Do coding agents recommend Modal?
Modal was chosen in 25% of 520 judged code sandboxes sessions, ranking second. Measured with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Grok Build CLI and Muse Code.
Modal was chosen in 25% of 520 judged code sandboxes sessions, ranking second. It was also raised as a candidate in 351 further sessions without being chosen.
This page reports what happened when Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Grok Build CLI and Muse Code had to solve a problem in code sandboxes inside a realistic codebase. Not what a chat assistant says about Modal. What an agent actually installed.
The numbers
| Category | Code sandboxes |
| Sessions in the category | 520 |
| Sessions where Modal was chosen | 131 |
| Install share | 25% |
| Rank in category | 2 of 7 |
| Codebases it won in | 5 |
| Raised as a candidate, not chosen | 351 |
| Chosen when considered | 27% |
| Site | modal.com |
By agent
The agents treat Modal very differently. Codex chose it in 54% of its sessions in this category and Muse Code in 0%, a spread of 54 points.
| Agent | Sessions | Chose Modal | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Code | 129 | 32 | 25% |
| Codex | 170 | 91 | 54% |
| Cursor | 136 | 5 | 4% |
| Grok Build CLI | 34 | 3 | 9% |
| Muse Code | 51 | 0 | 0% |
A single blended install share would report the midpoint and hide both ends. If most of your users run Muse Code, your real position here is 0%, not 25%.
By who was asking
Modal performs similarly across the four kinds of buyer, from 13% to 27%. That is unusual: the category leader changed with the persona in 24 of the 31 categories we measured.
| Who is asking | Sessions | Chose Modal | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Senior engineer | 464 | 124 | 27% |
| Enterprise team | 56 | 7 | 13% |
What Modal was up against
The full ranking in code sandboxes, from the same sessions:
| # | Product | Runs won | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | E2B | 227 | 44% |
| 2 | Modal (this page) | 131 | 25% |
| 3 | Vercel Sandbox | 81 | 16% |
| 4 | Daytona | 73 | 14% |
| 5 | Anthropic Code Execution | 3 | 1% |
| 6 | Runloop Devboxes | 3 | 1% |
| 7 | Cloudflare Workers | 2 | 0% |
What this means
A solid second or third position in a category means the agent is genuinely choosing rather than reaching automatically. That is a winnable position, because the inputs it uses can be changed.
The fastest gains are usually in the sessions that were nearly won: read them, find the step where the agent moved on, and fix that step.
Where these numbers come from
The 520 sessions in code sandboxes are part of a published set of 15,287, run with real coding agents inside realistic codebases and judged blind. The full method is on one page: how we measured this.
Every code sandboxes run can be replayed on the board.
If you work on Modal: the judge recorded a reason for every session where it was raised and passed over. Those reasons are in the transcripts.
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Common questions
Do coding agents recommend Modal?
Yes. Modal was chosen in 131 of the 520 judged sessions in code sandboxes, a 25% install share, ranking second in its category.
Does Claude Code recommend Modal?
In 32 of the 129 sessions in code sandboxes run with Claude Code, which is 25%.
Do different coding agents treat Modal differently?
Yes, and by a wide margin. Codex chose it in 54% of its runs and Muse Code in 0%.
How was this measured?
Real coding agents at pinned versions were run in sandboxes inside 110 realistic codebases and asked to solve real tasks. A simulated project owner approved or questioned each recommendation before any code was written, and a judge from a model family that builds none of the agents read every session blind.
How often is Modal considered but not chosen?
It was raised as a candidate in 351 sessions without being chosen, and chosen in 131. That is a 27% conversion from considered to chosen.
Where this comes from
Armature ran 15,287 judged sessions with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Grok Build CLI and Muse Code inside 110 realistic codebases, and published every run. The numbers on this page come from that work.