---
title: "Modal Alternative (2026): GPU Prices vs LowCostGPU"
description: "Modal vs LowCostGPU: B200 price, billing, payment (crypto, no KYC) and what maps to what when you switch. Public list prices checked 2026-09-03."
url: https://lowcostgpu.com/alternatives/modal
last_modified: 2026-10-20T10:29:15+00:00
prices_as_of: 2026-10-19
site: LowCostGPU (lowcostgpu.com)
---

Alternative · prices checked 2026-09-03

# Modal alternative: same NVIDIA GPUs, fixed prices 30% under the market

Modal is a serverless platform where Python functions decorated with a GPU spec run in containers that scale from zero to thousands and bill per second — GPU, CPU and memory as separate meters. It is excellent for bursty inference and jobs; it is not a place to keep a machine, SSH in and leave Jupyter running.

4 min read Updated 2026-10-19 (LowCostGPU prices live from the sheet)

## Modal vs LowCostGPU at a glance

Modal

Python-native serverless: functions on GPUs, per-second, scale to zero

LowCostGPU

Fixed prices at market median × 0.70, crypto only, verified datacenters

|  | Modal | LowCostGPU |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Billing | Per second — GPU + CPU ($0.047/core-hr) + memory ($0.008/GiB-hr) separately | Per second, no minimum, price locked at deploy |
| Payment | Card | Crypto only — USDT (TRC-20/ERC-20), BTC, XMR, LTC, ETH, TRX, SOL |
| Identity | Card or GitHub account | Email + password. No KYC, no card, no stored IP addresses |
| Free credit | $30/month (Starter), $100/month (Team) | None — every hour is ≥30% under the market median instead |
| Cheaper tier | None | Interruptible flat −50% (no auction) · reserved −35% (3+ months) |
| Regions | United States (+ selected) | 32 regions on 5 continents, verified datacenters only |
| Minimums | None | None — 1× to 8× GPUs at the same per-GPU price |
| Storage | Volumes $0.09/GiB/mo, first 1 TiB free | $0.08/GB/month NVMe, volumes survive instances |
| Egress | Free | $0.01/GB in and out, every region |
| Access | Python SDK only (no SSH, no long-lived VMs) | Containers or full KVM VMs, SSH, Jupyter, REST API, CLI, Python SDK |

Modal column: as published on modal.com on 2026-09-03. Details change — verify before you decide.

## Modal vs LowCostGPU prices, GPU by GPU

Public on-demand list prices per GPU-hour on Modal's pricing page (2026-09-03) against LowCostGPU's fixed rates today — every LowCostGPU price is the public marketplace median × 0.70, rounded down, re-checked weekly.

| GPU | Modal list | LowCostGPU on-demand | LowCostGPU interruptible | Difference |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [B200](https://lowcostgpu.com/gpu/b200) ($0.001736/s) | $6.25 | **$6.475** | $3.237 | +4% on LowCostGPU |
| [H200](https://lowcostgpu.com/gpu/h200) ($0.001261/s) | $4.54 | **$3.131** | $1.565 | −31% on LowCostGPU |
| [H100 SXM](https://lowcostgpu.com/gpu/h100-sxm) ($0.001097/s) | $3.95 | **$1.680** | $0.840 | −57% on LowCostGPU |
| [A100 SXM4](https://lowcostgpu.com/gpu/a100-sxm4) (80 GB, $0.000694/s) | $2.50 | **$0.468** | $0.234 | −81% on LowCostGPU |
| [L40S](https://lowcostgpu.com/gpu/l40s) ($0.000542/s) | $1.95 | **$0.448** | $0.224 | −77% on LowCostGPU |
| [A10](https://lowcostgpu.com/gpu/a10) ($0.000306/s) | $1.10 | **$0.168** | $0.084 | −85% on LowCostGPU |
| [L4](https://lowcostgpu.com/gpu/l4) ($0.000222/s) | $0.80 | **$0.196** | $0.098 | −76% on LowCostGPU |
| [Tesla T4](https://lowcostgpu.com/gpu/tesla-t4) ($0.000164/s) | $0.59 | **$0.104** | $0.052 | −82% on LowCostGPU |

Configurations differ (node sizes, tiers, regions); the note beside each card says which Modal price is quoted. Negative differences mean Modal is cheaper on that card.

## When to stay with Modal

- Your workload is bursty inference written in Python and you want autoscaling without operating anything.
- The $30/month free credit covers your usage.
- You never need a shell, a desktop, a VM or a long-running notebook.

## Why teams switch to LowCostGPU

- Long-running machines: SSH, Jupyter, full KVM VMs, desktops — Modal has no persistent instances.
- One price per GPU-hour that includes the CPU and RAM; Modal meters GPU, CPU and memory separately.
- Fixed rates at market median × 0.70 (Modal H100 $3.95, A100 80 GB $2.50), interruptible −50%, reserved −35%.
- Crypto settlement with no card or KYC — and a serverless endpoint product when you do want scale-to-zero.

## Switching from Modal: what maps to what

| On Modal | On LowCostGPU |
| --- | --- |
| @app.function(gpu="H100") | Serverless endpoint (vLLM / ComfyUI / any container) or an instance you keep |
| Modal Volume | Volume, $0.08/GB/month |
| Container image definition | Any OCI image or one of 37 templates |
| Modal CLI | lowcostgpu CLI, REST API, Python SDK |

*the whole migration, from the shell*

```
pip install lowcostgpu
export LOWCOSTGPU_API_KEY=pg_live_…          # console → API keys
lowcostgpu launch --gpu b200 --template pytorch --disk 100 --volume data:/data
# ✓ instance i-52ab77c1 running (24.1s) · $6.475/hr · per second
lowcostgpu stop i-52ab77c1                      # billing ends this second
```

Data moves the boring way: rsync or rclone from your Modal machine to a LowCostGPU [volume](https://lowcostgpu.com/products/volumes), which then mounts on every future instance in seconds. Templates for [PyTorch](https://lowcostgpu.com/templates/pytorch), [vLLM](https://lowcostgpu.com/templates/vllm), [ComfyUI](https://lowcostgpu.com/templates/comfyui) and [Ollama](https://lowcostgpu.com/templates/ollama) are official images; anything else runs from its OCI reference.

## A real month, costed

| Scenario | Modal | LowCostGPU |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1× B200, 730 hours on-demand | $4,563 | **$4,727** |
| 1× B200, 8 h/day × 20 days | $1,000 | **$1,036** |
| Same 160 hours, LowCostGPU interruptible | — | **$518** |
| 500 GB of storage, one month | Volumes $0.09/GiB/mo, first 1 TiB free | $40 |

Run your own schedule through the [cost calculator](https://lowcostgpu.com/calculator) — it adds storage and bandwidth and compares against the marketplace median.

## Modal alternative: FAQ

**Is LowCostGPU cheaper than Modal?**

Per GPU-hour, yes: Modal bills the H100 at $3.95/hr and the A100 80 GB at $2.50/hr plus CPU and memory meters (checked 2026-09-03); LowCostGPU fixes them at the public market median × 0.70, CPU and RAM included. Modal's $30 monthly credit can make tiny workloads free.

**Does LowCostGPU have scale-to-zero like Modal?**

Yes — serverless endpoints with queue-based autoscaling, cached weights and per-second billing on the same fixed prices. The difference is that LowCostGPU also offers instances, VMs and SSH when a function is not the right shape.

**Can I keep using Python to drive LowCostGPU?**

Yes: pip install lowcostgpu gives a typed SDK with a context manager that guarantees the meter stops when your block exits.

---

Try the switch for the price of a coffee

Top up $40 in USDT or Monero, deploy the same image you run on Modal, and benchmark it. No card, no KYC, per-second billing — stop it the minute you are done.

Modal and its logo are trademarks of their owner, used here only to identify the compared service; LowCostGPU is not affiliated with Modal. NVIDIA GPU names are trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation.

---

*About LowCostGPU:* LowCostGPU (lowcostgpu.com) is a cloud GPU rental service offering 83 NVIDIA GPU models — from the Tesla P4 at $0.019/hr to the B300 — at fixed prices set at least 30% below the public GPU marketplace median and re-checked weekly (H100 SXM: $1.680/hr on-demand). Billing is per second with no minimums; payment is crypto only (USDT, BTC, XMR, ETH, SOL, LTC, TRX) with no KYC. Instances run in Tier-III datacenters across 32 regions with a 99.9% uptime SLA and deploy in about 30 seconds from the web console (cloud.lowcostgpu.com) or the REST API.

Source: https://lowcostgpu.com/alternatives/modal · Site index for AI assistants: https://lowcostgpu.com/llms.txt · Full content: https://lowcostgpu.com/llms-full.txt
