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

Northflank bills $0.01667 per vCPU-hour and $0.00833 per GB-hour for the resources a sandbox holds, for as long as it runs.

**Runtime costs 42% less than Northflank 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 $111.10 on Northflank. The more of its time
an agent spends waiting, the more Runtime saves: half-hour sessions that use 180
CPU-seconds each cost 51% less. Rates checked 23 September 2026.

## How Northflank bills

Northflank creates each sandbox as a service and bills the vCPUs and memory
that service is allocated, for as long as it runs, whether the CPUs work or
wait.

| Meter  | Northflank, as published | For 2 vCPUs and 4 GB | Runtime                                   |
| ------ | ------------------------ | -------------------- | ----------------------------------------- |
| CPU    | $0.01667 per vCPU-hour   | $0.03334 an hour     | $0.025 per vCPU-hour of CPU actually used |
| Memory | $0.00833 per GB-hour     | $0.03332 an hour     | $0.0075 per reserved GiB-hour             |

So the shape costs $0.06666 an hour on Northflank, busy or idle. On Runtime it
costs $0.03125 an hour while it waits, memory plus a CPU floor of a twentieth
of a vCPU. Runtime's memory is also cheaper per unit, and a GiB is about 7%
larger than a GB.

## Example workloads

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

| Workload                                                         | Runtime | Northflank |
| ---------------------------------------------------------------- | ------: | ---------: |
| Agent runs: 2 vCPU, 4 GiB, 60 s, 20 CPU-seconds, 100,000 a month |  $63.89 |    $111.10 |
| Waiting agents: 2 vCPU, 4 GiB, 30 min, 180 CPU-seconds, 10,000   | $162.50 |    $333.30 |
| Tool calls: 1 vCPU, 2 GiB, 2 min, 30 CPU-seconds, 50,000         |  $35.42 |     $55.55 |
| Every CPU busy: 2 vCPU, 4 GiB, 60 s, 120 CPU-seconds, 100,000    | $133.33 |    $111.10 |

Agents that call a model and wait for the answer are where Runtime wins, by
36% to 51% in the first three rows.

## When Northflank costs less

Work that keeps every CPU busy costs less on Northflank: its allocated vCPU
rate, $0.01667, is lower than Runtime's measured rate, $0.025. In the last row
that is $111.10 against $133.33. At 2 vCPUs and 4 GiB in a one-minute run, the
two meet at about 88 CPU-seconds of the 120 the vCPUs can do; below that,
Runtime costs less. The calculator above shows where your own workload falls.

To find your own figure, count CPU-seconds: one core busy for one second is one
CPU-second, so a 60-second run on 2 vCPUs can use at most 120. An agent that
waits on a model for most of the minute uses about 20, well below that line;
build steps and test suites run close to the full 120.

## What the calculator leaves out

- **Plan fees.** Northflank publishes none for compute, and Runtime has none:
  prepaid credit from $10.
- **Free start.** Northflank includes 2 free services and 1 free database.
  Runtime gives 50 sandbox hours on the [free trial](/docs/trial), no card.
- **Storage and network.** Left out on both sides. A paused Runtime sandbox
  keeps its files, memory and running processes for $0.08 per GB a month, for
  1 to 365 days.

## Price your own runs exactly

After a few runs on Runtime, the CLI prices those same sandboxes at
Northflank's published rates:

```bash check
runtime compare --from northflank
```

It reads the last 30 days of settled sandboxes (`--days` up to 90), so it
answers the busy-or-waiting question with your own numbers.

On Runtime a sandbox is one call, with no service, project or deployment plan
to set up first. The full comparison is
[Runtime vs Northflank](/docs/northflank-alternative);
[pause and resume a sandbox](/how-to/pause-and-resume-a-sandbox) shows how
waiting work stays cheap between runs, and the
[sandbox cost calculator](/calculators/sandbox-cost-calculator) prices every
provider for your shape.

## Sources

- [Northflank pricing](https://northflank.com/pricing), checked 23 September 2026
- [Northflank sandboxes](https://northflank.com/product/sandboxes)
- Runtime [pricing](/docs/pricing)

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