Which is better, E2B or Northflank?
It depends on how busy your CPUs are and whose cloud they run in. For agents that wait on a model, Runtime has the lowest bill: $0.64 for this job, against $1.11 on Northflank and $2.76 on E2B. Pick Northflank when every CPU stays busy the whole run, where its rates beat Runtime's, or for GPUs billed by the second and sandboxes inside your own AWS, GCP, Azure or Oracle account. Pick E2B for self-hosting, or for pauses kept with no expiry.
At a glance
| E2B | Northflank | Runtime | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Firecracker microVM, own kernel | microVMs for CPU workloads, gVisor for GPU workloads | 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 per month | None published for compute | None; prepaid credit from $10 |
| Free start | $100 of usage credit, once | 2 services, 2 jobs and 1 database free | 100 free hours of a 1 GB machine in the first 30 days, no card |
| Session length | 1 hour on Hobby, 24 hours on Pro | No time limit, seconds to weeks | No time limit: runs while it works, pauses itself after 300 seconds idle |
| 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 costs $0.01667 an hour against E2B's $0.0504, and its memory costs $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 and no 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 per vCPU-hour of CPU actually used, and Northflank's costs $0.01667 per 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.
- 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 × $0.01667
- $0.556
- Memory
- 1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 4 × $0.00833
- $0.555
- 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, 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. 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.
Runtime Cloud
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 25 October 2026.
Check which side of that line your agent falls on, using the free usage. Run npx withruntime login, then run your agent. E2B code moves over with the migration
guide.
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 SandboxFrom 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();try { await box.files.write("/workspace/invoice.py", "print(sum([125, 250, 375]))\n"); console.log((await box.exec("python3 /workspace/invoice.py", { 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 usage and reports the monthly saving. The full comparisons are Runtime vs E2B and Runtime vs Northflank.
Sources
E2B pricing and Northflank's sandbox page rechecked 26 October 2026; the rest checked 25 October 2026.
- E2B pricing, E2B sandbox persistence
- Northflank pricing, Northflank sandboxes, Sandboxes on Northflank
- Runtime pricing
Facts on this page were checked on 26 October 2026.