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Modal vs Runpod: startup credits compared

Side-by-side amounts, eligibility and access paths, both verified against the official program pages.

ModalFree Modal credits, tiered by stage (amount set on approval)Verified Nov 3, 2026Runpod$1K (Starter) or $5K (Venture) in GPU credits; bonus credits on $25K+ commitsVerified Nov 4, 2026

At a glance

FactModalRunpod
ValueFree Modal credits, tiered by stage (amount set on approval)$1K (Starter) or $5K (Venture) in GPU credits; bonus credits on $25K+ commits
TypeCreditsCredits
DurationNot stated1 year
StagesSeed, Series A, Series B+Pre-seed, Seed, Series A, Series B+, Bootstrapped
RegionsGlobalGlobal
Max funding raisedNot statedNot stated
Max company ageNot statedNot stated
Ways to get it
  • Modal VC partner network — Seed to Series A tier credits
  • Apply directly — Seed to Series A tier credits
  • AWS Activate — Additional Modal credits for Activate members
  • Apply directly — $1K in credits (Starter)
  • a16z or Neo (Runpod verified VCs) — $5K in credits (Venture)
  • Apply directly — +$10K bonus on a $25K commit; +$25K bonus on a $50K commit (Growth Track)
Requirements
  • New to Modal (no prior credits in the tier)
  • VC funding from a Modal partner fund, or more than $1M raised from any fund (Seed to Series A tier)
  • More than $30M raised or beyond Series B for the custom Scaling tier
  • A real company: business email on its own domain, live website and LinkedIn
  • An AI or ML product with real GPU workloads (inference, training, fine-tuning or compute-heavy R&D)
  • Ready to onboard now
  • Tier set by funding: under $1M (Starter), verified VC and under $5M (Venture), over $5M (Growth Track)
Not eligible
  • Companies that already received credits in the same tier
  • Cloud-provider credits (AWS, GCP, Azure) cannot be applied to Modal usage
  • Existing Runpod customers (for the free Starter and Venture credits)
  • A second free offer for the same company, including through a second verified VC
VerificationPartially verified· Nov 3, 2026Verified· Nov 4, 2026

Which should you pick?

The two programs are not directly comparable on dollar value. Runpod accepts a wider range of funding stages, while Modal is more targeted. Note that only Runpod is fully verified against its official page; double-check the other before relying on it. If you qualify for both, there is usually no reason not to apply to both; the programs are independent.

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