Koyeb vs Modal
Koyeb scores higher on the AgentReady, 57/100 against 55/100. They differ on 7 of the 41 signals. Which ones decides whether an agent can adopt them without a person watching.
What each one is
Koyeb. Developer-friendly serverless platform designed to let businesses and developers easily deploy reliable and scalable applications globally, with high-performance infrastructure for AI inference, sandboxes, and microservices on CPUs, GPUs, and accelerators
Modal. Modal provides a serverless cloud for engineers and researchers who want to build compute-intensive applications without thinking about infrastructure.
Where Koyeb is ahead
Koyeb passes mcp discoverable, and Modal does not. That is discover, whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists.
It also holds adopt: fast time to first request, copyable quickstart and mcp integration available. Modal misses those.
Where Modal is ahead
Modal passes llms.txt published and llms-full.txt / full agent docs, and Koyeb does not. That is discover, whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists.
It also holds understand: structured api reference. Koyeb misses it.
What neither does
Both fail clear canonical domain, openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented, programmatic credential creation, structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified. If your agent needs any of those, you will be building it yourself either way.
Score, pillar by pillar
The AgentReady splits into four pillars, scored separately, because a product can be easy to find and still impossible to adopt.
Discover. Both sit at 80/100 here. Koyeb misses clear canonical domain, llms.txt published, llms-full.txt / full agent docs; Modal misses clear canonical domain, mcp discoverable.
Understand. Modal leads 38 to 23. Koyeb misses structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented; Modal misses openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented.
Adopt is whether an agent can get a key and make its first successful call without a human in the loop. Koyeb leads 90 to 65. Koyeb misses programmatic credential creation; Modal misses programmatic credential creation, fast time to first request, copyable quickstart, mcp integration available.
Operate. Both sit at 35/100 here. Koyeb misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified; Modal misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified.
Pricing
Koyeb does not publish a machine-readable starting price and has a free tier. Modal starts at $0/mo and has a free tier.
| Koyeb plans | Modal plans |
|---|---|
| - | Starter $0 + compute / month |
| - | Team $250 + compute / month |
| - | Enterprise Custom |
Signal by signal
| Signal | Koyeb | Modal |
|---|---|---|
| AgentReady | 57 | 55 |
| Discovery | 80 | 80 |
| Understanding | 23 | 38 |
| Adoption | 90 | 65 |
| Operability | 35 | 35 |
| Public API | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes | No |
| OpenAPI spec | Unknown | Yes |
| CLI | Yes | Yes |
| llms.txt | Unknown | Yes |
| Self-serve signup | Yes | Yes |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
Which to pick
Koyeb clears more of the signals an agent needs, so it is the safer default for unattended use. Full profiles: Koyeb and Modal. Alternatives to each: Koyeb, Modal.
An agent can fetch this as data: POST /v1/compare {"slugs": ["koyeb", "modal"]}