Sandbox cost calculator: Runtime, E2B, Daytona, Modal, Vercel and more
Enter a sandbox size, run length, CPU use and runs a month to see the monthly cost on Runtime and 12 other providers.
Runtime is the cheapest for an agent that waits on a model. 100,000 one-minute runs of a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox doing 20 CPU-seconds of work each cost $63.89 a month on Runtime, $276.00 on E2B or Daytona and $396.60 on Modal. Runtime bills the CPU your code uses, not the CPUs it holds. Rival rates checked 23 September 2026.
Price your workload
| Provider | A month | Runtime saves |
|---|---|---|
| Runtime | $63.89 | — |
| Northflank | $111.10 | 42% |
| Cloudflare Sandbox | $135.04 | 53% |
| Fly Machines | $143.50 | 55% |
| Morph | $166.67 | 62% |
| Vercel Sandbox | $212.44 | 70% |
| CodeSandbox | $247.67 | 74% |
| E2B | $276.00 | 77% |
| Daytona | $276.00 | 77% |
| Blaxel | $276.00 | 77% |
| Fly Sprites | $330.56 | 81% |
| Modal | $396.60 | 84% |
| Runloop | $532.56 | 88% |
CPU and memory at published list rates, checked 23 September 2026. Plan fees, storage, network and free credits are left out.
How the price is worked out
Every provider is priced on the same workload, at its published list rates.
| Part | Runtime | Most other providers |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | $0.025 per vCPU-hour of CPU actually used, floor 0.05 of a vCPU | Every allocated vCPU, for the whole run |
| Memory | $0.0075 per GiB-hour reserved | Per GiB-hour, allocated or in use |
| Plan fee | None | Some charge a monthly plan for longer sessions |
| Minimum top-up | $10 of prepaid credit | Varies |
A CPU-second is one core busy for one second. An agent that sends a prompt and waits for the answer is mostly idle: 20 CPU-seconds out of the 120 that 2 vCPUs could do in 60 seconds. Build steps and test suites come close to the whole 120.
Example workloads
A month of each, CPU and memory only.
| Workload | Runtime | E2B | Daytona | Modal | Vercel Sandbox |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agent runs: 2 vCPU, 4 GiB, 60 s, 20 CPU-seconds, 100,000 a month | $63.89 | $276.00 | $276.00 | $396.60 | $212.44 |
| Every CPU busy: 2 vCPU, 4 GiB, 60 s, 120 CPU-seconds, 100,000 | $133.33 | $276.00 | $276.00 | $396.60 | $568.00 |
| Long sessions: 4 vCPU, 8 GiB, 30 min, 720 CPU-seconds, 10,000 | $350.00 | $1,656.00 | $1,656.00 | $2,379.60 | $1,104.00 |
| Small checks: 1 vCPU, 1 GiB, 10 s, 5 CPU-seconds, 1,000,000 | $55.56 | $185.00 | $185.00 | $263.80 | $236.67 |
Runtime costs less than all four in every row, even with every CPU busy for the whole run.
Why Runtime costs less
- Measured CPU. Time your agent spends waiting on a model costs only the floor, a twentieth of a vCPU. Other providers bill every vCPU for the whole run.
- Lower rates on both meters. $0.025 per vCPU-hour against E2B's and Daytona's $0.0504, and $0.0075 per GiB-hour of memory against their $0.0162.
- No plan fee. Prepaid credit from $10, with no subscription, and 50 free sandbox hours to start, no card.
- Pause instead of idling. A paused sandbox keeps its files, memory and running processes for $0.08 per GB a month and uses no CPU or memory time.
Price your own runs exactly
After a few runs on Runtime, the CLI prices the sandboxes you actually ran at another provider's rates, with the date of those rates:
Terminalruntime compare --from e2bIt reads your settled sandboxes from the last 30 days. The same figures come
from GET /v1/usage/compare and the runtime_usage_compare MCP tool.
Sources
Rival rates checked 23 September 2026; their working and sources are on each comparison page and in the pricing guide. Runtime's rates are in pricing. Plan fees, storage, network, taxes, free credits and negotiated discounts are left out of every figure.