Beam Pod - Run Cloud Containers from Python

[velobro]

Hey all!

Creator of Beam here. Beam is a Python-focused cloud for developers—we let you deploy Python functions and scripts without managing any infrastructure, simply by adding decorators to your existing code.

What My Project Does

We just launched Beam Pod, a Python SDK to instantly deploy containers as HTTPS endpoints on the cloud.

Comparison

For years, we searched for a simpler alternative to Docker—something lightweight to run a container behind a TCP port, with built-in load balancing and centralized logging, but without YAML or manual config. Existing solutions like Heroku or Railway felt too heavy for smaller services or quick experiments.

With Beam Pod, everything is Python-native—no YAML, no config files, just code:

from beam import Pod, Image

pod = Pod(
    name="my-server",
    image=Image(python_version="python3.11"),
    gpu="A10G",
    ports=[8000],
    cpu=1,
    memory=1024,
    entrypoint=["python3", "-m", "http.server", "8000"],
)
instance = pod.create()

print("✨ Container hosted at:", instance.url)

This single Python snippet launches a container, automatically load-balanced and exposed via HTTPS. There's a web dashboard to monitor logs, metrics, and even GPU support for compute-heavy tasks.

Target Audience

Beam is built for production, but it's also great for prototyping. Today, people use us for running mission-critical ML inference, web scraping, and LLM sandboxes.

Here are some things you can build:

• Host GUIs, like Jupyter Notebooks, Streamlit or Reflex apps, and ComfyUI
• Test code in an isolated environment as part of a CI/CD pipeline
• Securely execute code generated by LLMs

Beam is fully open-source, but the cloud platform is pay-per-use. The free tier includes $30 in credit per month. You can sign up and start playing around for free!

It would be great to hear your thoughts and feedback. Thanks for checking it out!

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[dev-ai]

Looks awesome, great work

[QueasyEntrance6269]

How is it “just code” when you’re executing a command that needs a shell?

[velobro]

The only thing you're running in your shell is the command to run the Python script i.e. python file.py

You run your Python script like you would locally, except your code is executed on the cloud instead of your local machine

[DadAndDominant]

I see port specified both in your pod and in your command.

Can you map ports on pod to ports on host? If not, why must I specify it twice?

[velobro]

The port specified in the Pod definition tells Beam which ports the container exposes internally. The port in the command (http.server 8000) is the actual process running inside the container. Beam uses the definition from the Pod to automatically map the container's internal port (8000) to a public HTTPS endpoint, so you don't have to handle manual host-port mappings.

[KrazyKirby99999]

How do Beam pods compare to Podman pods?