# 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.

## 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.

```
Daytona   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

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

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
```

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.

Related: [Runtime vs Daytona](/docs/daytona-alternative),
[Runtime vs AWS Lambda MicroVMs](/docs/aws-lambda-microvms-alternative).

## Sources

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

- [Daytona pricing](https://www.daytona.io/pricing), [Daytona sandboxes](https://www.daytona.io/docs/en/sandboxes)
- [AWS Lambda pricing](https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/pricing/), [Lambda MicroVMs](https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/lambda-microvms/)
- Runtime [pricing](/docs/pricing)

Facts on this page were checked on 25 September 2026.