# Northflank vs Freestyle: long-running sandboxes, priced

Both bill allocated vCPUs and memory for as long as a sandbox lives. Northflank's rates are lower: $1.11 against $2.25 for the 2 vCPU benchmark.

**Runtime costs 42% less than Northflank and 72% less than Freestyle for an
agent that waits on a model.** The benchmark is 1,000 one-minute runs of a
2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox with 20 CPU-seconds of work each: $1.11 on Northflank,
$2.25 on Freestyle, $0.64 on Runtime.

## At a glance

|           | Northflank                                        | Freestyle                         | Runtime                                                  |
| --------- | ------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------- |
| Isolation | A microVM per workload, Kata Containers or gVisor | Full Linux virtual machines       | Firecracker microVM, own kernel                          |
| CPU       | $0.01667 per allocated vCPU-hour                  | $0.04032 per allocated vCPU-hour  | $0.025 per vCPU-hour of measured CPU, with a small floor |
| Memory    | $0.00833 per GB-hour                              | $0.0129 per GiB-hour              | $0.0075 per reserved GiB-hour                            |
| Model     | A service with a deployment plan                  | A VM with forks and hibernation   | A sandbox, created in one call                           |
| Plan      | None published for compute                        | Free, Hobby $50, Pro $500 a month | None; prepaid credit from $10                            |
| GPUs      | L4, A100 and H100 by the hour                     | No                                | No                                                       |

## Platform or VM

Northflank is a whole deployment platform where a sandbox is one more service,
with databases, jobs and GPUs beside it and the option to run in your own
cloud account. Freestyle is narrower: VMs for agents, with live forks and
hibernation that keeps memory. Runtime is narrower still per call, a sandbox in
one API call, and cheaper than both while the agent waits.

## Cost for the same job

2 vCPU and 4 GiB, 60 seconds a run, 20 CPU-seconds of work, 1,000 runs, with
Freestyle's 32 GiB default disk:

```
Northflank  CPU    1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 2 × $0.01667           = $0.556
            Memory 1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 4 × $0.00833           = $0.555
            Total                                                  $1.11

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
```

If the work kept both CPUs busy for the whole minute, it would cost $1.33 on Runtime and $2.25 on Freestyle, with $1.11 on Northflank the cheapest of the three. Allocated billing at a low rate wins only when the cores never rest.

## Which one to pick

- **Northflank** for CPU-bound services, GPUs, or sandboxes in your own cloud.
- **Freestyle** for VMs that fork live and hibernate for weeks.
- **Runtime** for agents that wait, at the lowest bill, with pause and forks
  that keep memory.

See [Runtime vs Northflank](/docs/northflank-alternative) and
[Runtime vs Freestyle](/docs/freestyle-alternative).

## Sources

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

- [Northflank pricing](https://northflank.com/pricing), [Northflank sandboxes](https://northflank.com/product/sandboxes)
- [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.