Modal vs SailSandbox Benchmark Comparison
Modal and Sail were each faster in 1 of 2 shared sandbox benchmarks.
- Shared benchmarks
- 2
- Last run
- October 30, 2026
Scorecard
Median of each benchmark's primary metric; lower is better. Medians within 5% count as roughly even, and a benchmark gets no speed verdict when either provider completed fewer than 50% of runs.
Burst TTI
Run October 30, 2026Time from sandbox creation to the first successful command, with 100 sandboxes launched at the same time.
Time to interactive
Modal had a 2.85x lower median time to interactive (751ms vs 2.14s for Sail).
Median time to interactive over time
16 runs from August 7, 2026 to October 30, 2026.
DAX
Run October 30, 2026A real developer workload: install system packages, download Bun, clone the opencode repo, then run bun install and bun typecheck.
Total workload time
Sail had a 1.57x lower median total workload time (67.34s vs 105.55s for Modal).
Median total workload time over time
12 runs from August 21, 2026 to October 30, 2026.
Cost per DAX run
Each provider's DAX median total workload time (run October 30, 2026) multiplied by its published rate at the 8 vCPU / 16 GiB benchmark spec. Workload time excludes sandbox create and destroy, and subscription floors and included credits are not modeled.
Modal
Per-second, max(request, actual)Sandbox rate $0.00003942/core-s (4 cores = 8 vCPU) + $0.00000667/GiB-s. Regional multipliers (1.25–2.5x) not included.
Source pricing pageSail
Observed usage$0.015/used vCPU-hr + $0.008/used GiB-hr + $0.0007/GiB-hr NVMe — bills observed usage, not reservations (upper bound shown at full utilization). Plus $0.012 per L Sailbox creation. No charge while sleeping.
Source pricing pageMethodology
- One workload, every provider. The same script, payload, and model hit every provider, addressed the way its own API expects. Nobody gets a tuned or special path.
- Repeated on a schedule. Every suite runs many iterations per provider, automated on a recurring schedule, so results reflect steady state rather than one lucky request.
- Raw results published. Every run is committed as JSON to the public benchmarks repo, next to the code that produced it. Nothing is cherry-picked or held back.
- How this comparison is built. Each benchmark compares the two providers' medians; results within 5% count as roughly even. A comparison is published only when both providers completed at least 50% of runs in 2 or more shared benchmarks run in the last 30 days.
Frequently asked questions
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Modal and Sail were each faster in 1 of 2 shared sandbox benchmarks. In Burst TTI (October 30, 2026), Modal had a median time to interactive of 751ms versus 2.14s for Sail, 2.85x faster. In DAX (October 30, 2026), Sail had a median total workload time of 67.34s versus 105.55s for Modal, 1.57x faster.