# Vercel Sandbox alternatives: agent sandboxes ranked by cost Runtime is the cheapest Vercel Sandbox alternative, 70% less per job, and it needs no Vercel team or project. **Runtime bills active CPU like Vercel Sandbox, at about a fifth of the price.** 1,000 one-minute runs of a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox cost $0.64 on Runtime and $2.12 on Vercel, $149 a month saved at 100,000 runs. Both run Firecracker microVMs, and Vercel Sandbox code keeps working after one import change. Rates checked 23 September 2026. ## Why do teams look beyond Vercel Sandbox? Vercel Sandbox already bills active CPU rather than every vCPU it holds, so the reasons to move are the rate and what a sandbox keeps: - **The CPU rate.** Active CPU is $0.128 an hour in `iad1`, against $0.025 on Runtime. The gap grows as work gets busier: with both CPUs busy for a whole minute, 1,000 runs cost $5.68 on Vercel. - **Memory is billed in whole minutes.** Vercel bills provisioned memory in 1-minute minimum increments, at $0.0212 per GB-hour, and each vCPU comes with 2 GB. - **A stop loses the processes.** A stopped Vercel sandbox keeps its filesystem, and a snapshot or fork captures the filesystem, so processes start again. A paused Runtime sandbox wakes with its processes still running. - **Ports are public.** Vercel's exposed ports answer at a public URL. A Runtime preview needs a token unless you make it public. - **It needs a Vercel team.** Usage beyond the Hobby allowance needs Pro, and a Hobby session lasts 45 minutes. Once the Hobby allowance is used up, sandbox creation is paused until the next cycle. ## Which alternatives are cheapest? Here the job is priced at each provider's list rates: 1,000 runs of 60 seconds on a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox, with 20 CPU-seconds of work in each. Vercel lands sixth, ahead of every provider that bills held vCPUs, because the agent is mostly waiting. Each total is worked out on [pricing](/docs/pricing#published-rate-comparison), without plan fees, storage, network, credits or custom deals. | # | Provider | Isolation | CPU billed on | 1,000 runs | | --- | --------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------ | --------------------------------------- | ---------: | | 1 | **Runtime** | Firecracker microVM, own kernel | Measured CPU, with a small floor | **$0.64** | | 2 | Northflank | microVMs for CPU work, gVisor for GPU work | Allocated vCPUs | $1.11 | | 3 | Cloudflare Sandbox (2 vCPU, 6 GiB, 12 GB disk) | A container in its own VM | Active CPU | $1.35 | | 4 | Fly Machines, `performance-2x` with 4 GB | Firecracker microVM | The machine's size while started | $1.44 | | 5 | Morph, 2 MCUs | Full virtual machines | The machine's size in MCUs | $1.67 | | 6 | Vercel Sandbox, `iad1` (4 GB) (the one you are replacing) | Firecracker microVM, own kernel | Active CPU | $2.12 | | 7 | CodeSandbox SDK, a Nano VM | Firecracker microVM | The VM's size, by the minute rounded up | $2.48 | | 8 | E2B | Firecracker microVM, own kernel | Allocated vCPUs | $2.76 | | 9 | Daytona | Containers by default; VM class separate | Allocated vCPUs | $2.76 | | 10 | Blaxel (4 GB) | Lightweight virtual machines | Included with memory, active time | $2.76 | | 11 | Fly Sprites (4 GB in use) | Firecracker microVM | Measured CPU | $3.31 | | 12 | Modal Sandboxes (1 physical core) | gVisor, a user-space kernel | Requested or used, whichever is higher | $3.97 | | 13 | Runloop, a `MEDIUM` devbox | microVM, with a container inside | Allocated CPUs while running | $5.33 | ## Cost for the same job The working for Runtime, Vercel and the two other providers that bill active CPU or run a microVM per sandbox: ``` 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 Vercel CPU 1,000 × 20 s / 3,600 × $0.128 = $0.71 Memory 1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 4 × $0.0212 = $1.41 Total $2.12 Cloudflare CPU 1,000 × 20 s × $0.000020 = $0.40 Memory 1,000 × 60 s × 6 × $0.0000025 = $0.90 Disk 1,000 × 60 s × 12 × $0.00000007 = $0.05 Total $1.35 E2B CPU 1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 2 × $0.0504 = $1.68 Memory 1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 4 × $0.0162 = $1.08 Total $2.76 ``` Vercel's CPU rate is what bites as the work gets heavier: busy for the whole minute on both CPUs, the job costs $1.33 on Runtime, $5.68 on Vercel, $3.35 on Cloudflare and $2.76 on E2B, and Vercel drops from third of the four to last. A month of 100,000 waiting runs is $63.89 on Runtime and $212.44 on Vercel. ## What each alternative changes for a Vercel user ### 1. Runtime: the same microVM, a fifth of the CPU rate Runtime also bills CPU by use, at $0.025 per vCPU-hour against Vercel's $0.128, with a floor of a twentieth of a vCPU, and reserved memory at $0.0075 per GiB-hour. After price, the biggest change is what a pause keeps: files, memory and the running processes, for 1 to 365 days, and a fork copies all three. No hosting plan, team or project sits in front of it; the account is prepaid credit from $10. ### 2. Northflank: under Vercel however hard the CPUs work Its allocation rates, $0.01667 per vCPU-hour and $0.00833 per GB-hour, make this job $1.11 whether the agent idles or computes. Sandboxes are services with deployment plans, and they can be deployed into your AWS, GCP or Azure account. ### 3. Cloudflare Sandbox: the other edge platform Cloudflare also meters active CPU, at $0.072 per vCPU-hour, just over half of Vercel's rate. It insists on 3 GiB of memory per vCPU, runs from a Worker on the Workers Paid plan and forgets a sandbox's files after 10 idle minutes unless they were copied to R2. ### 4. Fly Machines: a bill that ignores CPU load Where Vercel's charge rises with CPU, a Machine's stays flat: `performance-2x` with 4 GB is $0.0861 an hour in `iad`, so $1.44 busy against Vercel's $5.68. Its 18 regions come close to Vercel's 19; the root disk is temporary. ### 5. Morph: forks that carry memory A Vercel fork copies the filesystem. Morph's Infinibranch copies a running machine together with its memory, into hundreds of replicas. It charges $0.05 per MCU-hour, and this job takes 2. ### 6. CodeSandbox SDK: sized VMs, capped concurrency A Nano VM of 2 cores and 4 GB costs $0.1486 an hour, billed per minute and rounded up. For a Vercel Pro user used to 10,000 at once, the free plan's 10 VMs is the gap; Scale, at $170 a month, raises it. ### 7. E2B: dearer while waiting, cheaper when busy Allocation billing at $0.0504 per vCPU-hour and $0.0162 per GiB-hour gives $2.76 in both cases, above Vercel's waiting figure and below its busy one. Hobby sessions end after an hour, and the Apache-2.0 runtime can be self-hosted. ### 8. Daytona: GPUs, Windows and EU regions E2B's rates, a container unless you ask for its VM class, and a wider range of machines: GPU sandboxes, Windows machines, US and EU regions, and $200 of free compute. ### 9. Blaxel: no CPU meter at all Active memory costs $0.0000115 per GB-second and brings its cores with it, 4 for 8 GB. Standby follows the last closed connection, and waking takes about 25 ms. ### 10. Fly Sprites: active CPU, memory in use Fly.io's agent sandboxes meter CPU much as Vercel does, at $0.07 per CPU-hour, and memory in use at $0.04375 per GB-hour. A Sprite pauses by itself, keeps its memory at first and keeps its 100 GB disk for good. ### 11. Modal Sandboxes: one account for GPUs and functions gVisor in place of a microVM, and CPU charged on the greater of request and use at $0.1419 per physical core-hour. The draw is GPUs, functions and scheduled jobs under one SDK. ### 12. Runloop: devboxes with benchmarks ready A container inside a microVM, at $0.108 per CPU-hour and $0.0252 per GB-hour plus disk, with SWE-Bench and other public benchmarks set up to run. ## How to switch from Vercel Sandbox Runtime's SDK runs code written for Vercel Sandbox's SDK, in JavaScript and Python: commands, files, ports, snapshots and persistent sandboxes, with no Vercel project or token. Change the import and set `RUNTIME_API_KEY`, or run `npx withruntime login` once: ```ts no-run import { Sandbox } from "withruntime/vercel"; // was: from "@vercel/sandbox" ``` ```python no-run from withruntime.vercel import sandbox # was: from vercel import sandbox ``` Sandboxes keep Vercel's defaults (2 vCPUs, 2048 MiB each, a 5-minute timeout) and persistence, so `stop()` pauses one and `Sandbox.get({ name })` wakes it. Drives, other regions or a timeout over an hour throw `NotSupportedError` before anything happens. The full mapping is in the [Vercel comparison](/docs/vercel-sandbox-alternative#how-to-switch). Ports that must stay private can move to a Runtime preview, which asks for a token by default: ```ts check import { Sandbox } from "withruntime"; await using sbx = await Sandbox.create(); await sbx.spawn("python3 -m http.server 3000"); const preview = await sbx.previews.create(3000); const page = await fetch(preview.url, { headers: { "x-runtime-preview-token": preview.token! }, }); console.log(page.status); ``` Prefer to delegate? The instruction in [migration](/docs/migrate) tells a coding agent to move the project on a branch, check it on the free trial and report what a month would cost. Run `npx withruntime switch --from vercel` before adding credit the first time, and that first amount is matched, up to $100. Head-to-heads: [E2B vs Vercel Sandbox](/compare/e2b-vs-vercel-sandbox), [Daytona vs Vercel Sandbox](/compare/daytona-vs-vercel-sandbox) and [Modal vs Vercel Sandbox](/compare/modal-vs-vercel-sandbox). ## Sources Every rival rate below was checked 23 September 2026, and Vercel's own pricing page again on 25 September 2026. - [Vercel Sandbox pricing](https://vercel.com/docs/sandbox/pricing) - [Modal pricing](https://modal.com/pricing) - [Blaxel pricing](https://blaxel.ai/pricing) - [E2B pricing](https://e2b.dev/pricing) - [Together Code Sandbox](https://docs.together.ai/docs/together-code-sandbox) - [Fly.io pricing](https://fly.io/pricing/) - [Daytona pricing](https://www.daytona.io/pricing) - [Cloudflare Containers pricing](https://developers.cloudflare.com/containers/pricing/) - [Runloop pricing](https://www.runloop.ai/pricing) Facts on this page were checked on 25 September 2026. - [Northflank pricing](https://northflank.com/pricing) - [Morph Cloud pricing](https://cloud.morph.so/web/pricing) - Runtime [pricing](/docs/pricing) and the [Vercel comparison](/docs/vercel-sandbox-alternative)