ModalAlternatives
Alternatives to Modal
Modal: gVisor containers by default with a five-minute lifetime, no pause at all, and a CPU unit that may be one or two vCPUs depending on which reading you trust. Here is what the other 15 providers cost for the same jobs, and what each does that Modal does not.
Short answer: An always-on personal agent costs $143.71 a month on Modal, which cannot run it exactly as described; 11 providers run it as described for less, cheapest Agent 37 ($10.60), Lizard ($19.00) and Boat ($20.00). For short throwaway runs in a product, 11 cost less than its $49.32. Prices checked 29 October 2026.
Why people look elsewhere
Where Modal fits badly, from its provider page.
- An agent that needs to pause and resume: there is no paused state, and a memory snapshot terminates the source.
- An always-on box: the lifetime cap is 24 hours and a running idle sandbox bills its full request.
- A cheap always-on dev box: $347 a month documented, $555 on the measured CPU reading.
- A client-facing URL: inbound is closed by default and there is no built-in desktop or browser.
The alternatives, cheapest always-on agent first
Monthly machine cost at list prices, before any AI model. ✱ means it cannot run that workload exactly as described; the provider page says why.
Compare any two or three in full on side by side, or price your own workload in the cost calculator.