Modal vs Aquanode
Serverless compute platform — functions and containers on GPUs, billed per second
Modal is a serverless platform, not a GPU rental product, and comparing hourly rates is slightly unfair to both of us. If your work is Python functions that should scale to zero between calls, Modal is better than anything we offer. If it is a long-lived environment you SSH into and keep changing, that is our shape.
Where Modal wins
- True serverless: scale to zero, per-second billing, fast container cold starts. You pay only while code runs, which for bursty workloads is dramatically cheaper than any hourly rate.
- A strong Python-native developer experience, with the environment defined in code rather than assembled by hand on a box.
- No idle spend to forget about — the failure mode where you leave a box running for a week does not exist there.
Where Aquanode wins
- A persistent, interactive box you can SSH into and mutate, for the large class of work that does not decompose into stateless functions — ComfyUI graphs with custom nodes, iterative fine-tuning, anything you tune by hand.
- A snapshot taken on one provider restores onto another. Supply moved, price moved, or a region ran dry — the environment follows, rather than being stranded in the account that created it.
- One account across every provider we broker, so you are not maintaining separate logins, keys and billing per vendor to chase capacity.
- Automated backups are on by default when you attach storage at deploy time, at a 6-hour interval — you do not have to remember to configure them.
Modal pricing vs Aquanode
Modal figures are GPU compute, per GPU per hour (billed per second in practice), read from their own pricing page on 2026-08-05. The Aquanode column is the lowest live per-GPU rate in our marketplace feed and moves on its own — the two columns are not measured the same way, so treat this as a starting point, not a quote.
Source: https://modal.com/pricing — GPU compute, per GPU per hour (billed per second in practice). Verified 2026-08-05. Vendors change prices; check theirs before deciding.
What we do not claim
Restoring an environment requires a snapshot that already exists. Stopping a deployment yourself captures it on the way out, so you can bring it back later on any provider. A provider-side termination is different: it is only recoverable if you had already switched automated snapshots on for that deployment, and it costs you the work since the last one. Automated snapshots are opt-in — nothing runs until you start it — and with none running there is nothing to restore.
`aq deploy --snapshot <id>` rents the cheapest matching GPU and restores your snapshot onto it — including onto a different provider than the one it came from. Creating the snapshot is a separate step today: the standalone ogre CLI on the box writes it.
Modal vs Aquanode: common questions
Is Modal cheaper than renting a GPU by the hour?
For bursty work, almost certainly — you are not paying for idle time. Their hourly rate is higher than most rental capacity precisely because you are meant to use very little of it. Compare on your actual duty cycle, not on the headline rate.
Can I get a persistent interactive environment on Modal?
Modal is designed around ephemeral, code-defined environments. If your workflow is an environment you build up by hand and want back tomorrow, that is the gap this comparison is about.
