Keywords AI

DigitalOcean vs Modal

Compare DigitalOcean and Modal side by side. Both are tools in the Inference & Compute category.

Quick Comparison

DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean
Modal
Modal
CategoryInference & ComputeInference & Compute
Pricingusage-basedUsage-based
Best ForDevelopers and startupsPython developers who want serverless GPU infrastructure without managing containers or Kubernetes
Websitedigitalocean.commodal.com
Key Features
  • GPU droplets
  • Cloud compute
  • AI infrastructure
  • Serverless cloud for AI
  • Python-native container orchestration
  • Auto-scaling GPU infrastructure
  • Pay-per-second billing
  • Built-in web endpoints
Use Cases
  • Serverless model inference
  • Data processing pipelines
  • Batch jobs with GPU acceleration
  • Development environments with GPUs
  • Auto-scaling AI APIs

When to Choose DigitalOcean vs Modal

Modal
Choose Modal if you need
  • Serverless model inference
  • Data processing pipelines
  • Batch jobs with GPU acceleration
Pricing: Usage-based

About DigitalOcean

Cloud platform with GPU droplets and AI/ML infrastructure (acquired Paperspace).

About Modal

Modal is a serverless cloud platform for running AI workloads with zero infrastructure management. Developers write Python code and Modal handles containerization, GPU provisioning, scaling, and scheduling automatically. The platform supports GPU-accelerated functions, scheduled jobs, web endpoints, and batch processing, making it particularly popular for ML pipelines, model serving, and data processing tasks.

What is Inference & Compute?

Platforms that provide GPU compute, model hosting, and inference APIs. These companies serve open-source and third-party models, offer optimized inference engines, and provide cloud GPU infrastructure for AI workloads.

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