Agentic Index
Beam vs Modal (2026)
Beam and Modal are the closest rivals in serverless AI compute, both per second billed with free credit tiers: Modal runs a free Starter with 30 dollars in monthly credits and Team at 250 dollars, sandboxes at about a three times premium and regional multipliers of 1.25 to 2.5 times, while Beam runs a free Developer tier with 30 dollars in refreshed monthly credits and Team at 89 dollars, an open source beta9 core you can self host, bring your own compute across AWS, GCP, Azure, and Hetzner, and aggressive GPU rates with an H100 around one to three and a half dollars an hour. Modal leads on platform maturity; Beam leads on price aggression and self host freedom.
| At a glance | Beam | Modal |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Agent infrastructure | Agent infrastructure |
| Entry price | Free Developer ($30/mo credits); Team $89/mo; open source self host; per second GPU and CPU | Free Starter ($30/mo credits); Team $250/mo; Enterprise; per second usage |
| Free / trial | Free Developer tier with $30 a month in credits, refreshed monthly | Free Starter tier with $30 a month in credits |
| Pricing confidence | public exact | public exact |
| Feature |
B
Beam
|
M
Modal
|
|---|---|---|
| Action & orchestration | ||
|
Integrations & Tool Calling Ability to connect agents to real systems through native integrations, OAuth-authenticated actions, custom tools, APIs, webhooks, or MCP-compatible tools. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Workflow Orchestration Ability to sequence, branch, retry, route, and combine deterministic workflow nodes with autonomous agent steps. |
Partial | Partial |
|
Triggers & Channel Coverage How agents wake up and where they work: schedules, webhooks, message events, CRM events, inbox events, chat, email, voice, and collaboration tools. |
Partial | Partial |
| Knowledge & context | ||
|
Knowledge Grounding & RAG Ability to ground agent behavior in company data through document ingestion, retrieval, external knowledge APIs, semantic search, or RAG layers. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
|
Memory & State Persistence Ability to persist context across a run, conversation, workflow, user, team, or longer-term memory layer. |
Partial | Partial |
| Control & trust | ||
|
Human Oversight & Guardrails Approval steps, consent checkpoints, escalation rules, structured guardrails, policy constraints, and pause/resume controls. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
|
Security, Identity & Governance RBAC, SSO, auditability, encryption, least-privilege tool access, compliance posture, and data handling policy. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Observability & Auditability Traces, logs, execution histories, metrics, audit events, and debugging detail for production agent behavior. |
Partial | Partial |
|
Deployment & Data Residency Deployment modes and options, including SaaS, dedicated cloud, VPC, on-prem, hybrid, local runtime, and self-hosting. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
| Solution readiness | ||
|
Prebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Ready-made workflows, packaged employees, templates, blueprints, industry solutions, and role-specific agents that reduce time-to-value. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
| Platform extensibility | ||
|
Model Flexibility & Routing Ability to work across multiple foundation models, route tasks to different models, or let buyers bring their own providers and keys. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
APIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Composability layer: stable APIs, SDKs, MCP tool consumption/serving, custom tools, and integration into internal systems. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Testing, Debugging & Optimization Testing, debugging, scoring, retries, fallbacks, quality gates, and optimization loops for improving agent workflows before and after deployment. |
Partial | Partial |
| Specialist automation | ||
|
Browser & Computer Use Browser, desktop, or remote/local computer control for workflows that cannot be handled through stable APIs alone. |
Partial | Partial |
Pricing snapshot
Sourced from the Index pricing dataset · open each vendor's profile for full detail.
| Pricing |
B
Beam
|
M
Modal
|
|---|---|---|
|
Entry price Lowest public entry point |
Free Developer ($30/mo credits); Team $89/mo; open source self host; per second GPU and CPU | Free Starter ($30/mo credits); Team $250/mo; Enterprise; per second usage |
|
Pricing confidence How public the numbers are |
Public — exact | Public — exact |
|
Billing Primary billing axis |
per second and per millisecond compute (GPU, CPU, RAM) | per second compute (GPU, CPU, memory) |
|
Variable cost Workload / overage exposure |
High variable cost | High variable cost |
|
Free tier / trial Try before you buy |
Free tier
|
Free tier
|
|
Buying motion Self-serve vs sales call |
Self-serve | Mixed |
Choose Beam if
- Aggressive GPU pricing materially changes your inference economics.
- Bring your own compute across clouds preserves your negotiated rates.
- The open source core gives you a self host exit path.
Choose Modal if
- Platform maturity and ecosystem breadth derisk production workloads.
- Higher concurrency limits at the Team tier match your scale.
- Enterprise VPC deployment is on your requirements list.