Freestyle vs Prime Sandboxes: pricing, forks and concurrency

Both bill what a sandbox is given while it runs. Prime's rates are lower, so the 2 vCPU, 4 GiB benchmark costs $1.52 on Prime and $2.25 on Freestyle.

Runtime costs 72% less than Freestyle and 58% less than Prime on it. The benchmark is 1,000 one-minute runs of a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox, 20 CPU-seconds of work apiece: $2.25 on Freestyle, $1.52 on Prime Sandboxes and $0.64 on Runtime.

Estimated compute cost

72% less than Freestyle58% less than Prime Sandboxes

2 vCPUs · 4 GiB · 60 s a run · 20 CPU-seconds busy

Runs1,000

Compute only, at list rates checked 25 September 2026 (Freestyle pricing, Prime Sandboxes overview). Plan fees, network, taxes and free credits are left out. The worked example below shows the arithmetic.

At a glance

	Freestyle	Prime Sandboxes	Runtime
Isolation	Full Linux virtual machines	Hardware-virtualized microVM, own guest kernel	Firecracker microVM, own kernel
CPU	$0.04032 per allocated vCPU-hour	$0.02 per vCPU-hour while running	$0.025 per vCPU-hour of measured CPU, with a small floor
Memory	$0.0129 per GiB-hour	$0.0125 per GiB-hour	$0.0075 per reserved GiB-hour
Forks	Live, without pausing the VM	Listed as coming soon	Up to 10 copies of a running sandbox
At once	10 free, 40 Hobby, 400 Pro	1,024 per account to start	100 paid; 50 during the first week
Plan	Free, Hobby $50, Pro $500 a month	None; rates through 22 December 2026	None; prepaid credit from $10

Forks today, or scale today

Freestyle's strength is state: live forks and weeks-long hibernation. Prime's is breadth: a thousand microVMs per account from the start at half Freestyle's CPU rate, with forks still to come. Runtime has forks and memory-keeping pauses now, and prices waiting time at a floor of a twentieth of a vCPU.

Cost for the same job

The benchmark, 60 seconds a run, with each rival's default disk (32 GiB on Freestyle, 5 GiB on Prime):

TextFreestyle 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          Total                                                  $2.25Prime     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

Monthly at 100,000 runs: $224.99 on Freestyle, $151.67 on Prime, $63.89 on Runtime. With both CPUs busy for the whole minute: $2.25 on Freestyle, $1.52 on Prime, $1.33 on Runtime.

Which one to pick

Freestyle for VMs of up to 32 vCPUs that fork without a pause.
Prime Sandboxes for rollouts by the thousand inside Prime Intellect.
Runtime for the lowest price per run, forks and pauses that keep memory, and no plan fee.

See Runtime vs Freestyle and Runtime vs Prime Sandboxes.

Sources

Freestyle and Prime rates checked 25 September 2026.

Facts on this page were checked on 25 September 2026.