tools-only Getting Started with Modal
Sign Up
Sign up for free at https://modal.com and get $30/month of credits.
Authentication
Set up authentication using the Modal CLI:
modal token new
This creates credentials in ~/.modal.toml. Alternatively, set environment variables:
MODAL_TOKEN_IDMODAL_TOKEN_SECRET
Basic Concepts
Modal is Serverless
Modal is a serverless platform - only pay for resources used and spin up containers on demand in seconds.
Core Components
App: Represents an application running on Modal, grouping one or more Functions for atomic deployment.
Function: Acts as an independent unit that scales up and down independently. No containers run (and no charges) when there are no live inputs.
Image: The environment code runs in - a container snapshot with dependencies installed.
First Modal App
Create a file hello_modal.py:
import modal
app = modal.App(name="hello-modal")
@app.function()
def hello():
print("Hello from Modal!")
return "success"
@app.local_entrypoint()
def main():
hello.remote()
Run with:
modal run hello_modal.py
Running Apps
Ephemeral Apps (Development)
Run temporarily with modal run:
modal run script.py
The app stops when the script exits. Use --detach to keep running after client exits.
Deployed Apps (Production)
Deploy persistently with modal deploy:
modal deploy script.py
View deployed apps at https://modal.com/apps or with:
modal app list
Stop deployed apps:
modal app stop app-name
Key Features
- Fast prototyping: Write Python, run on GPUs in seconds
- Serverless APIs: Create web endpoints with a decorator
- Scheduled jobs: Run cron jobs in the cloud
- GPU inference: Access T4, L4, A10, A100, H100, H200, B200 GPUs
- Distributed volumes: Persistent storage for ML models
- Sandboxes: Secure containers for untrusted code