# Vercel Sandbox vs Prime Sandboxes: pricing and fit

Prime bills held vCPUs cheaply and Vercel bills active CPU dearly. The 2 vCPU, 4 GiB benchmark costs $1.52 on Prime and $2.12 on Vercel.

**Runtime costs 70% less than Vercel and 58% less than Prime on it.** A
thousand one-minute runs of a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox, 20 CPU-seconds each, are
$2.12 on Vercel Sandbox, $1.52 on Prime Sandboxes and $0.64 on Runtime.

## At a glance

|             | Vercel Sandbox                     | Prime Sandboxes                                | Runtime                                                  |
| ----------- | ---------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------- |
| Isolation   | Firecracker microVM, own kernel    | Hardware-virtualized microVM, own guest kernel | Firecracker microVM, own kernel                          |
| CPU         | $0.128 per active CPU-hour, `iad1` | $0.02 per vCPU-hour while running              | $0.025 per vCPU-hour of measured CPU, with a small floor |
| Memory      | $0.0212 per provisioned GB-hour    | $0.0125 per GiB-hour                           | $0.0075 per reserved GiB-hour                            |
| Built for   | Code from apps deployed on Vercel  | Agentic RL training on Prime Intellect         | Agents of any kind, by API, CLI, SDK or MCP              |
| Snapshots   | Filesystem snapshots and forks     | Listed as coming soon                          | Memory, processes and files                              |
| Price terms | Hobby allowance, then Pro          | Published through 22 December 2026             | Fixed in each quote; no plan                             |

## Two meters, one lesson

Prime's CPU rate is a sixth of Vercel's, but Prime charges it for every
second, working or not; Vercel charges only the seconds that work. On a job
that waits two thirds of the time, Prime still comes out 60 cents cheaper,
and on a busy one it wins by more. Runtime combines Vercel's approach, billing
only active CPU, with a rate close to Prime's.

## Cost for the same job

2 vCPU, 4 GiB (4 GB on Vercel), 60 seconds, 20 CPU-seconds, 1,000 runs, with
Prime's 5 GiB default disk:

```
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

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
```

At 100,000 runs a month: $212.44 on Vercel, $151.67 on Prime, $63.89 on
Runtime. With both CPUs busy for the whole minute, the job is $5.68 on Vercel, $1.52 on Prime and $1.33 on Runtime.

## Which one to pick

- **Vercel Sandbox** for code run from a Vercel app, close to its users.
- **Prime Sandboxes** for RL rollouts by the thousand on Prime's platform.
- **Runtime** for the lowest price at any load, memory-keeping pause and
  forks, and one-import switching from Vercel's SDK.

See [Runtime vs Vercel Sandbox](/docs/vercel-sandbox-alternative) and
[Runtime vs Prime Sandboxes](/docs/prime-sandboxes-alternative).

## Sources

Vercel rates checked 23 September 2026; Prime rates checked 25 September 2026.

- [Vercel Sandbox pricing](https://vercel.com/docs/sandbox/pricing), [Understanding Vercel Sandboxes](https://vercel.com/docs/sandbox/concepts)
- [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.