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

Daytona bills $0.0504 per vCPU-hour and $0.0162 per GiB-hour for the vCPUs and memory a sandbox holds, plus disk past 5 GiB.

**Runtime costs 77% less than Daytona 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 $276.00 on Daytona. Every Runtime sandbox is
also a Firecracker microVM with its own kernel, where Daytona's default sandbox
is a container. Rates checked 23 September 2026.

## How Daytona bills

Daytona meters the resources a sandbox is created with, for as long as it
runs. CPU that waits on a model is billed at the same rate as CPU compiling
code.

| Meter  | Daytona, as published                                         | For 2 vCPUs and 4 GiB |
| ------ | ------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------- |
| CPU    | $0.0504 per allocated vCPU-hour                               | $0.1008 an hour       |
| Memory | $0.0162 per GiB-hour                                          | $0.0648 an hour       |
| Disk   | First 5 GiB free, then $0.000108 per GiB-hour, stopped or not | Not in the calculator |

That is $0.1656 an hour for the shape, whatever it does. Runtime charges
$0.025 per vCPU-hour of CPU actually used, with a floor of a twentieth of a
vCPU, and $0.0075 per reserved GiB-hour: $0.03125 an hour for the same
sandbox while it waits, $0.08 with both CPUs working.

## Example workloads

A month of each, CPU and memory only, as the calculator above prices them.

| Workload                                                         | Runtime | Daytona |
| ---------------------------------------------------------------- | ------: | ------: |
| Agent runs: 2 vCPU, 4 GiB, 60 s, 20 CPU-seconds, 100,000 a month |  $63.89 | $276.00 |
| Every CPU busy: 2 vCPU, 4 GiB, 60 s, 120 CPU-seconds, 100,000    | $133.33 | $276.00 |
| Small checks: 1 vCPU, 1 GiB, 10 s, 5 CPU-seconds, 1,000,000      |  $55.56 | $185.00 |
| Test suites: 8 vCPU, 16 GiB, 10 min, 2,880 CPU-seconds, 5,000    | $200.00 | $552.00 |

Even the test-suite row, with 2,880 CPU-seconds in each 10-minute run on 8
vCPUs, costs 64% less on Runtime, because both of Runtime's rates are under half
of Daytona's. A job with every CPU busy still saves 52%.

## What the calculator leaves out

- **Idle minutes before auto-stop.** A Daytona sandbox stops after 15 idle
  minutes by default. One the agent forgets to stop bills both vCPUs and
  4 GiB for those minutes, $0.0414 each time at this shape. The figures assume
  every sandbox stops when its run ends.
- **Disk.** Daytona charges for disk past the first 5 GiB whether the sandbox
  is running or stopped. On Runtime, disk is part of a running sandbox, and a
  paused one keeps its files, memory and running processes for $0.08 per GB a
  month.
- **Plan fees.** Daytona publishes none, and Runtime has none: prepaid credit
  from $10.
- **Free credit.** Daytona gives $200 of compute to start. Runtime gives 50
  sandbox hours on the [free trial](/docs/trial), with no card.

Network and taxes are left out on both sides.

## Price your own runs exactly

Once your agent has run on Runtime, this prices those same sandboxes at
Daytona's published rates, with the date the rates were checked:

```bash check
runtime compare --from daytona
```

It covers the last 30 days of settled sandboxes, or up to 90 with `--days`.
Moving from Daytona? `runtime switch --from daytona` before your first top-up
has that top-up matched, up to $100
([switching credit](/docs/pricing#switching-credit)).

`withruntime/daytona` runs code written for Daytona's SDK, in JavaScript and
Python, including sessions, files, git and snapshots built from Daytona's
`Image`. See [Runtime vs Daytona](/docs/daytona-alternative) for the full
comparison, [Daytona alternatives](/compare/daytona-alternatives) for the
field, and [Daytona vs Modal](/compare/daytona-vs-modal) if Modal is the other
option. E2B charges the same two rates; its
[pricing calculator](/calculators/e2b-pricing-calculator) covers E2B's session
limits and plans.

## Sources

- [Daytona pricing](https://www.daytona.io/pricing), checked 23 September 2026
- [Daytona sandboxes](https://www.daytona.io/docs/en/sandboxes)
- Runtime [pricing](/docs/pricing)

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