Which is better, E2B or Freestyle?
It depends on whether you need a wide ecosystem or one very large VM. For agents that spend most of a run waiting on models, Runtime costs the least, busy or not: $0.64 for this job, against $2.76 on E2B and $2.25 on Freestyle. Its sandboxes fork and pause with memory kept. Pick E2B for its many templates and integrations, and for a runtime you can self-host. Pick Freestyle for one VM with 32 vCPUs on its Pro plan.
At a glance
| E2B | Freestyle | Runtime | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Firecracker microVM, own kernel | Full Linux virtual machines | Firecracker microVM, own kernel |
| 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 | Included | $0.000086 per GiB-hour, allocated | Included while it runs |
| Plans | Hobby $0; Pro $150 per month | Free; Hobby $50; Pro $500 per month, counted toward usage | None; prepaid credit from $10 |
| At once | Set by plan | 10 free, 40 Hobby, 400 Pro | 100 on a paid account |
| Pause | Files, memory and processes, no expiry | Pauses with memory; storage billed while paused | Files, memory and processes while you have credit |
Where the two differ
Freestyle's rates are about a fifth lower than E2B's on both meters, so it costs 51 cents less for this job. Its plans work differently: the fee buys the same amount of usage and raises how many VMs can run concurrently and how large they can be, up to 32 vCPUs and 64 GiB on Pro. E2B's Pro plan instead buys longer sessions, 24 hours against Hobby's one. Freestyle adds live forks that clone a VM without pausing it. E2B adds an open-source runtime you can host yourself.
Cost for the same job
The benchmark: 1,000 runs of 60 seconds on 2 vCPU and 4 GiB, 20 CPU-seconds each. Freestyle keeps its default 32 GiB disk.
- CPU
- 1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 2 × $0.0504
- $1.68
- Memory
- 1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 4 × $0.0162
- $1.08
- 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
- CPU
- 1,000 × 20 s / 3,600 × $0.025
- $0.14
- Memory
- 1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 4 × $0.0075
- $0.50
At 100,000 runs per month: $276.00 on E2B, $224.99 on Freestyle before its plan, and $63.89 on Runtime. With both CPUs busy for the whole minute, the costs are $2.76 on E2B, $2.25 on Freestyle and $1.33 on Runtime, so the order holds.
Which one to pick
- E2B for its large ecosystem of templates and integrations, and a runtime you can self-host.
- Freestyle for VMs that fork live, or one VM with 32 vCPUs on Pro.
- Runtime when agents wait on models: 72% below Freestyle's bill and 77% below E2B's here, no plan to buy for 100 concurrent sandboxes, and sandboxes up to 16 vCPUs and 64 GiB. E2B code moves with one
import (
withruntime/e2b).
More detail: Runtime vs E2B, Runtime vs Freestyle and the Freestyle pricing calculator.
Runtime Cloud
Runtime runs it for 77% less than E2B and 72% less than Freestyle. A thousand one-minute runs at 2 vCPU and 4 GiB, each doing 20 CPU-seconds of work, come to $2.76 on E2B, $2.25 on Freestyle and $0.64 on Runtime, because Runtime charges for measured CPU where the other two charge for held cores.
Try it on the free usage. Run npx withruntime login, then start a
sandbox. Code written for the E2B SDK moves over with the migration guide.
Sources
E2B rates checked 25 October 2026; Freestyle rates checked 25 October 2026.
- E2B pricing, E2B sandbox persistence
- Freestyle pricing, Freestyle VM pricing and limits
- Runtime pricing
Facts on this page were checked on 26 October 2026.