Modal Labs for GPU batch + Val.town for utility scripts

Modal Labs + Val Town for specialized compute (verified). Modal handles GPU-heavy batch jobs ($30/mo recurring credits = ~50 T4-hours, no card at signup, hard Workspace budget cap). Val.town handles utility scripts + webhook receivers + cron reminders (100K runs/day free, GitHub OAuth signup). Modal is NOT part of the 4-rail HTTP fallback chain; it's a specialized rail.

Modal Labs + Val.town as specialized rails

Modal Labs (GPU batch rail)

Free tier (verified 2026-06-23)

• $30/month recurring credits (refreshed monthly, not one-time signup grant)
• ~50 T4-hours/mo at $0.59/hr, ~7.6 H100-hours/mo at $3.95/hr
• Generic “compute” budget applies to GPU, CPU, memory, volume storage all in one wallet
• Signup via GitHub OAuth — no card required at signup
• Card enforced only when usage exceeds $30 free credit
• Workspace budget cap is a first-class feature: set to $0 to stay strictly free

When to use

• Bulk OG image generation (1 cron run scheduled via Modal, batches 1000 images, writes to R2/imgbb)
• Daily ML model retraining for analytics
• Video transcoding for the future audio.oriz.in / video.oriz.in apps
• Image processing that exceeds Cloudflare Workers’ 10ms CPU OR Deno’s 50ms
• Anything GPU that Workers AI’s 10K Neurons/day can’t cover

When NOT to use

• Real-time HTTP requests (use Workers / Deno — Modal cold starts are slow)
• Anything in the 4-rail HTTP fallback chain
• Anything that fits in Workers AI free quota (use that first)

Setup

• Sign up at https://modal.com via GitHub OAuth
• pip install modal-client then modal token new
• Set Workspace budget to $0 immediately in Usage & Billing
• Env vars (already added to .env / .env.example):
  • MODAL_TOKEN_ID
  • MODAL_TOKEN_SECRET
  • MODAL_WORKSPACE=oriz

Val.town (utility scripts + webhook rail)

Free tier

• Unlimited public vals
• 100,000 runs/day
• 15-minute minimum cron interval
• No custom domains (vals served at val.run//)
• GitHub OAuth signup, no card

When to use

• Quick webhook receivers (Telegram, GitHub, Razorpay test mode)
• Cron-based reminders / pings (e.g. weekly health checks)
• Blog code samples that should be runnable in-browser
• API mocks for demos
• Glue scripts that don’t deserve a full Worker repo

When NOT to use

• Private business logic (vals are public by default)
• Anything user-facing (no custom domains)
• Anything where 100K/day is a real ceiling (use Workers instead)

Setup

• Sign up at https://www.val.town via GitHub OAuth
• Generate API token in dashboard
• Env vars:
  • VAL_TOWN_API_TOKEN
  • VAL_TOWN_USERNAME

What about HF Spaces?

Skipped 2026-06-23. Sleep windows (48h idle) and infrastructure variance make Spaces unreliable for production. Modal covers GPU; Workers AI covers real-time inference. HF Spaces stays in the “evaluate when needed” pile.

Rail summary post-2026-06-23

Cross-refs

• Cost-controls rule ? [[rules/free-tier-with-cost-controls]]
• AWS Lambda exception ? [[rules/aws-lambda-exception]]
• Hono portability ? [[decisions/compute/hono-write-once-deploy-all-rails]]
• 4-rail chain ? [[runbooks/free-hosting-providers/serverless-functions]]

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