Cloudflare Sandbox vs Freestyle: what survives idle time

A Cloudflare sandbox loses its files when it sleeps; a Freestyle VM hibernates with its memory. The benchmark costs $1.35 on Cloudflare and $2.25 on Freestyle.

Runtime costs 53% less than Cloudflare and 72% less than Freestyle, and keeps memory across a pause. 1,000 one-minute runs of a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox with 20 CPU-seconds of work each: $1.35 on Cloudflare Sandbox (6 GiB, its minimum for two vCPUs), $2.25 on Freestyle and $0.64 on Runtime.

Estimated compute cost

53% less than Cloudflare Sandbox72% less than Freestyle

2 vCPUs · 4 GiB · 60 s a run · 20 CPU-seconds busy

Runs1,000

Compute only, at list rates checked 23 September 2026 and 25 September 2026 (Cloudflare Containers pricing, Freestyle pricing). Plan fees, network, taxes and free credits are left out. The worked example below shows the arithmetic.

At a glance

	Cloudflare Sandbox	Freestyle	Runtime
Isolation	A container in its own VM	Full Linux virtual machines	Firecracker microVM, own kernel
CPU	$0.072 per active vCPU-hour	$0.04032 per allocated vCPU-hour	$0.025 per vCPU-hour of measured CPU, with a small floor
Memory	$0.009 per provisioned GiB-hour, 3 GiB per vCPU at least	$0.0129 per GiB-hour	$0.0075 per reserved GiB-hour
Idle	Sleeps after 10 idle minutes; files lost unless in R2	Hibernates with memory; storage billed	Pause keeps files, memory and processes, 1 to 365 days
Largest	4 vCPUs, 12 GiB, 20 GB	32 vCPUs and 64 GiB on Pro	16 vCPUs and 64 GiB, paid
Plan	Workers Paid, from $5 a month	Free, Hobby $50, Pro $500 a month	None; prepaid credit from $10

Idle time decides it

An agent that stops to wait for a person, or comes back tomorrow, needs its state to survive. Cloudflare's sandbox sleeps after ten quiet minutes and starts clean unless you copied files to R2. Freestyle keeps the whole VM, memory included, and bills storage meanwhile. Runtime does the same with paused storage at $0.08 per GB-month for up to a year.

Cost for the same job

The benchmark, 60 seconds a run (6 GiB and a 12 GB disk on Cloudflare, a 32 GiB disk on Freestyle):

TextCloudflare  CPU    1,000 × 20 s × $0.000020                     = $0.40            Memory 1,000 × 60 s × 6 × $0.0000025                = $0.90            Disk   1,000 × 60 s × 12 × $0.00000007              = $0.05            Total                                                  $1.35Freestyle   CPU    1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 2 × $0.04032           = $1.34            Memory 1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 4 × $0.0129            = $0.86            Disk   1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 32 × $0.000086         = $0.05            Total                                                  $2.25Runtime     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

With both CPUs busy for the whole minute, the job costs $3.35 on Cloudflare, $2.25 on Freestyle and $1.33 on Runtime.

Which one to pick

Cloudflare Sandbox for short jobs launched from Workers, near users.
Freestyle for long-lived VMs of up to 32 vCPUs.
Runtime for the lowest bill with state that survives any gap.

See Runtime vs Cloudflare Sandbox and Runtime vs Freestyle.

Sources

Cloudflare rates checked 23 September 2026; Freestyle rates checked 25 September 2026.

Facts on this page were checked on 25 September 2026.