E2B pricing calculator: what your sandboxes cost, and on Runtime

E2B bills $0.0504 per vCPU-hour and $0.0162 per GiB-hour for every vCPU and GiB a sandbox holds, for as long as it runs.

Runtime runs the same agent for 77% less than E2B. 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 E2B, a saving of $212.11. Both run each sandbox in a Firecracker microVM; Runtime bills the CPU your code uses instead of the CPUs it holds. Rates checked 23 September 2026.

How E2B bills

E2B charges per second for the size you create, whether the CPUs work or wait. An agent that sends a prompt and waits 40 seconds for the answer pays for both vCPUs for all 40 seconds.

Meter	E2B, as published	Per hour	Runtime
CPU	$0.0504 per vCPU-hour	$0.1008 for 2 vCPUs	$0.025 per vCPU-hour of CPU actually used
Memory	$0.0162 per GiB-hour	$0.0648 for 4 GiB	$0.0075 per reserved GiB-hour
Basis	Allocated, whole run	$0.1656 for the shape	Measured CPU, floor of a twentieth of a vCPU

So a sandbox with 2 vCPUs and 4 GiB costs $0.1656 an hour on E2B, busy or idle. On Runtime the same sandbox costs $0.03125 an hour while it waits and $0.08 an hour with both CPUs working.

Example workloads

A month of each, CPU and memory only, computed by the calculator above.

Workload	Runtime	E2B
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
Long agent sessions: 2 vCPU, 4 GiB, 30 min, 180 CPU-seconds, 10,000	$162.50	$828.00
Code interpreter calls: 1 vCPU, 2 GiB, 2 min, 30 CPU-seconds, 50,000	$35.42	$138.00

Runtime costs less in every row, including a sandbox that keeps both CPUs busy the whole minute: its rates are lower on both meters. The long-session row saves the most, 80%, because an agent that mostly waits pays E2B for idle vCPUs for half an hour at a time.

What the calculator leaves out

• Plan fees. E2B's Hobby plan is $0 and caps a session at 1 hour. Sessions up to 24 hours need Pro at $150 a month. Runtime has no plan: a sandbox runs as long as you keep extending its lease, on prepaid credit from $10.
• Free credit. E2B gives $100 of usage credit on Hobby. Runtime gives 50 sandbox hours on the free trial, no card.
• Storage. E2B includes disk and keeps a paused sandbox with no expiry. A paused Runtime sandbox keeps its files, memory and running processes for $0.08 per GB a month, for the 1 to 365 days you choose.

Network and taxes are left out on both sides.

Price your own runs exactly

After a few runs on Runtime, the CLI prices the sandboxes you actually ran at E2B's published rates and prints the monthly saving:

Terminalruntime compare --from e2b

It reads your settled sandboxes from the last 30 days (--days up to 90). If you are moving from E2B, record it before your first top-up and that top-up is matched with credit, up to $100 (switching credit):

Terminalruntime switch --from e2b

Your E2B code keeps working: withruntime/e2b runs code written for E2B's SDK in JavaScript and Python. The full side-by-side is Runtime vs E2B, and migration is the one instruction that has a coding agent switch a project on a branch.

Daytona publishes the same two rates, so its pricing calculator gives the same figures; E2B vs Daytona covers how they differ, and E2B alternatives ranks the rest. The sandbox cost calculator prices Runtime and all 12 other providers side by side.

Sources

• E2B pricing, checked 23 September 2026
• E2B sandbox persistence
• Runtime pricing

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