for included usage / mo". Each plan includes a monthly allowance: 1 TiB / month on Starter, 10 TiB / month on Team, and 100 TiB / month on Enterprise. The same $0.04 / GiB rate applies on every tier, and the allowance grows tenfold at each step.
How are Modal Sandboxes priced?
Modal states that "Sandboxes are billed at non-preemptible rates of 3x list price." Sandbox CPU runs $0.00003942 / core / sec per physical core (2 vCPU equivalent), with a "minimum of 0.125 cores per container", and memory runs $0.00000667 / GiB / sec. GPU use in Sandboxes follows the standard GPU pricing table.
Does Modal offer compute credits for startups and academics, or let me use AWS and GCP committed spend?
Yes, Modal's "Programs and purchasing options" section covers all three. Early-stage startups can get free compute credits, and graduate students, labs, and researchers can get up to $10k in free compute credits. Teams can also transact through the AWS and GCP marketplace to use committed spend on Modal, an option the comparison table lists on the Enterprise plan, and each program has an "Apply now" button.
From the page as captured October 26, 2026. Current prices are on modal.com
Chroma
$250/mo + usageChroma prints all four metered rates in the hero, Write at $2.50 per GiB, Storage at $0.33 per GiB per month, Query at $0.0075 per TiB and Network at $0.09 per GiB returned, then hands the reader a calculator that turns documents and queries into a $79 monthly total. Plans sit on top of the meter: Starter at $0 plus usage, Team at $250 a month plus usage with $100 in credits, and Enterprise on custom terms.
Confluent
~$385/moConfluent prices serverless Kafka on a composite meter, eCKU-hours plus data in and out per GB plus storage per GB-month, and closes its rate table with an 'Estimated Monthly Starting Cost' of $0, $385, $895 and $2,300 that turns an hourly unit into a budget number. Behind it sit two discount structures and an annual commitment that can be spent across the whole Confluent Cloud stack.
Datadog
$15/host/moDatadog publishes a rate card per product, with every billable SKU listed in a left-hand navigator from AI Credits to Workflow Automation. Infrastructure Monitoring prices per host across three host levels: Basic, set with sales, beside Pro starting at $ 15 and Enterprise at $ 23 billed annually, with on-demand rates printed beside them and allotments of containers, custom metrics and custom events attached to each paid host. The bill is the sum of the products a customer adopts, and Basic hosts let one account price noncritical workloads at their own level.
Fly.io
From $0.0030/hr (shared-cpu-1x, 256MB)Fly.io prices raw infrastructure: Machines 'Billed by the second while a Machine runs', volumes on provisioned capacity, and egress by region, with prices set per region through a selector. Support is sold as its own ladder at '$29 / mo', '$199 / mo' and 'From $2,500 / mo', compliance is a '$99/mo' add-on, and a Custom plan covers committed spend and volume discounts.
Grafana
$19/moGrafana Cloud prices on a $19 per month platform fee that carries an allowance on every product, then a usage meter chosen per product, with volume tiers that lower the marginal rate as a customer grows. The hero states the thesis, 'Send more, charge more is broken. We are changing it.', and the page backs it with an embedded calculator that draws the tier curve and a cost-reduction band under the rates. Enterprise prints its entry point: 'Starts at $25,000 / year spend commit'.
MongoDB
$0.011/hourMongoDB Atlas prices two product lines by the hour, each translated into a monthly figure. Atlas Core keeps Free at $0, Flex at $0.011 an hour with 'Up to $30/month', and Dedicated at $0.08 an hour that 'Starts at $56.94/month', while Atlas Infinite adds a public-preview tier at '$0.09 /hour' that 'starts at $65/month' for elastic AI workloads. Flex remains the design to study, a usage tier with a printed ceiling, and Infinite shows a premium tier layered on the same hourly meter.