Beam vs Modal (2026)

Code on Beam reaches other systems through what the customer writes. Secrets hold credentials, S3 buckets mount into apps and custom registries supply images. Task callbacks POST results to the customer's server, and sandbox ports expose services. Beam has no catalog of connectors, OAuth actions or tool gateway of its own, and the tools are the customer's code.

Sourcedocs.beam.cloud/llms.txtread 2026-09-22

Code on Modal reaches other systems through what the customer writes. OIDC tokens authenticate functions to external clouds, cloud buckets mount as filesystems, and secrets hold credentials. Slack notifications report on apps (beta), and examples connect Discord, Google Sheets and Tailscale. Modal has no catalog of connectors, OAuth actions or tool gateway of its own, so the tools are the customer's code.

Sourcemodal.com/llms.txtread 2026-09-22

An agent framework ships in the SDK (Bot, BotLocation, BotContext) and is built on a Petri net model. Locations hold typed state, and transitions consume inputs from locations and write outputs to others. Transitions can be driven by a model or by plain code, run concurrently in isolated containers and keep state synchronized between them. Task queues add retries and timeouts, and map fans work out. Deterministic steps mix with agent steps, and branching and retries are built in. Beam says it is launching the framework and does not say how mature it is beyond the example it gives.

Sourcedocs.beam.cloud/v2/agents/introductionread 2026-09-22

Retries are first class on Modal. A Retries policy can sit on any function, alongside job queues, fan out with map and spawn, batch and dynamic batching, and gang scheduled clusters. A pipeline that mixes model calls with deterministic steps can be built on these pieces. Sequencing and branching live in the customer's Python. Modal has no multistep workflow primitive that records completed steps and resumes after failure.

Sourcemodal.com/docs/guide/retriesread 2026-09-22

The schedule decorator runs a deployed job on a schedule, and web endpoints and task queues boot containers from zero when requests or tasks arrive. One app can send events to another through signals, for example to reload a model when retraining finishes. Task callbacks also notify the customer's server when a task finishes.

Sourcedocs.beam.cloud/v2/function/scheduled-jobread 2026-09-22

Scheduled Functions run on a cron expression or a fixed period. Web functions and endpoints boot a container from zero when a request arrives, and job queues hand work to functions as it lands.

Sourcemodal.com/docs/guide/cronread 2026-09-22

Any retrieval system on Beam is one the customer builds. Beam maintains no retrieval structure of its own over the customer's content for an agent to query. Volumes, durable disks, Maps and mounted S3 buckets store data but return no search results, and nothing Beam provides indexes, refreshes or permissions the customer's sources.

Sourcedocs.beam.cloud/llms.txtread 2026-09-22

Retrieval systems the customer builds can run on Modal, and its examples embed documents with TEI and run a RAG chatbot over PDFs. Modal does not maintain a retrieval structure over the customer's content that an agent queries. Volumes, Dicts and mounted buckets are storage, and the product itself cannot index, refresh or permission sources.

Sourcemodal.com/llms.txtread 2026-09-22

State carries across runs. Sandbox snapshots capture filesystem and memory as an immutable artifact to fork from or restore, and distributed volumes and durable disks on each node persist data. Distributed Queues and Maps share it across tasks, and the agent framework synchronizes state between transitions, so an agent's code can read that state and carry on. Snapshot state is the machine's own state, which a customer can restore or delete but not review or edit. Beam names no memory layer for agents.

Sourcedocs.beam.cloud/v2/sandbox/snapshotsread 2026-09-22

State carries across runs. Sandbox snapshots save and restore a sandbox's filesystem and memory, memory snapshots speed cold starts, volumes persist files, and Dicts and Queues hold data shared across function calls. The agent's code reads that state to carry on. Restored process state belongs to the machine, and the customer can resume or delete it but cannot review or edit it. Modal has no memory layer for agents.

Sourcemodal.com/docs/guide/sandbox-snapshotsread 2026-09-22

For work running on Beam, including agents built with its framework, Beam names no approval step, consent checkpoint or escalation to a person. The platform isolates workloads with containers per customer, network separation and scoped secrets.

Sourcedocs.beam.cloud/v2/security/securityread 2026-09-22

Work running on Modal has no approval step, consent checkpoint or escalation to a person. Restricted Functions stop untrusted code from touching Modal resources, calling other functions or reaching Modal's APIs. With sandbox networking controls, they give isolation the developer configures, and no person reviews an agent's action.

Sourcemodal.com/docs/guide/restricted-accessread 2026-09-22

A SOC 2 Type II audit by Advantage Partners covers Beam, with the report under NDA, and Beam offers HIPAA BAAs for Enterprise customers and a GDPR DPA. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, and containers and networks are isolated per customer. The customer scopes, rotates and deletes its encrypted secrets, and workspace API tokens can be created, rotated and revoked. All members of a workspace currently have the same permissions, and single sign on is not yet available.

Sourcedocs.beam.cloud/v2/security/securityread 2026-09-22

A SOC 2 Type II audit report is available through Modal's Security Portal at trust.modal.com, and Modal supports HIPAA and has external penetration testing. Identity runs through SSO with Okta, Microsoft Entra or custom SAML, with SCIM provisioning (beta). Access is managed with role based access control, user groups and service users, and an append only audit log records sensitive actions on Enterprise. Secrets, Restricted Functions that cannot touch Modal resources, and sandbox networking controls round out the controls.

Sourcemodal.com/docs/guide/securityread 2026-09-22

Application logs are kept 30 days on Developer and Team plans and one year on Growth, and log export is included. Task status can be queried by ID, with callbacks on completion. Prompts, tool calls, retrieved knowledge and outputs can be inspected step by step only as far as the customer's code logs them. Beam names no audit log of workspace actions separate from the runtime logs.

Sourcebeam.cloud/pricingread 2026-09-22

The workload itself is recorded in detail. Modal keeps real time logs and metrics per function and container, GPU metrics, function stats, and an append only audit log of sensitive workspace actions on Enterprise. Audit logs, function logs and container metrics export to any OpenTelemetry provider or Datadog. Audit stays separate from runtime. Prompts, tool calls, retrieved knowledge and outputs can be inspected step by step only as far as the customer's own code logs them. There is no tracing of each call an agent makes.

Sourcemodal.com/docs/guide/otel-integrationread 2026-09-22

There are three ways to run Beam. The managed cloud runs on AWS and Google Cloud. With bring your own cloud, Beam runs the control plane and compute in the customer's AWS or GCP account for a flat management fee, and the compute bills to the customer's cloud. The pricing plans add Azure as a bring your own cloud option.

Beta9, the engine that powers Beam, is open source under AGPL 3.0 and can be self hosted on a local machine or Amazon EKS. Compute pools can also run Beam workloads on the customer's own machines. The beta9 repository is actively maintained. Beam names no region selection for the managed cloud.

Sourcedocs.beam.cloud/v2/self-hosting/overviewread 2026-09-22

Workloads can be pinned to a region. Functions and Sandboxes take a region argument for the container region, dedicated Endpoints set both container and routing regions, and a data residency guide sets out per service what can be pinned and when customer data may leave the region. Region selection carries a price multiplier (1.15x broad, 1.75x narrow). Modal is a managed cloud with no self hosted option, and shared Endpoints do not take a region.

Sourcemodal.com/docs/guide/data-residencyread 2026-09-22

Ready made starting points ship as end to end examples for model serving (Llama, DeepSeek, Qwen and Hugging Face models, plus an OpenAI compatible vLLM server), for media (ComfyUI, Whisper and text to speech), and for fine tuning and web scraping, plus a research assistant agent built on the agent framework. Developers build from these examples, and Beam offers no browsable catalog of agents a customer can adopt as they are.

Sourcedocs.beam.cloud/v2/examples/overviewread 2026-09-22

Ready made starting points come as a gallery of runnable examples and a Library of models deployable as Shared or Dedicated Endpoints. The agent examples include Cursor cloud agents, a background coding agent with OpenCode, a coding platform, a Claude Agent SDK Slack bot, a LangGraph agent in a GPU sandbox, a computer use agent over VNC and parallel evals. Developers build from these examples and models, and there is no browsable catalog of agents for a customer to adopt.

Sourcemodal.com/llms.txtread 2026-09-22

Customers choose the model, and Beam runs any model on the GPU the customer picks. Examples serve Hugging Face models such as Llama 3.1, DeepSeek R1 and Qwen through vLLM, including an OpenAI compatible vLLM server, or through SGLang, and others fine tune Gemma and Llama. Customers can bring their own deployments and providers.

Sourcedocs.beam.cloud/llms.txtread 2026-09-22

Model choice is the customer's throughout. Modal serves models from its Library on Shared Endpoints billed per token or Dedicated Endpoints with the customer's capacity and region. The customer can deploy any open model on GPUs with vLLM or SGLang, as its examples show for DeepSeek, Nemotron and others.

Sourcemodal.com/docs/guide/shared-endpointsread 2026-09-22

Outside callers reach Beam through Python and TypeScript SDKs, a CLI, and a REST API with published Swagger specifications for the gateway and pods, covering tasks, pods and sandboxes. Web endpoints expose the customer's code as HTTP APIs, the open source Beta9 engine can be extended, and a docs MCP server serves Beam's documentation to coding tools.

Sourcedocs.beam.cloud/llms.txtread 2026-09-22

Official SDKs in Python, JavaScript/TypeScript and Go (the latter two in beta) let outside code call Modal, alongside a full CLI that includes a skills command for coding agents. Web functions and endpoints expose the customer's code as HTTP APIs, and a gRPC API sits behind the open source client.

Sourcemodal.com/llms.txtread 2026-09-22

Code, experiments and fine tuning jobs run on Beam with retries and logs. Beam names no fixtures, scoring or quality gates for a customer's agent workflows, and no way to compare agent runs.

Sourcedocs.beam.cloud/llms.txtread 2026-09-22

Evaluations run on Modal, but scoring them is left to other tools. Its example runs massively parallel evals with Harbor in Modal Sandboxes, and its reinforcement learning examples use verl and TRL, with the datasets, graders and scoring belonging to those frameworks. Modal has no fixtures, scoring, quality gates or comparison of agent runs of its own.

Sourcemodal.com/llms.txtread 2026-09-22

Sandboxes run any code with GPUs, networking and storage and can expose ports for web services. Beam names no browser or desktop for an agent to operate and no API for screenshots, clicks or typing.

Sourcedocs.beam.cloud/v2/sandbox/overviewread 2026-09-22

Computer use agents can run on Modal's machines. In one example, a Browser Use agent drives Chromium inside a Modal Sandbox, watched over VNC, with the model served from a Modal Endpoint. VM Sandboxes are in beta. Control of the browser comes from Browser Use, a separate library. Modal has no API for screenshots, clicks or typing, so it supplies the environment but not the control.

Sourcemodal.com/docs/examples/computer_use_vncread 2026-09-22