What is Modal?
No dated launch filed yet
Summary
Modal runs code in the cloud and offers Sandboxes, secure containers for untrusted user or agent code.
- Category
- Agent infra
- Pricing
- Not stated in the sources on this page.
- Links
- Website
Modal is a platform for running code in the cloud. Its documentation home says it has "Everything you need to know to run code on Modal." Its Sandboxes guide describes Sandboxes as "secure containers for executing untrusted user or agent code on Modal."
According to the Sandboxes guide, Modal has a direct interface for defining containers at runtime and securely running arbitrary code inside them. Listed uses include executing code generated by a language model, creating isolated environments for untrusted code, running a command such as a test suite against a git repository, and running tests or CI pipelines against a full Docker stack. The guide says Sandboxes have a default maximum lifetime of 5 minutes, which can be changed with a timeout of up to 24 hours. It shows Images and Volumes used with Sandboxes. The docs home also lists guides such as running coding agents at scale in secure Sandboxes and sandboxing a LangGraph agent's code. PyPI lists modal 1.6.1, the Python client library, uploaded 2026-10-03, which requires Python <3.15,>=3.10 and carries an Apache-2.0 license.
For related tools and news, see the Agent infra category, the E2B 2.56.0 launch, and the guide on LLM observability tools. Primary sources: Sandboxes guide and Modal documentation.
Modal alternatives
| Tool | License | Pricing note |
|---|---|---|
ModalThis pageModal runs code in the cloud and offers Sandboxes, secure containers for untrusted user or agent code. | — | Not stated |
E2BE2B is an open-source sandbox environment for running AI agents in secure, on-demand Linux VMs. | Apache-2.0 | Not stated |
DaytonaDaytona is infrastructure for running AI-generated code in isolated sandboxes via SDKs, API and CLI. | — | Not stated |
Launches and updates
No dated launch has been filed for Modal yet. The description above is from the project’s own pages.
Guides covering Modal
Questions
What is Modal?
Its docs describe it as "Everything you need to know to run code on Modal." Its Sandboxes guide describes Sandboxes as "secure containers for executing untrusted user or agent code on Modal."
Is Modal open source?
Not stated in the cited sources for the hosted service. PyPI lists the Python client library, modal, under Apache-2.0, and lists its source at github.com/modal-labs/modal-client.
How is Modal used for agent code?
According to its Sandboxes guide, a Sandbox is created with the Sandbox.create constructor and commands run inside it with sandbox.exec(...). The guide shows examples in Python, JavaScript, and Go.