Daytona vs Northflank: pricing, isolation and limits

Both bill allocated CPU and memory; Northflank's rates are about a third of Daytona's, and it isolates in microVMs rather than containers.

Runtime runs the same job for 77% less than Daytona and 42% less than Northflank. 1,000 one-minute runs of a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox cost $2.76 on Daytona, $1.11 on Northflank and $0.64 on Runtime, because Runtime bills the CPU your code uses rather than the CPUs it holds. A Runtime sandbox is one call, with no service or project to set up. Rates checked 23 September 2026.

At a glance

	Daytona	Northflank	Runtime
Isolation	Containers by default; VM sandboxes as a separate class	Each workload in its own microVM, Kata Containers or gVisor	Firecracker microVM, own kernel, every sandbox
CPU	$0.0504 per allocated vCPU-hour	$0.01667 per allocated vCPU-hour	$0.025 per vCPU-hour of measured CPU, with a small floor
Memory	$0.0162 per GiB-hour	$0.00833 per GB-hour	$0.0075 per reserved GiB-hour
Plan fee	None published	None published for compute	None; prepaid credit from $10
Free start	$200 of compute	2 free services and 1 free database	50 sandbox hours, no card
Sandbox model	A sandbox from the SDK	A service with a deployment plan	A sandbox, created in one call
Where it runs	US and EU	Northflank's regions, or your own AWS, GCP or Azure	One US region
GPUs	GPU sandboxes; Windows machines too	L4, A100, H100 and others by the hour	CPUs only

Why is Northflank cheaper than Daytona?

The two bill the same way: every vCPU and every GB the sandbox holds, for as long as it runs, busy or waiting. Only the rates differ. Northflank charges $0.01667 a vCPU-hour, a third of Daytona's $0.0504, and $0.00833 a GB-hour, about half of Daytona's $0.0162 per GiB-hour. So the same sandbox costs 60% less on Northflank at every level of use.

Runtime counts differently. It bills measured CPU at $0.025 a vCPU-hour, with a floor of a twentieth of a vCPU, so an agent that waits on a model most of the minute pays for a small share of its CPUs. That makes Runtime the cheapest of the three for agent work. A job that keeps every CPU busy for the whole run is the exception: there Northflank's allocated rate is lower than Runtime's measured one.

Cost for the same job

1,000 runs of a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox (4 GB on Northflank). Each run lasts 60 seconds and keeps the CPU busy for 20 CPU-seconds: an agent that mostly waits for a model.

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                                          $2.76Northflank  CPU    1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 2 × $0.01667  = $0.556            Memory 1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 4 × $0.00833  = $0.555            Total                                          $1.11Runtime     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

At 100,000 runs a month that is $276.00 on Daytona, $111.10 on Northflank 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 $1.11 on Northflank, so for work that uses every CPU all the time Northflank costs less than Runtime. Disk, network, plan fees and free allowances are left out.

What does it take to start a sandbox?

• Daytona: daytona.create() from its SDK returns a sandbox.
• Northflank: a sandbox is a service. You create it with a deployment plan, and Northflank runs it in its own microVM.
• Runtime: Sandbox.create() returns a running sandbox, with no service, project or plan to set up. A default sandbox took 351 ms at the median from the create request to the first Python result, across 20 starts on 24 September 2026.

TypeScriptimport { Sandbox } from "withruntime";const box = await Sandbox.create({ funding: "trial" });try {  console.log((await box.exec("python3 -c 'print(6 * 7)'", { check: true })).stdout);} finally {  await box.stop();}

Which one to pick

• Pick Daytona for Windows machines, GPU sandboxes from the same SDK, or the $200 free start.
• Pick Northflank for jobs that keep every CPU busy, GPUs by the hour, or sandboxes in your own AWS, GCP or Azure account beside databases and services on one platform.
• Pick Runtime for agents that wait on models: a microVM per sandbox at under a quarter of Daytona's price and 42% under Northflank's, pause and forks that keep memory and running processes, and one call to start.

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

From Northflank, replace the service with a sandbox: create, exec, files and stop each map to one call in the migration table. Or give your coding agent the one instruction in migration: it switches the project on a branch, tests it on the free trial and reports the monthly saving. npx withruntime compare --from northflank prices the sandboxes you ran at Northflank's published rates, and npx withruntime switch --from daytona before your first top-up matches that top-up with credit, up to $100. The full side-by-sides are Runtime vs Daytona and Runtime vs Northflank.

Sources

Daytona pricing and Northflank sandboxes pages rechecked 25 September 2026; the rest checked 23 September 2026.

• Northflank pricing, Northflank sandboxes, Sandboxes on Northflank
• Daytona pricing, Daytona sandboxes
• Runtime pricing and speed

Facts on this page were checked on 25 September 2026.