> Documentation index: https://rift.sh/llms.txt

# Rift vs Modal

Modal runs containers and GPU jobs at scale. Rift syncs files between the machines you already have.

### What Modal is

Modal is a serverless compute platform driven from Python. It is built for running many short-lived containers and GPU jobs, and its Volumes serve large data such as model weights to all of them at once.

### How they differ

Modal runs code and gives it shared volumes, and the smallest grant its documentation describes is an environment. Rift keeps a folder in sync across every machine it runs on and grants one folder at a time.

- Identity
  - Modal: The agent has none by default. It uses a workspace API token.
  - Rift: A key that each machine and agent makes for itself. No account.

- Smallest share
  - Modal: An environment, with a role, on the Team and Enterprise plans. Read-only and subpath are mount options chosen by the code that starts the container.
  - Rift: A folder, a subfolder or one file, as read or write.

- Who checks access
  - Modal: Modal.
  - Rift: Each machine that receives a file checks the grant itself.

- Who can read your files
  - Modal: Not established. Modal's security page says stored data is encrypted at rest and lists customer-supplied encryption keys as a feature. It does not say who holds the keys otherwise.
  - Rift: Only the machines you shared with. Rift Cloud holds ciphertext.

- When your machines are off
  - Modal: Volume files stay reachable through Modal's own tools.
  - Rift: Files stored in Rift Cloud stay available.

- When a run ends
  - Modal: A sandbox lives 24 hours at most. A mounted Volume keeps its data, and a filesystem snapshot can save the rest.
  - Rift: Files the run wrote to a Rift folder are already on your other machines.

### Which to choose

Choose Modal when

- You run GPU jobs or many containers at once.
- You serve large read-mostly data such as model weights.

Choose Rift when

- What a job writes should reach your own machines with no download step.
- A person or agent outside your workspace should receive one folder and nothing else.

### Using them together

Modal runs the code and Rift keeps the files. Rift runs on Linux, which is what a Modal container runs.

[Use Rift with Modal](https://rift.sh/docs/use-with/modal.md)

Based on Modal's documentation, read in October 2026. Sources: [sandboxes](https://modal.com/docs/guide/sandbox) , [volumes](https://modal.com/docs/guide/volumes) , [access control](https://modal.com/docs/guide/rbac) , [security](https://modal.com/docs/guide/security).