Vercel Sandbox vs Morph pricing, snapshots and branching

Which is better, Vercel Sandbox or Morph?

It depends on whether you need to branch running machines. For agents that mostly wait on a model, Runtime forks and snapshots with memory kept, and it bills by use. The job below costs $0.64, against $1.67 on Morph and $2.12 on Vercel. There is no plan fee. Pick Vercel Sandbox for an app hosted on Vercel, for its 19 regions, or for up to 10,000 sandboxes running in parallel on Pro. Pick Morph to fan one running machine out to hundreds of replicas, or for devboxes shared with people.

At a glance

Vercel's column uses its default iad1 region rates.

What does a snapshot keep on each?

The question matters for agents that set up an environment once and try several things from it.

• Vercel snapshots and forks capture the filesystem. A sandbox started from one has the files but starts its processes again, so a dev server or a loaded model has to boot a second time. Snapshots expire 30 days after their last use unless you change the retention.
• Morph snapshots keep memory and disk. Infinibranch branches a running machine, memory included, into hundreds of parallel replicas. Morph is built around this.
• Runtime forks keep files, memory and running processes, from 1 to 100 running copies per call. The source pauses for the capture and is running again when the call returns. A kept snapshot starts copies later and is held while you have credit, or for 1 to 365 days you set.

TypeScriptimport { Sandbox } from "withruntime";await using base = await Sandbox.create();await base.spawn("python3 -m http.server 8000"); // a process the copies inheritconst [a, b] = await base.fork({ count: 2 }); // both running, server includedfor (const copy of [a!, b!]) {  const probe =    "import urllib.request; print(urllib.request.urlopen('http://localhost:8000').status)";  console.log((await copy.exec(["python3", "-c", probe])).stdout); // 200 in each copy  await copy.stop();}

See what a sandbox fork is and what a snapshot keeps.

Why is Morph cheaper than Vercel for this job?

Because of memory. Vercel bills 4 GB at $0.0212 a GB-hour, which is $0.0848 an hour, before any CPU. Morph's 2 MCUs, $0.10 an hour, cover 2 vCPUs and 4 GB together, busy or idle. Vercel's CPU charge then decides it. Vercel is cheaper only while a one-minute run uses less than about 7 CPU-seconds. With both CPUs busy the whole minute, it costs more than three times as much.

Cost for the same job

The sums use 1,000 runs, 60 seconds long, each spending 20 CPU-seconds on 2 vCPU with 4 GiB. That is 4 GB on Vercel and 2 MCUs on Morph.

At 100,000 runs a month: $212.44 on Vercel, $166.67 on Morph, $63.89 on Runtime. With both CPUs busy for the whole minute, it is $1.33 on Runtime, $5.68 on Vercel and $1.67 on Morph. Plan fees, included credit, creation charges, snapshot storage, network and free allowances are not part of these figures.

Which one to pick

• Vercel Sandbox suits an app hosted on Vercel, or a need for sandboxes in many places: 19 regions, with up to 10,000 running at the same time on Pro.
• Morph suits fan-out from one running machine to hundreds of replicas, and devboxes shared with people.
• Runtime suits agents that fork and snapshot with memory kept, at 62% below Morph and 70% below Vercel, with no plan fee.

Moving to Runtime

Vercel Sandbox code runs after an import change. As on Vercel, stop() keeps the disk, which on Runtime means a pause. delete() removes the sandbox:

TypeScriptimport { Sandbox } from "withruntime/vercel"; // was: from "@vercel/sandbox"

Pythonfrom withruntime.vercel import sandbox  # was: from vercel import sandbox

Morph code is ported with map the calls: starting an instance, commands, files and stopping each have one call. A Morph snapshot is snapshot(), and a branch is fork({ count }).

The migration guide's single instruction lets a coding agent make the port on a branch and test it on the free usage. Coming from Vercel, credit you add within 30 days of signing up is matched, up to $1,000 in total. Full comparisons: Runtime vs Vercel Sandbox, Runtime vs Morph.

Sources

Vercel Sandbox and Morph Cloud pricing rechecked 25 October 2026; the rest checked 25 October 2026.

• Vercel Sandbox pricing, Understanding Vercel Sandboxes
• Morph Cloud pricing, Morph Devboxes, Morph snapshots
• Runtime pricing

Facts on this page were checked on 26 October 2026.