# Modal vs Nebius AI Cloud

> Nebius AI Cloud scores 67.2 (B) on agent readiness against Modal's 63.6 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Modal leads on reliability and payments & pricing. Both do compute gpu. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-09

Nebius AI Cloud scores 67.2 (B) on agent readiness against Modal's 63.6 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Modal leads on reliability and payments & pricing. Both do compute gpu.

- Modal: grade B, 63.6/100, rank #346 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/modal.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/modal.json
- Nebius AI Cloud: grade B, 67.2/100, rank #240 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/nebius-ai-cloud.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/nebius-ai-cloud.json

## Which one, for what

### Modal (B)

Good for: Python teams that want GPU functions, batch jobs and HTTP endpoints from one decorator with scale to zero.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 70 against 57
- Payments & pricing, 30 against 20

Also in its favour:
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: No REST API or OpenAPI spec for deploying or invoking Functions

### Nebius AI Cloud (B)

Good for: Teams that want whole GPU VMs or InfiniBand clusters in Europe, the UK, Israel or the US with IAM, Terraform and an SLA, and are content to manage endpoint lifecycles themselves.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 78 against 70
- Agent ergonomics, 77 against 57
- Security & auth, 81 against 68
- Transparency & trust, 77 against 67

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Runs on your own machine

Watch for: Status page lists 14 incidents marked major between 14 July and 8 October 2026, including about 21 hours of partial degradation in us-central1 on 19 August


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Modal | Nebius AI Cloud | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 70 | 57 | Modal +13 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 70 | 78 | Nebius AI Cloud +8 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 57 | 77 | Nebius AI Cloud +20 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 68 | 81 | Nebius AI Cloud +13 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 20 | Modal +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 85 | 82 | Modal +3 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 67 | 77 | Nebius AI Cloud +10 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **63.6 · B** | **67.2 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Modal | Nebius AI Cloud |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model platform | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Modal | Nebius |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.nebius.cloud` |
| Transports |  | HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| Price for compute gpu | not published | $1.35 per GPU-hour |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Proprietary service under the Nebius Services Agreement. The API definitions, the Go, Python and JavaScript SDKs and the MCP server on GitHub are MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-28 | 2026-10-07 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-05-01 | 2026-09-28 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2023-05-17 | 2026-09-23 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | 514 stars, 941k npm/wk, 10.1M PyPI/wk | 4.1k npm/wk, 469k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 4/5 (2) | none |

## Verdicts

**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.

**Nebius AI Cloud.** One API definition generates the REST and gRPC interfaces, the CLI, Terraform provider and three SDKs, with a 602-operation OpenAPI document, `X-Idempotency-Key` and role-scoped service accounts. The status page lists 14 major incidents between 14 July and 8 October 2026, no request rate limits were found, and signup needs a browser and a card.

## Before you call either

### 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

### Nebius AI Cloud

1. Use a service account with an authorised key, then exchange a five-minute RS256 JWT at `https://auth.eu.nebius.com/oauth2/token/exchange` for a 12-hour Bearer token
2. Send `X-Idempotency-Key` with a random UUID on every create, update and delete, since a 504 can follow a call that succeeded
3. Poll the returned operation (`/ai/v1/endpoints/operations/{id}`) until `status` is set; concurrent operations on one resource are not supported
4. Stop or delete endpoints when idle. A stopped endpoint bills nothing, a stopped Devlab or VM still bills for its disk
5. Check region support first. Serverless AI is absent from `eu-south1` and `us-north1`, and each GPU platform exists in one to four regions
6. Run the beta `nebius/mcp-server` with safe mode on (the default); `nebius_cli_execute` can run any CLI command when `SAFE_MODE=false`

## Questions

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

Nebius AI Cloud scores 67.2 (B) on agent readiness against Modal's 63.6 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Modal leads on reliability and payments & pricing.

### Can an agent call Modal and Nebius AI Cloud without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Modal. Nebius AI Cloud has a hosted endpoint at https://api.nebius.cloud.


## For agents

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

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