Black Forest Labs vs Modal: Token Pricing, Speed & Intelligence

Full comparison of Black Forest Labs and Modal — live token pricing, latency, throughput, context window, strengths, weaknesses, and best use cases. Rates sourced from public APIs — verify before use.

Black Forest Labs

FLUX 1.1 Pro Ultra — the quality benchmark for commercial image generation

Black Forest Labs created FLUX, the model family that has become the quality benchmark for both open and commercial image generation. FLUX 1.1 Pro Ultra produces photorealistic images at up to 4MP resolution. The 2026 lineup adds FLUX 1.1 Pro Ultra (highest quality), FLUX 1.1 Pro (production), FLUX.1 Dev (open-weight, fine-tuning), and FLUX.1 Schnell (open-weight, fastest). FLUX models are available via the BFL API and through Replicate, fal.ai, and other inference platforms.

Commercial image productionPhotorealistic generationCreative AISelf-hosted image generationFine-tuning

Proprietary modelsHosts open weights

Modal

Managed inference API — 10 shared-endpoint models with per-token pricing

Modal Shared Endpoints serve a fixed catalog of models from Modal-managed pools. Modal manages the hardware and autoscaling, and usage is billed per token. Shared Endpoints have model-specific concurrency limits on concurrent in-flight requests. Prices are published rates from modal.com/docs/guide/supported-models.md, re-read 2026-10-31.

InferenceCost-efficiencyOpen-sourceChat

Open-weight hostHosts open weights

Key metric comparison

Cheapest input ($/1M)

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Cheapest output ($/1M)

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Peak throughput

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Best latency (TTFT)

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Intelligence score

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Context window

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Live token pricing

Strengths and weaknesses

Black Forest Labs

FLUX 1.1 Pro Ultra: highest-quality commercial image generation available

FLUX.1 Dev and Schnell: open-weight models for fine-tuning and self-hosting

FLUX.1 Schnell: fastest open-weight image generation model

Available on Replicate, fal.ai, and other inference platforms

Consistently outperforms Stable Diffusion 3.5 on photorealism benchmarks

Strong prompt adherence and text rendering in images

Newer company with smaller ecosystem than Stable Diffusion

Pro models require API access — no self-hosting for highest quality

Less community fine-tuning ecosystem than SD

Modal

Managed hardware and autoscaling — no infrastructure to operate

Published per-token rates including cached-input pricing

OpenAI-style per-token billing across all 10 models

Cached-input pricing available on every model in the catalog

Small fixed catalog of 10 models

Model-specific concurrency limits on shared pools

Prices are published rates re-read 2026-10-31, not continuously collected

Key differentiators

Black Forest Labs

FLUX 1.1 Pro Ultra produces the highest-quality AI images available — consistently outperforming Stable Diffusion and competing with Midjourney on photorealism — with open-weight Dev/Schnell variants for self-hosting.

Modal

Modal Shared Endpoints provide managed per-token inference on a fixed 10-model catalog with published cached-input pricing and no infrastructure to manage.

Frequently asked questions

Black Forest Labs FAQs

What is the difference between FLUX 1.1 Pro Ultra and FLUX.1 Dev?

FLUX 1.1 Pro Ultra is a commercial API model offering the highest quality output at up to 4MP resolution. FLUX.1 Dev is an open-weight model available for self-hosting and fine-tuning, with slightly lower quality than Pro Ultra but full weight access.

How does FLUX compare to Stable Diffusion 3.5?

FLUX consistently outperforms SD 3.5 on image quality benchmarks, particularly for photorealism and prompt adherence. FLUX Schnell is also significantly faster than SD 3.5 for equivalent quality.

Where can I access FLUX models?

FLUX models are available via the BFL API directly, and through Replicate, fal.ai, Novita AI, and other inference platforms. FLUX.1 Dev and Schnell weights are also available on Hugging Face for self-hosting.

Modal FAQs

What models does Modal offer on Shared Endpoints?

Modal Shared Endpoints currently serve 10 models: GLM 5.3 Flash NVFP4, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, GLM 5.3 Flash, Muse Spark Open, GLM 5.3, Inkling NVFP4, Qwen3.8-Max, Qwen3.8-Max VL, and Kimi K3. Use the model table above for per-model pricing and capability details. Source: Modal's published Shared Endpoints catalog, re-read 2026-10-31.

How much does Modal charge per 1M tokens?

Modal Shared Endpoints input prices range from $0.15/1M (GLM 5.3 Flash NVFP4) to $3.00/1M (Kimi K3). All models include cached-input pricing. See the model table for full per-model rates.

Does Modal offer prompt caching?

Yes. All 10 models in the Modal Shared Endpoints catalog have published cached-input pricing, ranging from $0.005/1M (DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017) to $0.30/1M (Kimi K3). Depending on the model, the cached-input rate is 77.5% to 98% below the standard input rate. Source: Modal's published Shared Endpoints rates, re-read 2026-10-31.

Provider resources

Black Forest Labs

Provider page

Website

Pricing Docs

Modal

Provider page

Website

Pricing Docs

Black Forest Labs — FLUX 1.1 Pro Ultra — the quality benchmark for commercial image generation

Modal — Managed inference API — 10 shared-endpoint models with per-token pricing

Modal Shared Endpoints provide managed per-token inference on a fixed 10-model catalog with published cached-input pricing and no infrastructure to manage.

Key strengths compared

Black Forest Labs

FLUX 1.1 Pro Ultra: highest-quality commercial image generation available
FLUX.1 Dev and Schnell: open-weight models for fine-tuning and self-hosting
FLUX.1 Schnell: fastest open-weight image generation model

Newer company with smaller ecosystem than Stable Diffusion
Pro models require API access — no self-hosting for highest quality

Modal

Managed hardware and autoscaling — no infrastructure to operate
Published per-token rates including cached-input pricing
OpenAI-style per-token billing across all 10 models

Small fixed catalog of 10 models
Model-specific concurrency limits on shared pools

Key weaknesses compared

Black Forest Labs

Newer company with smaller ecosystem than Stable Diffusion
Pro models require API access — no self-hosting for highest quality
Less community fine-tuning ecosystem than SD

Modal

Small fixed catalog of 10 models
Model-specific concurrency limits on shared pools
Prices are published rates re-read 2026-10-31, not continuously collected

Provider category context

Black Forest Labs is a frontier lab, founded in 2024. Modal is a inference api. Black Forest Labs as a frontier lab trains and serves its own proprietary models. Modal as an inference API provider hosts open-weight models — typically offering lower prices for equivalent capability tiers but without access to proprietary frontier models.

How to choose between them

Choose Black Forest Labs if you need flux 1.1 pro ultra: highest-quality commercial image generation available. Choose Modal if you need managed hardware and autoscaling — no infrastructure to operate. For high-volume production workloads, run a cost comparison using the token pricing table above with your actual prompt/completion token ratio — the cheapest provider depends heavily on your input-to-output token ratio.