# Modal Sandboxes vs Morph Cloud

> Modal Sandboxes scores 75.5 (BB) on agent readiness against Morph Cloud's 50.8 (D), and leads in every scored category. Both do sandbox code. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/modal-sandboxes-vs-morph-cloud
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/modal-sandboxes-vs-morph-cloud.md (~2,150 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/modal-sandboxes-vs-morph-cloud.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/modal-sandboxes-vs-morph-cloud.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: 2026-10-08

Modal Sandboxes scores 75.5 (BB) on agent readiness against Morph Cloud's 50.8 (D), and leads in every scored category. Both do sandbox code.

- Modal Sandboxes: grade BB, 75.5/100, rank #41 of 629. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/modal-sandboxes.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/modal-sandboxes.json
- Morph Cloud: grade D, 50.8/100, rank #515 of 629. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/morph-cloud.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/morph-cloud.json

## Which one, for what

### Modal Sandboxes (BB)

Good for: GPU work inside a sandbox, or agents already running on Modal.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 95 against 63
- Schema & documentation, 79 against 72
- Agent ergonomics, 67 against 61
- Security & auth, 76 against 39
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 20
- Maintenance & community, 93 against 58
- Transparency & trust, 72 against 25

Also in its favour:
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better

Watch for: No REST API, and the JavaScript and Go SDKs are beta

### Morph Cloud (D)

Good for: Agents that need to checkpoint and fork a running machine with memory intact, for parallel attempts, evaluations or reinforcement learning rollouts.

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for: No terms of service, privacy policy, DPA or subprocessor list found on morph.so or cloud.morph.so


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Modal Sandboxes | Morph Cloud | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 95 | 63 | Modal Sandboxes +32 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 79 | 72 | Modal Sandboxes +7 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 67 | 61 | Modal Sandboxes +6 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 76 | 39 | Modal Sandboxes +37 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 20 | Modal Sandboxes +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 93 | 58 | Modal Sandboxes +35 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 72 | 25 | Modal Sandboxes +47 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **75.5 · BB** | **50.8 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Modal Sandboxes | Morph Cloud |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | SDK + MCP | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Modal | Morph Labs |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://cloud.morph.so/api` |
| Transports |  | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Proprietary hosted service with no published terms found. The Python and TypeScript SDKs are Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-28 | 2026-09-01 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-05-01 | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2023-05-17 | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text |  |
| Popularity | 514 stars, 941k npm/wk, 10.1M PyPI/wk | 3 stars, 339 npm/wk, 13k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.3/5 (8) | none |

## Verdicts

**Modal Sandboxes.** GPU sandboxes at the same per-second rates as the rest of Modal. No REST API, and the JavaScript and Go SDKs are beta.

**Morph Cloud.** Pause and snapshot keep memory and running processes, and one call branches an instance into several copies. A public OpenAPI file covers 69 operations. No terms of service, privacy policy or security page was found, the free plan includes no compute credit, and the changelog holds one entry from November 2024.

## Before you call either

### Modal Sandboxes

1. Pass `timeout=` when you create a sandbox. The default lifetime is 5 minutes
2. Set `block_network=True` or a `cidr_allowlist` for untrusted code
3. Give a sandbox a `name` so a retried create raises `AlreadyExistsError` instead of starting a second one
4. Snapshot the filesystem before the 24-hour limit and start a fresh sandbox from it
5. Catch `ResourceExhaustedError` from `Sandbox.create()` on SDK 1.6.0 and later

### Morph Cloud

1. Set `ttl_seconds` and `ttl_action` when starting an instance. Nothing in the docs stops an instance with no TTL from billing MCUs
2. Pass `auth_mode: api_key` when exposing an HTTP service. The default is `none`, which makes the URL public
3. Enable `wake_on_ssh` before calling exec on an instance that may be paused. There is no separate exec wake setting
4. Use `/api/instance/list` and `/api/snapshot/list` with `page` and `limit` (default 50, maximum 1,000). The plain list routes return everything
5. On a 503 from snapshot, branch, pause or reboot, wait for the `Retry-After` value before repeating the call

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Modal Sandboxes or Morph Cloud?

Modal Sandboxes scores 75.5 (BB) on agent readiness against Morph Cloud's 50.8 (D), and leads in every scored category.

### Can an agent call Modal Sandboxes and Morph Cloud without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Modal Sandboxes. Morph Cloud has a hosted endpoint at https://cloud.morph.so/api.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/modal-sandboxes-vs-morph-cloud.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/modal-sandboxes-vs-morph-cloud.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "modal-sandboxes", "b": "morph-cloud"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare modal-sandboxes morph-cloud`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/modal-sandboxes.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/morph-cloud.json

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