Daytona vs Vercel Sandbox: pricing, isolation and limits

Daytona defaults to containers and bills allocated CPU; Vercel uses Firecracker microVMs and bills active CPU, cheaper for agents that wait.

Runtime costs 77% less than Daytona and 70% less than Vercel on the same job. Run a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox 1,000 times for a minute each and the bill is $2.76 on Daytona, $2.12 on Vercel and $0.64 on Runtime. Runtime meters CPU by use, as Vercel does, but its CPU rate is about a fifth of Vercel's, and it puts every sandbox in its own Firecracker microVM, which Daytona does only on request. Rates checked 23 September 2026.

At a glance

Vercel's figures are at the rates of its default iad1 region.

	Daytona	Vercel Sandbox	Runtime
Isolation	Containers by default; VM sandboxes as a separate class	Firecracker microVM, own kernel	Firecracker microVM, own kernel, every sandbox
CPU	$0.0504 per allocated vCPU-hour	$0.128 per active CPU-hour	$0.025 per vCPU-hour of measured CPU, with a small floor
Memory	$0.0162 per GiB-hour	$0.0212 per provisioned GB-hour	$0.0075 per reserved GiB-hour
Disk	First 5 GiB free, then $0.000108 per GiB-hour	64 GB of ephemeral NVMe included	Included while running; paused storage $0.08 per GB-month
Plan fee	None published	Hobby allowance free; usage beyond it needs Pro	None; prepaid credit from $10
Free start	$200 of compute	5 active CPU-hours and 420 GB-hours a month on Hobby	50 sandbox hours, no card
Idle and stop	Stops after 15 idle minutes by default	Stop keeps the filesystem; processes start again	Pause keeps files, memory and processes, 1 to 365 days
Pause with memory	On VM sandboxes	No; snapshots and forks capture the filesystem	Every sandbox, and forks keep memory too
Regions	US and EU	19 regions	One US region

When is Daytona cheaper than Vercel, and when is it the other way round?

The two meter CPU in opposite ways. Daytona charges $0.0504 an hour for each allocated vCPU from start to stop. Vercel charges $0.128 an hour for CPU time the code actually spends, so a sandbox that sits waiting on a model call pays only for its memory. For this 2 vCPU, 4 GiB size the lines cross at about 0.63 of a CPU busy on average, roughly 38 CPU-seconds in every minute.

Workload on 2 vCPU, 4 GiB, 1,000 one-minute runs	Daytona	Vercel	Runtime
Waits on a model, 20 CPU-seconds a run	$2.76	$2.12	$0.64
Both CPUs busy the whole run	$2.76	$5.68	$1.33

Runtime also bills by use, with a floor of a twentieth of a vCPU, at $0.025 a vCPU-hour, which keeps it lowest in both rows.

Cost for the same job

The worked numbers behind the first row: 1,000 runs, 2 vCPU and 4 GiB (Vercel sells memory at 2 GB per vCPU, so 4 GB there), 60 seconds each, 20 CPU-seconds of real work per run.

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                                        $2.76Vercel   CPU    1,000 × 20 s / 3,600 × $0.128      = $0.71         Memory 1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 4 × $0.0212 = $1.41         Total                                        $2.12Runtime  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 is $276.00 on Daytona, $212.44 on Vercel and $63.89 on Runtime. The busy case, both CPUs busy for the whole minute, costs $1.33 on Runtime, $2.76 on Daytona and $5.68 on Vercel. Daytona's figure stays put because it was already charging for full use, and Vercel's more than doubles. These sums leave out plan fees, creation charges, disk, network and free allowances.

Container or microVM?

A Daytona sandbox is a container unless you choose its separate VM class, which is also what you need for a pause that keeps memory. Every Vercel sandbox is a Firecracker microVM with its own kernel, as is every Runtime sandbox. The difference matters most when a model writes the code; see microVM vs container.

Vercel stops rather than pauses: the filesystem survives and processes start again. Daytona stops an idle sandbox after 15 minutes by default. A Runtime pause keeps files, memory and processes for 1 to 365 days, and a fork copies a running sandbox with its memory.

Which one to pick

• Daytona suits CPU-heavy jobs, where a flat allocated rate beats paying per busy second, and teams that want GPU sandboxes, Windows machines, an EU region or $200 of free compute to start.
• Vercel Sandbox suits apps already deployed on Vercel and workloads that need a sandbox close to users: it runs in 19 regions and allows up to 10,000 at once on Pro.
• Runtime suits agents that spend most of a run waiting: a microVM every time, CPU billed by use at about a fifth of Vercel's rate, memory kept on pause and fork, and no plan fee.

Moving to Runtime

Each SDK has a compatible import on Runtime:

TypeScriptimport { Daytona } from "withruntime/daytona"; // was: from "@daytona/sdk"import { Sandbox } from "withruntime/vercel"; // was: from "@vercel/sandbox"

Pythonfrom withruntime.daytona import Daytona  # was: from daytona import Daytonafrom withruntime.vercel import sandbox  # was: from vercel import sandbox

stop() behaves as each provider taught you, keeping the disk for a restart, and on Runtime that means a pause; delete() removes the sandbox. The migration guide has one instruction you can hand a coding agent to make the change on a branch, try it on the free trial and report the saving. Running npx withruntime switch --from daytona or --from vercel before the first top-up adds matching credit, up to $100. Detail on each: Runtime vs Daytona, Runtime vs Vercel Sandbox.

Sources

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

• Daytona pricing, Daytona sandboxes, Daytona on microVMs, pause and fork
• Vercel Sandbox pricing, Understanding Vercel Sandboxes
• Runtime pricing

Facts on this page were checked on 25 September 2026.