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

Morph bills $0.05 per MCU-hour; one MCU is 1 vCPU, 4 GB of memory or 16 GB of disk, whichever a machine needs most of.

**Runtime costs 62% less than Morph 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 $166.67 on Morph. Morph bills a machine's
full size for as long as it runs; Runtime bills the CPU your code uses. Rates
checked 23 September 2026.

## How Morph bills

Morph Cloud counts Morph Compute Units. A machine is billed for as many MCUs
as its largest need, CPU, memory or disk, for every hour it runs.

| Machine          | MCUs | Morph, at $0.05 per MCU-hour | Runtime, waiting | Runtime, fully busy |
| ---------------- | ---: | ---------------------------: | ---------------: | ------------------: |
| 1 vCPU and 2 GB  |    1 |                $0.05 an hour | $0.01625 an hour |       $0.04 an hour |
| 2 vCPUs and 4 GB |    2 |                $0.10 an hour | $0.03125 an hour |       $0.08 an hour |

Runtime's figures come from its two rates: $0.025 per vCPU-hour of measured
CPU, with a floor of a twentieth of a vCPU, and $0.0075 per reserved GiB-hour.
The calculator gives Morph the MCUs your vCPUs and memory need, and assumes
the disk fits inside them.

## Example workloads

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

| Workload                                                         | Runtime |   Morph |
| ---------------------------------------------------------------- | ------: | ------: |
| Agent runs: 2 vCPU, 4 GiB, 60 s, 20 CPU-seconds, 100,000 a month |  $63.89 | $166.67 |
| Every CPU busy: 2 vCPU, 4 GiB, 60 s, 120 CPU-seconds, 100,000    | $133.33 | $166.67 |
| Tool calls: 1 vCPU, 2 GiB, 2 min, 30 CPU-seconds, 50,000         |  $35.42 |  $83.33 |
| Data analysis: 4 vCPU, 16 GiB, 60 min, 2,880 CPU-seconds, 2,000  | $280.00 | $400.00 |

Runtime costs less in every row, and 20% less even with both CPUs busy for the
whole minute. A 1 vCPU, 2 GB machine pays for a whole MCU, 4 GB of memory's
worth, so Runtime saves 57% on the tool-call row.

Memory-heavy shapes follow the same rule. A machine with 2 vCPUs and 16 GB
counts as 4 MCUs, because memory is its largest need: $0.20 an hour on Morph.
The same Runtime sandbox costs $0.12125 an hour waiting and $0.17 with both
CPUs busy.

Where the saving comes from: of Runtime's $63.89 in the first row, $50.00 is
memory and $13.89 is CPU, because only the 20 CPU-seconds each run uses are
billed. Morph bills both MCUs for the whole minute of every run.

## What the calculator leaves out

- **Plan fees and included credit.** Morph is free with no credit. Its
  Developer plan costs $40 a month with 1,000 MCUs, and Team costs $250 a
  month. Runtime has no plan: prepaid credit from $10, and 50 free sandbox
  hours on the [trial](/docs/trial), no card.
- **Storage and snapshots.** 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

After a few runs on Runtime, price the same sandboxes in MCUs at Morph's
published rate:

```bash check
runtime compare --from morph
```

It reads the last 30 days of settled sandboxes, or up to 90 with `--days`, and
says what you save a month.

Both keep memory in snapshots and forks: a Runtime fork copies a running
sandbox with its memory and processes, 1 to 10 copies at a time. The full
comparison is [Runtime vs Morph](/docs/morph-alternative). Forks for RL and
search are covered in [RL environments](/use-cases/rl-environments), and the
[sandbox cost calculator](/calculators/sandbox-cost-calculator) prices every
provider for your shape.

## Sources

- [Morph Cloud pricing](https://cloud.morph.so/web/pricing), checked 23 September 2026
- [Morph Devboxes](https://cloud.morph.so/web/product/devboxes)
- Runtime [pricing](/docs/pricing)

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