HEAD-TO-HEAD · PRICES VERIFIED 2026-08-25
Beam vs Modal Sandboxes
Beam undercuts Modal on BOTH billing axes — $0.0675 vs $0.071/vCPU-hr and $0.02304 vs $0.024/GiB-hr — so Beam's computed bill is lower at every profile ($113.58 vs $119.00/mo at the reference, widening with RAM). The margin is thin enough that Modal's broader platform (serverless functions, GPUs, web endpoints in the same runtime) can easily justify the difference; on raw sandbox price alone, though, Beam wins cleanly.
Monthly Cost Across Realistic Benchmarks
100 hr × 1 vCPU / 2 GiB
Beam (sandbox): $11.36 Modal (Sandboxes): $11.90
Cheaper: Beam (sandbox)500 hr × 2 vCPU / 4 GiB
Beam (sandbox): $113.58 Modal (Sandboxes): $119.00
Cheaper: Beam (sandbox)2,000 hr × 4 vCPU / 8 GiB
Beam (sandbox): $908.64 Modal (Sandboxes): $952.00
Cheaper: Beam (sandbox)Rate Card Snapshot
| Vendor | $/vCPU-hr | $/GiB-hr | Billing granularity | Concurrency note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beam (sandbox) | $0.0675 | $0.0230 | per 0.001s | No self-serve concurrency cap published at capture time. |
| Modal (Sandboxes) | $0.0710 | $0.0240 | per-second | Concurrency scales with plan; Starter $30/mo credits, Team $250/mo incl. $100/mo credits, Enterprise custom. |
Fit Notes
- Beam (sandbox) — Skip if you want the biggest platform — young product; fine for browser/computer-use sandboxes, thinner on compliance and regions than E2B or Modal.
- Modal (Sandboxes) — Skip if pure sandbox price is the decision — you pay ~40% over E2B/Daytona for the same vCPU-hour; Modal earns it back only when the rest of your stack already lives on Modal functions.
Run your own workload through the full interactive calculator, or browse all pairs on the comparisons hub.