# Cloudflare Sandbox pricing calculator: what your sandboxes cost, and on Runtime

Cloudflare Sandbox bills $0.072 per active vCPU-hour, $0.009 per GiB-hour with at least 3 GiB per vCPU, and disk, on a $5 plan.

**Runtime costs 53% less than Cloudflare Sandbox 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 $135.04 on Cloudflare, with no
Worker to deploy and no plan to hold. Rates checked 23 September 2026.

## How Cloudflare Sandbox bills

Cloudflare's Sandbox SDK runs on Cloudflare Containers, so it is billed at the
Containers rates. CPU is metered while active; memory and disk are billed on
what is provisioned, for as long as the container runs.

| Meter  | Cloudflare, as published              | Per hour                        |
| ------ | ------------------------------------- | ------------------------------- |
| CPU    | $0.000020 per active vCPU-second      | × 3,600 = $0.072 per vCPU-hour  |
| Memory | $0.0000025 per provisioned GiB-second | × 3,600 = $0.009 per GiB-hour   |
| Disk   | $0.00000007 per provisioned GB-second | × 3,600 = $0.000252 per GB-hour |

Two rules shape the bill. A custom size needs at least 3 GiB per vCPU, so the
calculator prices a 2 vCPU sandbox at 6 GiB even when you ask for 4. And it
gives every Cloudflare sandbox 12 GB of disk, the size in Cloudflare's own
example. Runtime charges $0.025 per vCPU-hour of measured CPU and $0.0075 per
reserved GiB-hour for exactly the memory you choose, with disk included while
the sandbox runs.

## Example workloads

A month of each, CPU, memory and Cloudflare's disk, as the calculator above
prices them.

| Workload                                                         | Runtime | Cloudflare Sandbox |
| ---------------------------------------------------------------- | ------: | -----------------: |
| Agent runs: 2 vCPU, 4 GiB, 60 s, 20 CPU-seconds, 100,000 a month |  $63.89 |            $135.04 |
| Every CPU busy: 2 vCPU, 4 GiB, 60 s, 120 CPU-seconds, 100,000    | $133.33 |            $335.04 |
| Quick scripts: 1 vCPU, 4 GiB, 2 min, 30 CPU-seconds, 50,000      |  $60.42 |             $95.04 |
| Waiting agents: 2 vCPU, 4 GiB, 30 min, 180 CPU-seconds, 10,000   | $162.50 |            $321.12 |

The busy row saves the most, 60%, because Cloudflare's active CPU rate is
almost three times Runtime's. The 1 vCPU row saves the least, 36%, because a
single vCPU with 4 GiB already clears Cloudflare's memory minimum.

The Workers Paid plan's 375 included vCPU-minutes cover 1,125 of the
agent runs in the first row, each using 20 vCPU-seconds. Past that, the
rates above apply.

## What the calculator leaves out

- **The plan.** The Sandbox SDK needs the Workers Paid plan, at least $5 a
  month, which includes 375 vCPU-minutes. Workers requests and Durable Object
  time are billed on top. Runtime has no plan: prepaid credit from $10 and 50
  free sandbox hours on the [trial](/docs/trial), no card.
- **Idle time before sleep.** The figures assume each sandbox is destroyed when
  its run ends. A Cloudflare sandbox left alone keeps billing memory and disk
  until it has been idle for 10 minutes, then sleeps and loses its files unless
  they were backed up to R2. A paused Runtime sandbox keeps files, memory and
  running processes for $0.08 per GB a month.
- **Network and taxes**, on both sides.

## Price your own runs exactly

After your agent has run on Runtime, this prices the same sandboxes at
Cloudflare's published Containers rates:

```bash check
runtime compare --from cloudflare
```

It reads up to 90 days of settled sandboxes and prints what you save a month.
`runtime switch --from cloudflare` before your first top-up gets that top-up
matched, up to $100 ([switching credit](/docs/pricing#switching-credit)).

Runtime is an API with JavaScript and Python SDKs, a CLI and an
[MCP server](/docs/mcp), so it is called from any backend rather than from
inside a Worker. The full comparison, sizes and limits included, is
[Runtime vs Cloudflare Sandbox](/docs/cloudflare-sandbox-alternative), and
[E2B vs Cloudflare Sandbox](/compare/e2b-vs-cloudflare-sandbox) sets it
against E2B.

## Sources

- [Cloudflare Containers pricing](https://developers.cloudflare.com/containers/pricing/), checked 23 September 2026
- [Containers limits and instance types](https://developers.cloudflare.com/containers/platform/limits/)
- Runtime [pricing](/docs/pricing)

Rival rates on this page were checked on 23 September 2026.