# Northflank vs Prime Sandboxes: the lowest allocated rates compared

Northflank and Prime have the two lowest allocated CPU rates in the benchmark. The 2 vCPU, 4 GiB job costs $1.11 on Northflank and $1.52 on Prime.

**For an agent or rollout that waits on a model, Runtime is 42% cheaper than
Northflank and 58% cheaper than Prime.** 1,000 one-minute runs of a 2 vCPU,
4 GiB sandbox, 20 CPU-seconds of work each: $1.11 on Northflank, $1.52 on
Prime Sandboxes, $0.64 on Runtime.

## At a glance

|           | Northflank                                        | Prime Sandboxes                                | Runtime                                                  |
| --------- | ------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------- |
| Isolation | A microVM per workload, Kata Containers or gVisor | Hardware-virtualized microVM, own guest kernel | Firecracker microVM, own kernel                          |
| CPU       | $0.01667 per allocated vCPU-hour                  | $0.02 per vCPU-hour while running              | $0.025 per vCPU-hour of measured CPU, with a small floor |
| Memory    | $0.00833 per GB-hour                              | $0.0125 per GiB-hour                           | $0.0075 per reserved GiB-hour                            |
| At once   | Set by your plan and project                      | 1,024 per account to start                     | 100 paid; 50 until the first week is out                 |
| GPUs      | L4, A100 and H100 by the hour                     | Listed as coming soon                          | No                                                       |
| Terms     | None published for compute                        | Rates published through 22 December 2026       | Fixed in each quote                                      |

## Where Prime loses to Northflank

Their CPU rates are close. Memory is not: Prime's $0.0125 per GiB-hour is half
as much again as Northflank's $0.00833 per GB-hour, and memory is most of this
job's cost. Runtime's memory rate is below both, and its CPU is billed only
while it works.

## Cost for the same job

2 vCPU and 4 GiB (4 GB on Northflank), 60 seconds a run, 20 CPU-seconds,
1,000 runs, with Prime's 5 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

Prime       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                                                  $1.52

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
```

Should both CPUs stay busy for the whole minute, the job costs $1.33 on Runtime and $1.52 on Prime, with $1.11 on Northflank the lowest: allocated CPU at a low rate wins when nothing waits.

## Which one to pick

- **Northflank** for CPU-bound jobs, GPUs, or sandboxes in your own cloud.
- **Prime Sandboxes** for a thousand rollouts at once on Prime Intellect.
- **Runtime** for rollouts and agents that wait, with forks of a warmed-up
  environment.

See [Runtime vs Northflank](/docs/northflank-alternative) and
[Runtime vs Prime Sandboxes](/docs/prime-sandboxes-alternative).

## Sources

Northflank rates checked 23 September 2026; Prime Sandboxes rates checked 25 September 2026.

- [Northflank pricing](https://northflank.com/pricing), [Northflank sandboxes](https://northflank.com/product/sandboxes)
- [Prime Sandboxes overview](https://docs.primeintellect.ai/sandboxes/overview), [Prime Sandboxes launch](https://www.primeintellect.ai/blog/sandboxes)
- Runtime [pricing](/docs/pricing)

Facts on this page were checked on 25 September 2026.