Self-hosting

Run useknockout on Modal

The whole stack — API code, model weights, infrastructure config — is MIT licensed. Deploy your own copy to Modal in four commands. You keep the GPU credits, we keep the open source.

Modal's free tier covers ~50,000 image-equivalents per month before billing kicks in. Plenty of runway to ship a side project or evaluate the platform.

1. Prerequisites

Modal account (free tier is fine; $30/month free credits as of 2025)
Python 3.10 or newer locally for modal CLI
pip install modal in any virtualenv
A Stripe account if you want to monetize the deployment (optional)

2. Deploy

Modal handles GPU provisioning, autoscaling, and HTTPS endpoints. The repo ships with a app.py that defines the functions, mounts, and image. You don't need to touch it for a stock deploy.

# 1. Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/useknockout/api
cd api

# 2. Authenticate Modal (one-time, opens browser)
modal token new

# 3. Deploy to your Modal account
modal deploy app.py

# 4. Confirm it's live
curl https://<your-username>--api.modal.run/health

The first deploy builds the image and downloads BiRefNet weights — takes ~3 minutes. Subsequent deploys are seconds because Modal caches the image layer cache.

3. Configure secrets (optional)

Stock app.py works with no secrets — it accepts unauthenticated requests. To gate access by token, point at your own Supabase tokens table, or report metered usage to Stripe, set these:

# Set via Modal dashboard or CLI. The deploy reads these at runtime.

modal secret create useknockout-secrets \
  KNOCKOUT_ADMIN_TOKEN=<random 32 chars> \
  SUPABASE_URL=https://<project>.supabase.co \
  SUPABASE_SERVICE_ROLE_KEY=<your service role key> \
  STRIPE_SECRET_KEY=sk_live_... \
  STRIPE_METER_EVENT_NAME=images.processed

4. Cost math

GPU	Cost / hr	Throughput	Cost / image
L4	$0.80	5 img/sec	~$0.000044
A10G	$1.10	8 img/sec	~$0.000038
A100-40GB	$3.10	18 img/sec	~$0.000048

L4 is the recommended starting point: cheapest per-image, generous Modal free tier, and Modal autoscales to zero when idle so you don't pay for empty containers. Cold-start adds ~3 seconds — fine for most workloads, tunable via keep_warm=1 on the Modal function decorator.

5. Custom domain (optional)

Modal hands you a default URL like https://<username>--api.modal.run. To use your own domain (e.g. api.yourcompany.com):

Modal dashboard → Settings → Custom domains → Add api.yourcompany.com
Modal returns a target hostname; add a CNAME at your DNS provider
Wait ~5 minutes for cert provisioning

6. Updating

Pull the latest changes and redeploy:

git pull
modal deploy app.py

Modal does a rolling redeploy with zero downtime. Old containers drain gracefully.

← Quickstart Self-host on your own GPU →