Daytona vs AWS Lambda MicroVMs: pricing, isolation and idle time

Daytona runs containers by default and Lambda MicroVMs run Firecracker. The 2 vCPU, 4 GiB benchmark costs $2.76 on Daytona and $4.20 on Lambda.

Runtime costs 77% less than Daytona and 85% less than Lambda MicroVMs for an agent that waits on a model. The benchmark, 1,000 one-minute runs of a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox with 20 CPU-seconds of work each, is $2.76 on Daytona, $4.20 on AWS Lambda MicroVMs and $0.64 on Runtime, where every sandbox is a Firecracker microVM with its own kernel.

Estimated compute cost

77% less than Daytona85% less than AWS Lambda MicroVMs

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 (Daytona pricing, AWS Lambda pricing). Plan fees, network, taxes and free credits are left out. The worked example below shows the arithmetic.

At a glance

	Daytona	AWS Lambda MicroVMs	Runtime
Isolation	Containers by default; VM sandboxes as a separate class	Firecracker microVM	Firecracker microVM, own kernel, every sandbox
CPU	$0.0504 per allocated vCPU-hour	$0.0000276944 per baseline vCPU-second	$0.025 per vCPU-hour of measured CPU, with a small floor
Memory	$0.0162 per GiB-hour	$0.0000036667 per GB-second	$0.0075 per reserved GiB-hour
Idle	Stops after 15 idle minutes by default	Suspends after 5 idle minutes, state up to 8 h	Pause keeps memory for 1 to 365 days
Regions	US and EU	AWS regions	One US region
Free start	$200 of compute	No free tier for MicroVMs	100 sandbox hours, no card
GPUs, Windows	Both offered	Neither	Neither

The isolation question

A Daytona sandbox is a container unless you choose its VM class, which is where Daytona offers pause with memory and forks. Every Lambda MicroVM is a Firecracker guest, as is every Runtime sandbox, so the kernel boundary is the default rather than an option. For agents running code nobody has read, that default is the one that matters.

Cost for the same job

Same shape everywhere: 2 vCPU and 4 GiB (a 4 GB baseline on Lambda), 60 seconds a run, 20 CPU-seconds of work, 1,000 runs.

TextDaytona   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                                                  $2.76Lambda    CPU    1,000 × 60 s × 2 × $0.0000276944              = $3.32          Memory 1,000 × 60 s × 4 × $0.0000036667              = $0.88          Total                                                  $4.20Runtime   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

A month of 100,000 such runs: $276.00 on Daytona, $420.33 on Lambda MicroVMs, $63.89 on Runtime. Kept busy for the whole minute on both CPUs, it is $2.76 on Daytona, $4.20 on Lambda and $1.33 on Runtime.

Which one to pick

Daytona for GPU sandboxes, Windows machines, an EU region or the largest free start of the three.
Lambda MicroVMs when the agent must reach private AWS resources through your VPC under IAM.
Runtime for Firecracker on every sandbox at the lowest price, memory kept across pauses for up to a year, and withruntime/daytona, which runs Daytona SDK code after one import changes.

Sources

Daytona rates checked 23 September 2026; Lambda rates checked 25 September 2026.

Facts on this page were checked on 25 September 2026.