Daytona vs Fly Sprites Sprites 13% cheaper if agents wait, Daytona 20% if busy

Which is better, Daytona or Fly Sprites?

It depends on how busy the CPU is and how long sandboxes sleep. Runtime has the lowest bill on this page whether the agent waits or computes: $0.64 for the waiting job, against $2.76 on Daytona and $2.40 on Sprites. It meters CPU as Sprites do, at a lower rate, and its pause keeps memory and processes. Pick Daytona for GPU or Windows sandboxes. Pick Sprites for cold storage at $0.02 per GB-month, or Go and Elixir SDKs.

At a glance

Is Daytona cheaper than Sprites?

It depends on how much memory the sandbox really uses. The two bill in opposite ways. Daytona charges for what the sandbox is given, every vCPU and every GiB, for as long as it runs. Sprites charge for what it uses: CPU time at $0.0385 an hour, and memory in use at $0.021875 per GB-hour.

For the job below, an agent that keeps its CPU busy a third of the time, the Sprite's CPU costs $0.21 and the rest is memory. That keeps the Sprite cheaper up to about 5 GB in use:

Busy CPUs move it the other way. With both CPUs working the whole minute a Sprite's CPU charge rises to $1.28, while Daytona's stays the same.

Runtime is cheaper than both in every row of the table above: $0.64 for the job, because its measured CPU is $0.025 a vCPU-hour and its memory $0.0075 a GiB-hour.

Cost for the same job

1,000 runs of a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox. Each run lasts 60 seconds and keeps the CPU busy for 20 CPU-seconds: an agent that mostly waits for a model. The Sprite is assumed to use all 4 GB for the whole minute.

At 100,000 runs a month that is $276.00 on Daytona, $240.14 on Sprites 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 $3.47 on Sprites, so Runtime is cheaper however busy the sandbox is. Plan fees, disk, network and free credits are left out.

What does an idle sandbox keep, and cost?

A Daytona sandbox stops after 15 idle minutes by default. Its disk past the first 5 GiB is billed at $0.000108 per GiB-hour whether it runs or not, and only VM sandboxes pause with their memory. A Sprite pauses itself shortly after its last activity, keeps its disk, and keeps its memory until it goes cold; cold storage is $0.02 per GB-month.

A paused Runtime sandbox keeps its files, memory and running processes while you have credit, for $0.08 per GB-month, and the next request wakes it:

TypeScriptimport { Sandbox } from "withruntime";const sbx = await Sandbox.create({ timeoutSeconds: 600 });await sbx.exec("echo state > /workspace/state.txt");await sbx.pause(); // memory and files are kept; compute billing stops// ... later, even from another process:const again = await Sandbox.connect(sbx.id);await again.wake({ timeoutSeconds: 1200 });await again.extend(600); // moves its time limit ten minutes onawait again.stop();

Which one to pick

• Pick Daytona for GPU or Windows sandboxes, sizes you set yourself, or $200 of free compute to start.
• Pick Sprites for sandboxes that use little memory and sleep for long stretches, a 100 GB disk, or SDKs in Go and Elixir.
• Pick Runtime for over 60% below either price on an agent that waits, a microVM on every sandbox, and memory kept across a pause for as long as you choose.

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 a sandbox with its files and memory, and start() carries on.

From Sprites, client.createSprite(name) becomes Sandbox.create(), a Sprite found by name becomes Sandbox.getOrCreate(name), and sprite.execFile(cmd, args) becomes exec([cmd, ...args]):

TypeScriptimport { Sandbox } from "withruntime";const box = await Sandbox.create();try {  await box.files.write("/workspace/invoice.py", "print(sum([125, 250, 375]))\n");  console.log((await box.exec(["python3", "/workspace/invoice.py"], { check: true })).stdout);} finally {  await box.stop();}

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 full side-by-sides are Runtime vs Daytona and Runtime vs Fly.io; how to pause and resume a sandbox covers idle sandboxes on Runtime.

Sources

Fly.io prices checked 25 October 2026.

Daytona and Fly.io pricing pages rechecked 25 October 2026; the rest checked 25 October 2026.

• Daytona pricing, Daytona sandboxes
• Fly.io pricing, Sprites, Sprites lifecycle and persistence
• Runtime pricing

Facts on this page were checked on 26 October 2026.