# Vercel Sandbox vs Northflank: sandbox pricing, isolation and limits Vercel bills active CPU in Firecracker microVMs; Northflank bills allocated CPU in Kata or gVisor microVMs, at a much lower rate. **For an agent that mostly waits on a model, Runtime is 70% cheaper than Vercel and 42% cheaper than Northflank.** One thousand one-minute runs of a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox bill $2.12 on Vercel, $1.11 on Northflank and $0.64 on Runtime. Runtime charges measured CPU, as Vercel does, at about a fifth of Vercel's rate, and its memory rate is the lowest of the three. Rates checked 23 September 2026. ## At a glance Vercel is priced at its default region, `iad1`. | | Vercel Sandbox | Northflank | Runtime | | --------------- | ---------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------- | | Isolation | Firecracker microVM, own kernel | A microVM per workload, with Kata Containers or gVisor | Firecracker microVM, own kernel | | CPU | $0.128 per active CPU-hour | $0.01667 per allocated vCPU-hour | $0.025 per vCPU-hour of measured CPU, with a small floor | | Memory | $0.0212 per provisioned GB-hour; 2 GB per vCPU | $0.00833 per GB-hour | $0.0075 per reserved GiB-hour | | Plan fee | Hobby allowance free; usage beyond it needs Pro | None published for compute | None; prepaid credit from $10 | | Free start | 5 active CPU-hours and 420 GB-hours a month on Hobby | 2 free services and 1 free database | 50 sandbox hours, no card | | Session length | 45 minutes on Hobby, 24 hours on Pro, per session | No forced time limit | Leases of up to an hour, extended as often as needed | | Where it runs | 19 Vercel regions | Northflank's regions, or your AWS, GCP, Azure or Oracle VPC | Dedicated servers Runtime operates | | What you create | A sandbox, in a Vercel project | A service with a deployment plan | A sandbox, in one call | ## Why is Northflank cheaper even though Vercel bills only active CPU? Because the rates are far apart. Vercel's active CPU costs $0.128 an hour; Northflank's allocated vCPU costs $0.01667, under a seventh as much. Vercel only bills the CPU the code uses, but even an agent busy a sixth of the time pays more on Vercel than for a whole allocated vCPU on Northflank. Memory is the same story: $0.0212 per GB-hour on Vercel against $0.00833 on Northflank, and both bill it for the whole run. In the example below Northflank costs about half of Vercel for an agent that waits, and about a fifth when both CPUs are busy. Runtime's measured CPU at $0.025 a vCPU-hour puts it under both while the agent waits. ## Which one lets a sandbox live longest? A Vercel session runs for up to 24 hours on Pro and 45 minutes on Hobby. The limit applies to each session, so a persistent sandbox that stops and resumes lives on. Northflank states no forced time limit: a sandbox can run for seconds or weeks. It is created as a service, so it also brings a deployment plan. A Runtime sandbox runs on a lease of up to an hour that you extend as often as needed, or, on a paid account, `persistent=True` keeps it running for as long as the account has credit, under a cost ceiling you set. Between tasks it can pause and keep its memory: ```python check from withruntime import Sandbox worker = Sandbox.get_or_create("long-lived-worker", idle_pause_seconds=900) worker.files.write("/workspace/progress.txt", "step 3 of 10\n") print(worker.files.read_text("/workspace/progress.txt")) worker.extend(1800) # more time before the lease ends ``` ## Cost for the same job The worked case: 1,000 runs on 2 vCPU with 4 GiB (4 GB on both Vercel and Northflank), 60 seconds per run, 20 CPU-seconds of that spent computing. ``` 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 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 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 ``` Across 100,000 runs in a month, Vercel totals $212.44, Northflank $111.10 and Runtime $63.89. With both CPUs busy for the whole minute it is $1.33 on Runtime, $5.68 on Vercel and $1.11 on Northflank, which makes Northflank the cheapest of the three for work that saturates every CPU. Runtime stays under Northflank until a one-minute run keeps its CPUs busy for about 88 of 120 CPU-seconds. Plan fees, creation charges, storage, network and free allowances are excluded. ## Which one to pick | Situation | Best fit | | ------------------------------------------------------ | -------------- | | The app is on Vercel; up to 10,000 sandboxes on Pro | Vercel Sandbox | | CPU-bound jobs that keep every core busy | Northflank | | Sandboxes that run for weeks, or inside your own cloud | Northflank | | Agents that wait on a model | Runtime | In that last case, measured CPU puts Runtime 42% below Northflank and 70% below Vercel, and pause and [forks](/glossary/sandbox-fork) keep memory and running processes. ## Moving to Runtime Vercel Sandbox code, in JavaScript or Python, runs on Runtime once the import changes, without a Vercel project or token: ```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 ``` Northflank's service and deployment plan have no counterpart to port: each sandbox is a single `Sandbox.create()`. Commands, files and teardown follow [map the calls](/docs/migrate#map-the-calls). A coding agent can do the change from the one instruction in [migration](/docs/migrate), on a branch, tested on the free trial. Vercel users who run `npx withruntime switch --from vercel` before their first top-up get it matched with credit, up to $100. Longer reads: [Runtime vs Vercel Sandbox](/docs/vercel-sandbox-alternative), [Runtime vs Northflank](/docs/northflank-alternative). ## Sources Vercel Sandbox pricing and Northflank's sandboxes page rechecked 25 September 2026; the rest checked 23 September 2026. - [Vercel Sandbox pricing](https://vercel.com/docs/sandbox/pricing), [Understanding Vercel Sandboxes](https://vercel.com/docs/sandbox/concepts) - [Northflank pricing](https://northflank.com/pricing), [Northflank sandboxes](https://northflank.com/product/sandboxes), [Sandboxes on Northflank](https://northflank.com/docs/v1/application/sandboxes/sandboxes-on-northflank) - Runtime [pricing](/docs/pricing) Facts on this page were checked on 25 September 2026.