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

A CodeSandbox SDK Nano VM, 2 cores and 4 GB, costs 10 credits an hour ($0.1486), billed by the minute and rounded up.

**Runtime costs 74% less than CodeSandbox for an agent that waits on a model,
and more for short runs.** 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 $247.67 on
CodeSandbox. Runtime bills by the second and charges for the CPU your code uses.
Rates checked 23 September 2026.

## How CodeSandbox bills

The CodeSandbox SDK sells VMs in fixed sizes, priced in credits per hour. The
smallest, Nano, has 2 cores and 4 GB of memory. Each VM's running time is
rounded up to the next whole minute.

| Nano VM      | As published              | Converted                       |
| ------------ | ------------------------- | ------------------------------- |
| Rate         | 10 credits an hour        | 10 × $0.01486 = $0.1486 an hour |
| Billing unit | By the minute, rounded up | A 40-second run is a minute     |
| Per minute   | 1/60 of the hourly rate   | About $0.00248                  |

Runtime charges $0.025 per vCPU-hour of measured CPU, with a floor of a
twentieth of a vCPU, and $0.0075 per reserved GiB-hour, by the second. The
same shape costs $0.03125 an hour while it waits and $0.08 fully busy.

Because CodeSandbox sells fixed sizes, the calculator prices it only at
2 vCPUs and 4 GiB. Choose another shape and it lists CodeSandbox as unpriced.

## Example workloads

A month of each at 2 vCPUs and 4 GiB, from the calculator above, with
CodeSandbox's rounding applied.

| Workload                                                         | Runtime | CodeSandbox |
| ---------------------------------------------------------------- | ------: | ----------: |
| Agent runs: 2 vCPU, 4 GiB, 60 s, 20 CPU-seconds, 100,000 a month |  $63.89 |     $247.67 |
| Every CPU busy: 2 vCPU, 4 GiB, 60 s, 120 CPU-seconds, 100,000    | $133.33 |     $247.67 |
| Short runs: 2 vCPU, 4 GiB, 40 s, 24 CPU-seconds, 200,000         | $100.00 |     $495.33 |
| Quick checks: 2 vCPU, 4 GiB, 20 s, 20 CPU-seconds, 500,000       | $152.78 |   $1,238.33 |

The last two rows show the rounding. A 20-second check is billed as a full
minute on CodeSandbox, three times its length, so Runtime saves 88% there. On
whole-minute runs with both CPUs busy, Runtime still saves 46%.

Per run, that 20-second check costs $0.000306 on Runtime and $0.00248 on
CodeSandbox. Runtime has no one-minute minimum, so short runs cost what they
use.

CodeSandbox VMs keep memory in snapshots. A Runtime sandbox does too: a pause
keeps its files, memory and running processes, and a fork copies a running
sandbox, 1 to 10 copies at a time.

## What the calculator leaves out

- **Plan fees and concurrency.** The free Build plan runs up to 10 VMs at once;
  more needs the Scale plan at $170 a month, which runs 250. Runtime has no
  plan: a paid account starts at 100 sandboxes at once, on prepaid credit from
  $10.
- **Free start.** CodeSandbox's is the free Build plan. Runtime's is 50
  sandbox hours on the [trial](/docs/trial), no card.
- **Storage.** Left out on both sides. A paused Runtime sandbox keeps its
  files, memory and running processes for $0.08 per GB a month.

Network and taxes are also left out.

## Price your own runs exactly

With some runs on Runtime, price exactly those sandboxes as Nano VMs:

```bash check
runtime compare --from codesandbox
```

It reads up to 90 days of settled sandboxes and prints what you save a month.

The rest of the comparison, snapshots and VM sizes included, is on
[Runtime vs CodeSandbox](/docs/codesandbox-alternative). The
[sandbox cost calculator](/calculators/sandbox-cost-calculator) prices the
other providers for any shape, and [pricing](/docs/pricing#per-1-000-runs)
works through Runtime's cost per 1,000 runs.

## Sources

The rates are from Together's documentation of the CodeSandbox SDK;
CodeSandbox is a Together company.

- [Together Code Sandbox](https://docs.together.ai/docs/together-code-sandbox), checked 23 September 2026
- [CodeSandbox SDK pricing](https://codesandbox.io/docs/sdk/pricing)
- Runtime [pricing](/docs/pricing)

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