Morph vs Runloop: pricing, isolation and limits

Morph bills a VM in MCUs and snapshots its memory; Runloop bills a devbox's CPU, memory and disk. The same job is $1.67 against $5.33.

This job costs 62% less on Runtime than on Morph, and 88% less than on Runloop. Take 1,000 one-minute runs of a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox: Morph bills $1.67, Runloop $5.33 and Runtime $0.64. Both rivals charge for the machine a run occupies; Runtime charges for the CPU its code spends. Rates checked 23 September 2026.

At a glance

	Morph	Runloop	Runtime
Isolation	Full virtual machines	microVM, with a container inside	Firecracker microVM, own kernel, every sandbox
How size is billed	$0.05 per MCU-hour: 1 vCPU, 4 GB of memory or 16 GB disk	$0.108 per CPU-hour, $0.0252 per GB-hour, disk per GB	$0.025 per vCPU-hour of measured CPU, with a small floor
2 vCPU, 4 GB, an hour	$0.10 (2 MCUs, disk included)	$0.3195 (MEDIUM, with 8 GB disk)	$0.03125 waiting, $0.08 fully busy
Saved state	Snapshots keep memory and disk	Suspend keeps the disk; processes restart	Pause and snapshots keep files, memory and processes
Copies	Infinibranch: hundreds of replicas of a running machine	Snapshots of a devbox	Forks: 1 to 10 running copies with memory and processes
Plan fee	Free with no credit; Developer $40 and Team $250 a month	Basic free; Pro $250 a month plus usage	None; prepaid credit from $10
Free start	No free credit; 1,000 MCUs come with Developer ($40)	$50 of credit, no card; 3 devboxes running at once	50 sandbox hours, no card
Beyond sandboxes	Devboxes; GitHub Actions runners from 3 MCUs an hour	Public and custom benchmarks; deploys in your cloud	MCP server, desktop, code interpreter, previews

Which one keeps memory when you stop work?

For an agent, the difference between saving the disk and saving the memory is whether it resumes where it was or starts its tools again.

• Morph snapshots a machine with its memory and disk, and Infinibranch starts hundreds of running replicas from one point. Devboxes scale to zero when idle and keep their memory.
• Runloop suspends a devbox to its disk. On resume its processes must be started again, so a dev server, a REPL or a loaded model is gone. Suspend and resume are listed under the $250-a-month Pro plan.

Runtime keeps memory and running processes on every pause and every snapshot, with no plan needed. A pause is kept 1 to 365 days on a paid account and a snapshot 7 days unless you choose 1 to 365, both at $0.08 per GB-month.

Cost for the same job

Priced here: 1,000 runs of 60 seconds with 20 CPU-seconds of work in each, on 2 vCPU and 4 GiB. Morph needs 2 MCUs, enough for as much as 32 GB of disk. Runloop's nearest size is MEDIUM, which pairs 2 CPUs and 4 GB with 8 GB of disk.

TextMorph    Size   1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 2 MCU × $0.05    = $1.67Runloop  CPU    1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 2 × $0.108       = $3.60         Memory 1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 4 × $0.0252      = $1.68         Disk   1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 8 × $0.00034236 = $0.05         Total                                             $5.33Runtime  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

Over 100,000 runs a month, Morph comes to $166.67, Runloop to $532.56 and Runtime to $63.89. With both CPUs busy for the whole minute, it is $1.33 on Runtime, $1.67 on Morph and $5.33 on Runloop. The gap between the rivals is mostly the CPU rate: a single Runloop CPU-hour, $0.108, is more than two Morph MCUs, $0.10, which hold two vCPUs. Plan fees, included credit, idle storage, network, taxes and free credit are not counted.

Which one to pick

• Morph, to fan one running machine out to hundreds of replicas, or for very large VMs: its Team plan goes up to 1,024 vCPUs and 4,096 GB of memory.
• Runloop, if what you need is an evaluation service more than a sandbox: SWE-Bench and other public suites run for you, custom benchmarks built from your data, deployment into your own cloud, and stated readiness for SOC 2, HIPAA and GDPR.
• Runtime, for a Firecracker microVM per sandbox at 62% below Morph and 88% below Runloop, memory kept by every pause and snapshot, and no plan fee. Sandbox snapshot explains what a snapshot holds.

Moving saved state across

Neither SDK has a compatibility import; port the calls with map the calls. A Morph snapshot, or a Runloop devbox that you set up once and reuse, turns into a Runtime snapshot, and new sandboxes start from exactly that state:

TypeScriptimport { Runtime, Sandbox } from "withruntime";const runtime = new Runtime();await using base = await Sandbox.create();await base.exec("pip install --quiet requests");const snapshot = await base.snapshot({ name: "with-requests", retentionDays: 7 });await using later = await runtime.sandboxes.create({ snapshot: snapshot.id });console.log((await later.exec("python3 -c 'import requests; print(1)'")).stdout);await runtime.snapshots.delete(snapshot.id);

Pythonfrom withruntime import Runtimeruntime = Runtime()with runtime.sandboxes.create() as base:    base.exec("pip install --quiet requests")    snapshot = base.snapshot(name="with-requests", retention_days=7)    with runtime.sandboxes.create(snapshot=snapshot["id"]) as later:        print(later.exec("python3 -c 'import requests; print(1)'").stdout)    runtime.snapshots.delete(snapshot["id"])

npx withruntime compare --from runloop or --from morph shows what your past usage would have cost here. The migration guide has the one instruction a coding agent needs to port the project on a branch and try it on the free trial. Longer comparisons: Runtime vs Morph, Runtime vs Runloop.

Sources

Rates checked 23 September 2026. Morph's and Runloop's pricing pages and Runloop's devbox sizes reread 25 September 2026.

• Morph Cloud pricing, Morph Devboxes, Morph snapshots
• Runloop pricing, Devbox sizes, Devbox lifecycle
• Runtime pricing and JavaScript SDK

Facts on this page were checked on 25 September 2026.