# Baseten vs Modal

> Baseten has a score of 66.7 (B) against Modal's 63.8 (B). Both do compute gpu. The largest gap is schema & documentation, 14 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-modal
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-modal.md (~1,400 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-modal.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-modal.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-05

Baseten has a score of 66.7 (B) against Modal's 63.8 (B). Both do compute gpu. The largest gap is schema & documentation, 14 points.

- Baseten: grade B, 66.7/100, rank #157 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/baseten.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/baseten.json
- Modal: grade B, 63.8/100, rank #195 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/modal.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/modal.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Baseten for reliability (+10), schema & documentation (+14), security & auth (+14), payments & pricing (+10), maintenance & community (+5).

Pick Modal for nothing in particular (no category where it leads by five points or more).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Baseten | Modal | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 80 | 70 | Baseten +10 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 84 | 70 | Baseten +14 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 55 | 57 | Modal +2 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 82 | 68 | Baseten +14 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 30 | Baseten +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 90 | 85 | Baseten +5 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 67 | 69 | Modal +2 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -5 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **66.7 · B** | **63.8 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Baseten | Modal |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | Model platform |
| Vendor | Baseten | Modal |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.baseten.co` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP |  |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | none | none |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-28 | 2026-09-28 |
| Popularity | 1.2k stars, 74k PyPI/wk | 514 stars, 941k npm/wk, 10.1M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | 4/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Baseten.** Team API keys scoped to inference-only, metrics-only or a single environment or model, plus a Viewer role since 1 September 2026. H100 at $6.50 and A100 at $4.00 an hour, and start-up and idle replica time are billed.

**Modal.** Scale to zero by default, per-second billing and about one-second container boots. No REST API or OpenAPI spec for deploying or invoking Functions.

## Before you call either

### Baseten

1. Create a team key with inference-only permission for calling models and keep full-access keys out of the agent
2. Sleep for `retry_after` seconds on a 429 from api.baseten.co; the activate and deactivate endpoints allow 20 calls a minute
3. Retry 429, 503 and 529 with backoff, but treat 500 as a bug in your model code
4. Set `scale_down_delay` below the 900-second default or every burst bills 15 idle minutes
5. Send payloads over 256 KiB to `/predict`, not `/async_predict`, unless support has raised the async limit

### Modal

1. Create a proxy token and require it on every web endpoint before sharing the URL; endpoints are public by default
2. Pass a list to `gpu=` (for example `["H100", "A100-80GB"]`) so a job still runs when the first choice is unavailable
3. Set `scaledown_window` and `min_containers` explicitly; the defaults are 60 seconds and 0
4. Use `.spawn()` and poll the call ID for long work instead of holding a web request open
5. Keep web endpoint traffic under 200 requests a second or ask Modal to raise the limit

## Other comparisons with Baseten or Modal

- [Baseten vs Beam](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-beam.md)
- [Baseten vs Koyeb](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-koyeb.md)
- [Baseten vs Lambda Cloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-lambda.md)
- [Baseten vs Northflank](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-northflank.md)
- [Baseten vs Replicate Deployments](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-replicate-deploy.md)
- [Baseten vs Runpod](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baseten-vs-runpod.md)
- [Beam vs Modal](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/beam-vs-modal.md)
- [Koyeb vs Modal](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/koyeb-vs-modal.md)
- [Lambda Cloud vs Modal](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lambda-vs-modal.md)
- [Modal vs Northflank](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/modal-vs-northflank.md)
- [Modal vs Replicate Deployments](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/modal-vs-replicate-deploy.md)
- [Modal vs Runpod](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/modal-vs-runpod.md)