Which is better, Fly Machines or Freestyle?
It depends on how busy your agent is and what must sit around it. For an agent that mostly waits on a model, Runtime costs the least: $0.64 for 1,000 one-minute runs, against $1.53 on Fly Machines and $2.25 on Freestyle. It bills the CPU used, not the cores held. Its pause keeps memory at any size up to 64 GiB. Pick Fly Machines for apps across 17 regions, with Fly's volumes and Postgres. Pick Freestyle for forks of a running VM with no pause.
At a glance
| Fly Machines | Freestyle | Runtime | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Firecracker microVM | Full Linux virtual machines | Firecracker microVM, own kernel |
| Price | performance-2x with 4 GB, $0.0916704 an hour, iad |
$0.1322 an hour for 2 vCPUs and 4 GiB | $0.03125 an hour waiting, $0.08 busy |
| Disk | Temporary root disk; volumes keep files | 32 GiB by default, billed | Included while it runs |
| Idle | Suspend at 2 GB of memory or less | Hibernates with memory | Pause keeps memory while you have credit |
| Regions | 17 | Not stated | One US region |
Whole cores or hibernation
Fly's performance vCPUs are whole cores, and the Machine is still the cheaper of the two rivals. What Freestyle offers in return is state: VMs that hibernate with memory at any size and fork while running. A Fly Machine suspends with memory only at 2 GB or less, and its root disk does not outlive it.
Cost for the same job
2 vCPU and 4 GB, 60 seconds, 20 CPU-seconds, 1,000 runs. Freestyle's default 32 GiB disk is counted:
- Size
- 1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × $0.0916704
- $1.53
- 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
Both rivals bill by allocation, so with both CPUs busy for the whole minute, the job costs $1.53 on Machines, $2.25 on Freestyle and $1.33 on Runtime.
Which one to pick
- Fly Machines for apps across 17 regions, with Fly's volumes and Postgres.
- Freestyle for forks of a running VM with no pause.
- Runtime for the lowest cost, with memory kept across pauses at any size up to 64 GiB.
See Runtime vs Fly.io and Runtime vs Freestyle.
Runtime Cloud
Runtime costs less than both: 58% less than Fly Machines and 72% less than
Freestyle. One thousand one-minute runs of a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox using 20
CPU-seconds each cost $1.53 on a performance-2x Fly Machine, $2.25 on
Freestyle and $0.64 on Runtime.
Each sandbox is a Firecracker microVM, and there is no plan fee. Sign in with npx withruntime login to start on the free usage. See the migration guide to bring existing code over.
Sources
Fly.io prices checked 25 October 2026.
Fly Machines rates checked 25 October 2026; Freestyle rates checked 25 October 2026.
Facts on this page were checked on 26 October 2026.