Daytona vs Cloudflare Sandbox Cloudflare 51% cheaper if agents wait, Daytona 18% if busy

Which is better, Daytona or Cloudflare Sandbox?

It depends on where your app lives and what hardware it needs. For agents that mostly wait on a model, Runtime has the lowest bill, $0.64 for the job against $1.35 on Cloudflare and $2.76 on Daytona, and it stays cheapest when both CPUs are busy. Pick Daytona for GPU or Windows sandboxes, US or EU regions, or a large free start; pick Cloudflare Sandbox if your app already runs on Workers and wants sandboxes near users.

At a glance

Cloudflare's sandboxes run on Cloudflare Containers, so their prices are the Containers prices.

Is Cloudflare Sandbox cheaper than Daytona?

For an agent that mostly waits, yes: $1.35 against $2.76 in the job below. Cloudflare charges CPU only while the code uses it, $0.000020 a vCPU-second, where Daytona charges every allocated vCPU for the whole run. Cloudflare's memory rate is lower too, $0.009 a GiB-hour against $0.0162.

Two things narrow the gap. A Cloudflare custom size needs at least 3 GiB of memory per vCPU, so a 2 vCPU sandbox pays for 6 GiB, and its disk is billed as provisioned. And when both CPUs stay busy, Cloudflare's active CPU rate, $0.072 a vCPU-hour, is higher than Daytona's allocated $0.0504: the busy job costs $3.35 on Cloudflare and $2.76 on Daytona.

Runtime's measured CPU is $0.025 a vCPU-hour and memory is chosen apart from vCPUs, so it is below both at either end.

Are both of them containers?

Both start from a container image, but they draw the security boundary differently. A Daytona sandbox is a container by default; Daytona sells VM sandboxes as a separate class, and those are the ones that pause with memory and take memory snapshots. Cloudflare puts each sandbox's container inside its own VM.

Every Runtime sandbox is a Firecracker microVM with its own Linux kernel, with no class to choose. MicroVM vs container explains the difference, and Runtime's security sets out its model.

Cost for the same job

1,000 runs of a 2 vCPU sandbox. Each run lasts 60 seconds and keeps the CPU busy for 20 CPU-seconds: an agent that mostly waits for a model. Daytona and Runtime get 4 GiB. Cloudflare's smallest custom 2 vCPU size has 6 GiB, with 12 GB of disk, the disk of Cloudflare's 6 GiB standard-2 type.

At 100,000 runs a month that is $276.00 on Daytona, $135.04 on Cloudflare and $63.89 on Runtime. With both CPUs busy for the whole minute, it is $1.33 on Runtime against $2.76 on Daytona and $3.35 on Cloudflare, so Runtime is the cheapest of the three however busy the sandbox is. The Cloudflare figure assumes each sandbox is destroyed when its run ends, and Daytona's disk stays within its free 5 GiB. Plan fees, Workers requests, Durable Object time, network and free credits are left out.

Which one to pick

• Pick Daytona for GPU sandboxes or Windows machines, sandboxes in the US or the EU, or the largest free start of the three, $200 of compute.
• Pick Cloudflare Sandbox if your application already runs on Workers and you want sandboxes in the same account and billing, placed near users across Cloudflare's network. Runtime runs in one US region.
• Pick Runtime for a microVM on every sandbox, measured CPU at 65% below Cloudflare's rate, pause that keeps memory and processes, and an API you call from any backend.

Switch from either one

From Daytona, Runtime's SDK runs your code after one import change:

TypeScriptimport { Daytona } from "withruntime/daytona"; // was: from "@daytona/sdk"

Pythonfrom withruntime.daytona import Daytona  # was: from daytona import Daytona

Its stop() pauses the sandbox with its files and memory, and delete() ends it. Daytona's auto_stop_interval maps to Runtime's idlePauseSeconds.

From Cloudflare's 0.x SDK, the code moves out of the Worker to any server: getSandbox(env.Sandbox, name) becomes Sandbox.getOrCreate(name), sandbox.exec(cmd) becomes exec, and proxyToSandbox becomes box.previews.create(port). A Worker can also call Runtime directly with SDK 0.4.0 or later and the nodejs_compat flag; Runtime vs Cloudflare has the sample.

TypeScriptimport { Sandbox } from "withruntime";const dev = await Sandbox.getOrCreate("dev", { idlePauseSeconds: 900 });await dev.exec("git pull || true");

Or give your coding agent the one instruction in migration: it switches the project on a branch, tests it on the free usage and reports the monthly saving. Credit you add within 30 days of signing up is matched, up to $1,000 in total. The Daytona side-by-side is Runtime vs Daytona.

Sources

• Cloudflare sandbox lifetime, snapshot behavior checked 25 October 2026. Daytona's pricing page rechecked 25 October 2026; the rest checked 25 October 2026.

• Daytona pricing, Daytona sandboxes

• Cloudflare Containers pricing, Containers limits and instance types, Containers architecture, Sandbox lifecycle

• Runtime pricing and security

Facts on this page were checked on 26 October 2026.