# Morph vs Freestyle: branching VMs for agents

Morph and Freestyle both sell VMs that fork while running. Morph bills MCUs, Freestyle bills allocation: $1.67 against $2.25 for the 2 vCPU benchmark.

**Runtime costs 62% less than Morph and 72% less than Freestyle for an agent
that waits.** On 1,000 one-minute runs of a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox with 20
CPU-seconds of work each, Morph costs $1.67, Freestyle $2.25 and Runtime
$0.64.

## At a glance

|           | Morph                                                 | Freestyle                                    | Runtime                          |
| --------- | ----------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------- |
| Isolation | Full virtual machines                                 | Full Linux virtual machines                  | Firecracker microVM, own kernel  |
| Price     | $0.05 per MCU-hour: 1 vCPU, 4 GB or 16 GB of disk     | $0.04032 per vCPU-hour, $0.0129 per GiB-hour | Measured CPU and reserved memory |
| Forks     | Infinibranch, to hundreds of replicas                 | Live forks without pausing                   | Up to 10 running copies          |
| Plan      | Free with no credit; Developer $40, Team $250 a month | Free, Hobby $50, Pro $500 a month            | None; prepaid credit from $10    |

## Forks at different scales

Morph's Infinibranch turns one running machine into hundreds of replicas,
made for tree search over agent actions. Freestyle clones a running VM without
pausing it. A Runtime fork pauses the source for about a second and gives up
to ten running copies, memory and processes included, which covers trying a
few approaches from one warmed-up state.

## Cost for the same job

2 vCPU and 4 GB (2 MCUs on Morph), 60 seconds, 20 CPU-seconds, 1,000 runs,
with Freestyle's 32 GiB disk:

```
Morph      Size   1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 2 MCU × $0.05          = $1.67

Freestyle  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                                                  $2.25

Runtime    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
```

With both CPUs busy for the whole minute, the job costs $1.67 on Morph, $2.25 on Freestyle and $1.33 on Runtime.

## Which one to pick

- **Morph** for branching into hundreds of replicas.
- **Freestyle** for forks that never pause the source.
- **Runtime** for the lowest bill, with forks when ten copies suffice.

See [Runtime vs Morph](/docs/morph-alternative) and
[Runtime vs Freestyle](/docs/freestyle-alternative).

## Sources

Morph rates checked 23 September 2026; Freestyle rates checked 25 September 2026.

- [Morph Cloud pricing](https://cloud.morph.so/web/pricing), [Morph Devboxes](https://cloud.morph.so/web/product/devboxes)
- [Freestyle pricing](https://www.freestyle.sh/pricing), [Freestyle VM pricing and limits](https://www.freestyle.sh/docs/vms/pricing-and-limits)
- Runtime [pricing](/docs/pricing)

Facts on this page were checked on 25 September 2026.