# Blaxel alternatives: agent sandboxes ranked by cost Runtime is the cheapest Blaxel alternative, 77% less per job, with CPU and memory priced on separate meters. **Runtime runs Blaxel's workload for 77% less, and prices CPU and memory separately.** 1,000 one-minute runs of a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox cost $0.64 on Runtime and $2.76 on Blaxel, $212 a month saved at 100,000 runs. Runtime stays cheaper when the CPU is busy too, and keeps paused work for $0.08 per GB a month against Blaxel's $0.20. Rates checked 23 September 2026. ## Why do teams look beyond Blaxel? Blaxel sells one meter, memory for the time a sandbox is active, and the CPU comes with it. That is simple, and it is where the reasons to move come from: - **The memory rate carries everything.** $0.0000115 per GB-second is $0.0414 per GB-hour, more than five times Runtime's $0.0075 per GiB-hour. Runtime bills measured CPU on top, at $0.025 per vCPU-hour, and the total is still lower. - **CPU is set by memory.** 8 GB gets 4 cores. A job that needs more CPU buys memory it does not use; on Runtime you choose vCPUs and memory apart. - **Paused work costs more to keep.** Blaxel's standby snapshots cost $0.20 per GB a month. A paused Runtime sandbox keeps its files, memory and processes for $0.08 per GB a month, for 1 to 365 days. - **Standby is not immediate.** Blaxel's docs say standby starts about 15 seconds after the last connection closes. ## Which alternatives are cheapest? One job, priced at list rates everywhere: 1,000 runs of a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox lasting 60 seconds, of which 20 CPU-seconds are real work. Blaxel is priced at 4 GB of memory while active, which ties it with E2B and Daytona. The sums for every row are on [pricing](/docs/pricing#published-rate-comparison); they leave out plan fees, storage, network, credits and negotiated rates. | # | Provider | Isolation | CPU billed on | 1,000 runs | | --- | ---------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------ | --------------------------------------- | ---------: | | 1 | **Runtime** | Firecracker microVM, own kernel | Measured CPU, with a small floor | **$0.64** | | 2 | Northflank | microVMs for CPU work, gVisor for GPU work | Allocated vCPUs | $1.11 | | 3 | Cloudflare Sandbox (2 vCPU, 6 GiB, 12 GB disk) | A container in its own VM | Active CPU | $1.35 | | 4 | Fly Machines, `performance-2x` with 4 GB | Firecracker microVM | The machine's size while started | $1.44 | | 5 | Morph, 2 MCUs | Full virtual machines | The machine's size in MCUs | $1.67 | | 6 | Vercel Sandbox, `iad1` (4 GB) | Firecracker microVM, own kernel | Active CPU | $2.12 | | 7 | CodeSandbox SDK, a Nano VM | Firecracker microVM | The VM's size, by the minute rounded up | $2.48 | | 8 | E2B | Firecracker microVM, own kernel | Allocated vCPUs | $2.76 | | 9 | Daytona | Containers by default; VM class separate | Allocated vCPUs | $2.76 | | 10 | Blaxel (4 GB) (the one you are replacing) | Lightweight virtual machines | Included with memory, active time | $2.76 | | 11 | Fly Sprites (4 GB in use) | Firecracker microVM | Measured CPU | $3.31 | | 12 | Modal Sandboxes (1 physical core) | gVisor, a user-space kernel | Requested or used, whichever is higher | $3.97 | | 13 | Runloop, a `MEDIUM` devbox | microVM, with a container inside | Allocated CPUs while running | $5.33 | ## Cost for the same job The working for Runtime, Blaxel, Fly Sprites (the other sandbox that pauses itself) and E2B: ``` Runtime CPU 1,000 × 20 s / 3,600 × $0.025 = $0.14 Memory 1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 4 × $0.0075 = $0.50 Total $0.64 Blaxel Memory 1,000 × 60 s × 4 × $0.0000115 = $2.76 Sprites CPU 1,000 × 20 s / 3,600 × $0.07 = $0.39 Memory 1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 4 × $0.04375 = $2.92 Total $3.31 E2B CPU 1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 2 × $0.0504 = $1.68 Memory 1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 4 × $0.0162 = $1.08 Total $2.76 ``` Because Blaxel's single meter ignores CPU, keeping both CPUs busy for the whole minute leaves it where it was: the job reads $1.33 on Runtime, $2.76 on Blaxel, $5.25 on Sprites and $2.76 on E2B, and Runtime's busy figure is still under half of Blaxel's. Over a month of 100,000 waiting runs, that is $63.89 on Runtime against $276.00 on Blaxel. The Blaxel figure assumes each sandbox goes to standby the moment its run ends. ## How each alternative compares for a Blaxel user ### 1. Runtime: two meters, cheaper pauses Memory costs $0.0075 per reserved GiB-hour, about a fifth of Blaxel's $0.0414 per GB-hour, and CPU is metered separately on use at $0.025 per vCPU-hour, with a floor of a twentieth of a vCPU. `idlePauseSeconds` gives the same hands-off standby: a quiet sandbox pauses, and the next request wakes it with its processes. Read-only keys, a daily spending limit per key and `maxCostMicros` keep an agent's spending bounded. ### 2. Northflank: low allocated rates, CPU chosen apart $0.01667 per vCPU-hour and $0.00833 per GB-hour, so a job that needs more CPU than memory does not have to buy the memory. Each sandbox is a service with a deployment plan, and it can deploy into your AWS, GCP or Azure account. ### 3. Cloudflare Sandbox: sleep that forgets Active CPU at $0.072 per vCPU-hour, 3 GiB per vCPU at least, and a Worker on the Workers Paid plan to call it. It sleeps after 10 idle minutes, but where a Blaxel standby keeps state, a Cloudflare sandbox restarts from its image with its files gone unless R2 has a copy. ### 4. Fly Machines: flat hourly sizes `performance-2x` with 4 GB costs $0.0861 an hour in `iad`, in 18 regions. Its root disk is temporary, and suspend is the way to keep memory. ### 5. Morph: copy a machine mid-run At $0.05 per MCU-hour, where an MCU is 1 vCPU, 4 GB of memory or 16 GB of disk, Morph is billed by the largest need. Infinibranch turns one running machine, memory and all, into hundreds of copies. ### 6. Vercel Sandbox: active CPU, filesystem stops A Firecracker microVM at $0.128 per active CPU-hour and $0.0212 per GB-hour in `iad1`. Stopping keeps the filesystem, and processes start fresh. ### 7. CodeSandbox SDK: memory snapshots in fixed shapes The Nano VM (2 cores, 4 GB) is $0.1486 an hour, billed by the minute rounded up, and supports memory snapshot and restore. Its free Build plan allows 10 VMs at once. ### 8. E2B: separate meters, billed on allocation $0.0504 per vCPU-hour and $0.0162 per GiB-hour. Hobby sandboxes stop after one hour; Pro, at $150 a month, runs them for 24. ### 9. Daytona: E2B's price with GPUs Identical rates to E2B, a container unless you choose the VM class, GPU sandboxes, Windows machines and $200 of free compute. ### 10. Fly Sprites: the other sandbox that sleeps itself $0.07 per measured CPU-hour and $0.04375 per GB-hour of memory in use. When a Sprite sleeps, its 100 GB disk costs $0.02 per GB a month. ### 11. Modal Sandboxes: gVisor and GPUs $0.1419 per physical core-hour on the larger of request and use, beside Modal's GPU functions. ### 12. Runloop: benchmark devboxes $0.108 per CPU-hour, $0.0252 per GB-hour and a disk charge, with SWE-Bench and other public benchmarks. ## How to switch from Blaxel The call to run code is short on Runtime, in TypeScript or Python: ```ts import { Sandbox } from "withruntime"; const box = await Sandbox.create({ funding: "trial" }); try { console.log((await box.exec("python3 -c 'print(6 * 7)'", { check: true })).stdout); } finally { await box.stop(); } ``` ```python from withruntime import Sandbox with Sandbox.create(funding="trial") as box: print(box.exec("python3 -c 'print(6 * 7)'", check=True).stdout) ``` Blaxel's standby maps to a named sandbox that pauses when idle. It wakes on the next `exec`, file call or preview visit, usually in about half a second, with its memory and processes: ```ts check import { Sandbox } from "withruntime"; const dev = await Sandbox.getOrCreate("dev", { idlePauseSeconds: 900 }); await dev.exec("git pull || true"); ``` A coding agent can handle the rest: paste the instruction from [migration](/docs/migrate), and it swaps the calls on a branch, runs them on the free trial and totals the monthly saving. Once some real sandboxes have run, `npx withruntime compare --from blaxel` prices them at Blaxel's published rates. More on pausing: [pause and resume a sandbox](/how-to/pause-and-resume-a-sandbox) and [sandbox snapshot](/glossary/sandbox-snapshot). ## Sources The rival rates were checked 23 September 2026; Blaxel's pricing page was read once more on 25 September 2026. - [Blaxel pricing](https://blaxel.ai/pricing) - [Cloudflare Containers pricing](https://developers.cloudflare.com/containers/pricing/) - [Daytona pricing](https://www.daytona.io/pricing) - [Together Code Sandbox](https://docs.together.ai/docs/together-code-sandbox) - [Northflank pricing](https://northflank.com/pricing) - [Runloop pricing](https://www.runloop.ai/pricing) - [Fly.io pricing](https://fly.io/pricing/) Facts on this page were checked on 25 September 2026. - [Morph Cloud pricing](https://cloud.morph.so/web/pricing) - [E2B pricing](https://e2b.dev/pricing) - [Modal pricing](https://modal.com/pricing) - [Vercel Sandbox pricing](https://vercel.com/docs/sandbox/pricing) - Runtime [pricing](/docs/pricing) and the [Blaxel comparison](/docs/blaxel-alternative)