E2B vs Prime Sandboxes: pricing, scale and snapshots

Both give every sandbox a microVM and bill it while it runs. A 2 vCPU, 4 GiB job costs $2.76 on E2B and $1.52 on Prime Sandboxes.

Runtime costs 77% less than E2B and 58% less than Prime Sandboxes on the same job. 1,000 one-minute runs of a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox with 20 CPU-seconds of work each are $2.76 on E2B, $1.52 on Prime and $0.64 on Runtime. Prime's rates are the lower of the two rivals'; Runtime's measured CPU undercuts both.

At a glance

	E2B	Prime Sandboxes	Runtime
Isolation	Firecracker microVM, own kernel	Hardware-virtualized microVM, own guest kernel	Firecracker microVM, own kernel
CPU	$0.0504 per allocated vCPU-hour	$0.02 per vCPU-hour while running	$0.025 per vCPU-hour of measured CPU, with a small floor
Memory	$0.0162 per GiB-hour	$0.0125 per GiB-hour	$0.0075 per reserved GiB-hour
Largest	8 vCPUs and 8 GiB	16 vCPUs, 64 GiB, 128 GiB of disk	16 vCPUs and 64 GiB, paid
At once	Set by plan	1,024 per account to start	100 paid; a new account 50 for a week
Pause and fork	Pause keeps memory	Snapshots and forks listed as coming soon	Pause keeps memory; forks of a running sandbox
Price terms	Hobby $0; Pro $150 a month	Published through 22 December 2026	Fixed in each quote; no plan

Rates against features

Prime is cheaper than E2B at every level of use here: its CPU rate is less than half of E2B's and its memory about a quarter lower. What E2B has that Prime does not yet is state: an E2B pause keeps memory and processes with no expiry, while Prime lists snapshots, and forking a sandbox mid-run, as coming soon. Prime starts accounts at 1,024 sandboxes at once, built for reinforcement learning rollouts.

Cost for the same job

2 vCPU, 4 GiB, 60 seconds and 20 CPU-seconds a run, 1,000 runs, with Prime's default 5 GiB disk:

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                                                  $2.76Prime     CPU    1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 2 × $0.02              = $0.67          Memory 1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 4 × $0.0125            = $0.83          Disk   1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 5 × $0.0002            = $0.02          Total                                                  $1.52Runtime   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

That is $276.00, $151.67 and $63.89 a month at 100,000 runs. With the CPUs busy for the whole minute, the job costs $2.76 on E2B, $1.52 on Prime and $1.33 on Runtime; Runtime stays cheapest because its memory is the cheapest.

Which one to pick

• E2B when paused sandboxes must stay forever, or you may self-host.
• Prime Sandboxes for thousands of rollouts at once from the first day, inside Prime Intellect's training platform.
• Runtime for agents and rollouts that wait on a model: the lowest bill, pause and forks today, and eval harnesses (Harbor, Inspect) that switch without code changes.

See Runtime vs E2B and Runtime vs Prime Sandboxes.

Sources

E2B rates checked 23 September 2026; Prime rates checked 25 September 2026.

• E2B pricing, E2B sandbox persistence
• Prime Sandboxes overview, Prime Sandboxes launch
• Runtime pricing

Facts on this page were checked on 25 September 2026.