Ask HN: Looking for empirical advices on "serverless" ML hosting

[tonyabracadabra]

Hey HN,

I'm exploring serverless platforms for hosting custom machine learning models and could use some advice from those who have experience with these services. I get that "serverless" still involves servers, but I'm looking at options that market themselves this way.

I'm considering:

modal.com runpod.io replicate.com beam.cloud

I'm curious about two main things: Pricing: How do the costs compare for running custom ML models on these platforms? Any detailed breakdowns would be great. Cold Start Time: How quickly can each platform start up a custom model from a cold start? Are there big differences in startup times?

If you've used any of these, I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences.