E2B vs Northflank: pricing, isolation and limits

Both bill allocated vCPUs and memory, and Northflank's rates are lower on both: the same job costs $1.11 there and $2.76 on E2B.

Runtime runs the same job for 77% less than E2B and 42% less than Northflank. 1,000 one-minute runs of a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox cost $2.76 on E2B, $1.11 on Northflank and $0.64 on Runtime, because Runtime bills the CPU an agent uses while it waits on a model instead of every vCPU it holds. Rates checked 23 September 2026.

At a glance

	E2B	Northflank	Runtime
Isolation	Firecracker microVM, own kernel	Its own microVM with Kata Containers, or gVisor	Firecracker microVM, own kernel
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	Hobby $0; Pro $150 a month	None published for compute	None; prepaid credit from $10
Free start	$100 of usage credit, once	2 free services and 1 free database	50 sandbox hours, no card
Session length	1 hour on Hobby, 24 hours on Pro	No forced time limit, seconds to weeks	Leases of up to an hour, extended as often as needed
Sandbox model	A sandbox, created in one call	A service with a deployment plan	A sandbox, created in one call
Where it runs	E2B's cloud, or self-hosted	Northflank's regions, or your AWS, GCP, Azure or Oracle account	Runtime's own dedicated servers

Is Northflank cheaper than E2B?

Yes, on both meters. Northflank's vCPU is $0.01667 an hour against E2B's $0.0504, and its memory $0.00833 per GB-hour against $0.0162 per GiB-hour. Both bill what the sandbox holds for as long as it runs, so the ratio holds however busy the work is: a 2 vCPU, 4 GB sandbox is $0.0667 an hour on Northflank and $0.1656 on E2B.

What differs is the shape of the product. E2B is a sandbox API: one call returns a running sandbox, and a session lasts up to 1 hour on Hobby or 24 on Pro. Northflank is a platform that also runs sandboxes: each one is a service with a deployment plan, with no forced time limit, and it can run in your own cloud account and rent GPUs.

When is Runtime cheaper than Northflank?

When the agent waits. Runtime's measured CPU costs $0.025 a vCPU-hour of CPU actually used, and Northflank's $0.01667 a vCPU-hour of CPU held. In this page's job, 1,000 one-minute runs at 2 vCPU and 4 GiB, Runtime costs less as long as each run keeps the CPUs busy for under 88 CPU-seconds out of the 120 it could use. A typical agent, which spends most of its time waiting on a model, is far below that line. A sandbox that runs every CPU flat out is above it.

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.

TextE2B         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 E2B, $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 E2B and $1.11 on Northflank, so for work that keeps every CPU busy all the time Northflank costs less than Runtime. Plan fees, storage, network and free allowances are left out.

Which one to pick

• Pick E2B for a sandbox API with a code interpreter and paused sandboxes kept with no expiry, or a runtime you can self-host under Apache-2.0.
• Pick Northflank for sandboxes that keep every CPU busy, GPUs by the hour, or sandboxes inside your own AWS, GCP, Azure or Oracle account.
• Pick Runtime for agents that wait on a model: 42% less than Northflank and 77% less than E2B in the example, a sandbox in one call, pause and forks that keep memory and processes, and an agent that connects without an API key.

Switch from either one

From E2B, Runtime's SDK runs your code after one import change:

TypeScriptimport { Sandbox } from "withruntime/e2b"; // was: from "e2b"

Pythonfrom withruntime.e2b import Sandbox  # was: from e2b import Sandbox

From Northflank, there is no service or deployment plan to create. A sandbox service becomes Sandbox.create(), a command becomes exec, and deleting the service becomes stop(). A sandbox you want to find again takes a name:

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();}

Pythonfrom withruntime import Sandboxdev = Sandbox.get_or_create("dev", idle_pause_seconds=900)dev.exec("git pull || true")

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. The full side-by-sides are Runtime vs E2B and Runtime vs Northflank; Kata Containers vs Firecracker compares the two microVM designs.

Sources

E2B pricing and Northflank's sandbox page rechecked 25 September 2026; the rest checked 23 September 2026.

• E2B pricing, E2B sandbox persistence
• Northflank pricing, Northflank sandboxes, Sandboxes on Northflank
• Runtime pricing

Facts on this page were checked on 25 September 2026.