Runtime costs 81% less than Blaxel for an agent that waits on a model. 100,000 one-minute runs of a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox, each using 20 CPU-seconds, cost $63.89 a month on Runtime and $345.00 on Blaxel. Runtime prices CPU and memory separately and bills only the CPU your code uses. Rates checked 25 October 2026.
How Blaxel bills
Blaxel has one meter: memory, per second of active time. CPU comes with the memory, so a sandbox's cores are set by its memory size. How busy the cores are does not change the bill.
| Meter | Blaxel, as published | Converted | Runtime |
|---|---|---|---|
| Memory | $0.0000115 per GB-second, active time | × 3,600 = $0.0414 per GB-hour | $0.0075 per reserved GiB-hour |
| CPU | Included; 8 GB gets 4 cores | Nothing separate | $0.025 per vCPU-hour of CPU actually used |
At 4 GB, a Blaxel sandbox costs $0.1656 an hour while active. A Runtime sandbox with 2 vCPUs and 4 GiB costs $0.03125 an hour while it waits and $0.08 with both CPUs busy. It costs less than Blaxel even at full load.
The calculator prices Blaxel on the memory you enter, in decimal GB. The shapes below keep 2 GB per vCPU, the ratio of Blaxel's 8 GB with 4 cores.
Example workloads
A month of each, CPU and memory only, from the calculator above.
| Workload | Runtime | Blaxel |
|---|---|---|
| Agent runs: 2 vCPU, 4 GiB, 60 s, 20 CPU-seconds, 100,000 a month | $63.89 | $345.00 |
| Every CPU busy: 2 vCPU, 4 GiB, 60 s, 120 CPU-seconds, 100,000 | $133.33 | $345.00 |
| Tool calls: 1 vCPU, 2 GiB, 2 min, 30 CPU-seconds, 50,000 | $35.42 | $155.25 |
| Long sessions: 4 vCPU, 8 GiB, 30 min, 720 CPU-seconds, 10,000 | $350.00 | $1,669.80 |
Runtime costs less in every row. Blaxel's price does not move with CPU use, so the busy row is where the two come closest: 61% less on Runtime.
A CPU-heavy job that needs more cores than memory pays for extra memory on Blaxel to get them. On Runtime, you choose vCPUs and memory separately and pay only for what you choose.
CPU-heavy work costs the most under this coupling. Four cores on Blaxel come with 8 GB, $0.3312 an hour while active. A Runtime sandbox with 4 vCPUs and 4 GiB, with every CPU busy, costs $0.13 an hour.
What the calculator leaves out
- Paused storage. Blaxel's standby snapshots cost $0.20 per GB a month. A paused Runtime sandbox keeps its files, memory and running processes for $0.08 per GB a month.
- Plans and credit. Blaxel has no plan fee. Its tiers follow the credit topped up over the last 30 days, and that credit is spent on usage: $20 lifts the limit from 10 sandboxes to 50, and $50 to 200. It gives up to $200 of credit to start. Runtime has no plan either: prepaid credit from $10, and 100 free hours of a 1 GB machine in the first 30 days, no card.
- Network. Blaxel includes internet egress. On Runtime, inbound traffic is free, and each account's first 100 GiB out a month is free, then $0.02 per GB.
Taxes are left out on both sides.
Price your own runs exactly
After a few runs on Runtime, price the same sandboxes at Blaxel's published rate:
Terminalruntime compare --from blaxelIt reads the last 30 days of settled sandboxes (--days up to 90) and prints
the monthly saving. Credit you add within 30 days of signing up is matched, up to $1,000 in total (welcome match).
Your Blaxel code keeps working: withruntime/blaxel runs code written for
Blaxel's sandbox SDK in JavaScript and Python after one import change.
The full comparison is Runtime vs Blaxel, and pricing ranks all fifteen rivals on one workload. To price every provider for your own shape, use the sandbox cost calculator.
Sources
- Blaxel pricing, checked 25 October 2026
- Blaxel sandboxes
- Runtime pricing
Rival rates on this page were checked on 25 October 2026.