Daytona vs Freestyle: pricing, plans and what each keeps

Freestyle's VM rates are about a fifth below Daytona's, so the 2 vCPU, 4 GiB benchmark is $2.25 on Freestyle against $2.76 on Daytona.

Runtime beats both: 77% under Daytona and 72% under Freestyle. One thousand runs of a minute on 2 vCPU and 4 GiB, each with 20 CPU-seconds of work, cost $2.76 on Daytona, $2.25 on Freestyle and $0.64 on Runtime. Daytona and Freestyle charge for every core a sandbox holds; Runtime charges for the cores' actual work.

At a glance

	Daytona	Freestyle	Runtime
Isolation	Containers by default; VM sandboxes as a separate class	Full Linux virtual machines	Firecracker microVM, own kernel, every sandbox
CPU	$0.0504 per allocated vCPU-hour	$0.04032 per allocated vCPU-hour	$0.025 per vCPU-hour of measured CPU, with a small floor
Memory	$0.0162 per GiB-hour	$0.0129 per GiB-hour	$0.0075 per reserved GiB-hour
Disk	First 5 GiB free, then $0.000108 per GiB-hour	$0.000086 per GiB-hour of the allocation	Included while it runs
Plan	None published	Free, Hobby $50, Pro $500 a month	None; prepaid credit from $10
Free start	$200 of compute	200 vCPU-hours and 400 GiB-hours a month	100 sandbox hours, no card
Idle	Stops after 15 idle minutes by default	Hibernates with memory; storage billed meanwhile	Pause keeps memory, 1 to 365 days

Free tiers compared

Daytona gives $200 of compute once. Freestyle's free plan renews 200 vCPU-hours and 400 GiB-hours every month, but caps you at 10 VMs at once and 4 vCPUs and 8 GiB each; more takes Hobby at $50 or Pro at $500 a month. The Runtime trial is 100 sandbox hours with no card, and a paid account then runs 100 sandboxes at once with no plan at all, after a first week at 50.

Cost for the same job

1,000 runs of 60 seconds, 2 vCPU and 4 GiB, 20 CPU-seconds each; Freestyle's default 32 GiB disk counted, Daytona's first 5 GiB free:

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                                                  $2.76Freestyle 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

Across 100,000 runs a month: $276.00 on Daytona, $224.99 on Freestyle, $63.89 on Runtime. Kept busy for the whole minute, the totals read $2.76 on Daytona, $2.25 on Freestyle and $1.33 on Runtime.

Which one to pick

• Daytona for GPUs, Windows sandboxes, an EU region, or $200 of free compute.
• Freestyle for VMs that fork while running, or 32 vCPUs in one VM on Pro.
• Runtime for the lowest bill of the three, a microVM for every sandbox, and Daytona code that runs through withruntime/daytona after changing one import.

Compare further with Runtime vs Daytona and Runtime vs Freestyle.

Sources

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

• Daytona pricing, Daytona sandboxes
• Freestyle pricing, Freestyle VM pricing and limits
• Runtime pricing

Facts on this page were checked on 25 September 2026.