E2B vs Vercel Sandbox: pricing, isolation and limits

Both run Firecracker microVMs. Vercel bills active CPU, so it costs less than E2B for idle-heavy agents and more for busy ones.

Same Firecracker isolation on all three, and Runtime is 77% cheaper than E2B and 70% cheaper than Vercel on the same job. 1,000 one-minute runs of a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox cost $2.76 on E2B, $2.12 on Vercel and $0.64 on Runtime. Runtime meters CPU as Vercel does, at about a fifth of Vercel's CPU rate, and its memory is cheaper than either rival's. Rates checked 23 September 2026.

At a glance

Vercel is priced in iad1, its default region.

	E2B	Vercel Sandbox	Runtime
Isolation	Firecracker microVM, own kernel	Firecracker microVM, own kernel	Firecracker microVM, own kernel
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
Plan fee	Hobby $0; Pro $150 a month	Hobby allowance free; usage beyond it needs Pro	None; prepaid credit from $10
Free start	$100 of usage credit, once	5 active CPU-hours and 420 GB-hours a month on Hobby	50 sandbox hours, no card
Session length	1 hour on Hobby, 24 hours on Pro	45 minutes on Hobby, 24 hours on Pro	Leases of up to an hour, extended as often as needed
Pause or stop	Keeps files, memory and processes	Stop keeps the filesystem; processes start again	Pause keeps files, memory and processes
Agent sign-in	API key	Vercel project and token	Browser approval; no key in the agent's config

Which is cheaper, E2B or Vercel Sandbox?

That depends on the workload, because they meter the opposite way. E2B charges $0.0504 an hour for every vCPU it allocates, from the moment the sandbox starts until it ends. Vercel charges $0.128 an hour, but only for CPU time the code actually consumes, so seconds spent waiting on a model call are free.

• Mostly waiting (20 CPU-seconds in a one-minute run): Vercel, $2.12 against $2.76 for 1,000 runs.
• Mostly computing (both CPUs busy all minute): E2B, $2.76 against $5.68.

Runtime meters like Vercel, with a floor of a twentieth of a vCPU, at $0.025 a vCPU-hour, and so comes out lowest at either extreme.

Cost for the same job

The waiting case in detail: 1,000 runs, each 60 seconds on 2 vCPU with 4 GiB (Vercel sells 2 GB per vCPU, so 4 GB), with 20 CPU-seconds of work per run.

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                                        $2.76Vercel   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

At 100,000 runs a month, E2B bills $276.00, Vercel $212.44 and Runtime $63.89. With both CPUs busy for the whole minute the job is $1.33 on Runtime, $2.76 on E2B and $5.68 on Vercel. Plan fees, creation charges, disk, network and free allowances are not in these totals.

What survives a stop?

A paused E2B sandbox keeps its files, memory and running processes, with no expiry. A stopped Vercel sandbox keeps its filesystem, and its processes start again; Vercel's snapshots and forks capture the filesystem too. A paused Runtime sandbox keeps files, memory and running processes for the retention you set, 1 to 365 days, and a fork copies a running sandbox with its memory. See how to pause and resume a sandbox.

Which one to pick

• E2B, for CPU-heavy work at a flat allocated rate, paused sandboxes kept with no expiry, or a runtime you can self-host under Apache-2.0.
• Vercel Sandbox, for an app that already runs on Vercel, or sandboxes spread over many places: 19 regions and up to 10,000 at once on Pro.
• Runtime, for CPU metered by use at about a fifth of Vercel's rate, pause and forks that keep memory, port URLs that are private by default, and no plan fee.

Moving to Runtime

Both SDKs have a compatibility import on Runtime:

TypeScriptimport { Sandbox } from "withruntime/e2b"; // was: from "e2b"import { Sandbox as VercelSandbox } from "withruntime/vercel"; // was: from "@vercel/sandbox"

Pythonfrom withruntime.e2b import Sandbox  # was: from e2b import Sandboxfrom withruntime.vercel import sandbox  # was: from vercel import sandbox

Vercel code then runs without a Vercel project or token, and its stop() becomes a pause. npx withruntime switch --from vercel or --from e2b, before the first top-up, matches it with credit up to $100. A coding agent can carry out the change from the one instruction in migration, on a branch, against the free trial. Full detail: Runtime vs E2B, Runtime vs Vercel Sandbox.

Sources

E2B and Vercel pricing pages rechecked 25 September 2026; the rest checked 23 September 2026.

• E2B pricing, E2B sandbox persistence
• Vercel Sandbox pricing, Understanding Vercel Sandboxes
• Runtime pricing

Facts on this page were checked on 25 September 2026.