Runtime vs Daytona

• You pay for the CPU you use. Daytona bills every vCPU for as long as the sandbox runs. Runtime measures the CPU your code actually uses. Time spent waiting on a model costs only a small floor, a twentieth of a vCPU.
• It pauses itself when idle. After 300 seconds with no request, command, connection, traffic or CPU use, a Runtime sandbox pauses. While paused, it pays only paused storage, $0.08 per GB (10⁹ bytes) a month. The next request wakes it. Its processes keep running.
• An uptime promise that pays itself. Paid accounts get 99% API uptime each month. A month below that returns 10% of that month's charges as credit. No claim is needed (Uptime Promise).
• Lower rates on both meters. $0.025 per vCPU-hour, against Daytona's $0.0504, and $0.0075 per GiB-hour of memory, against $0.0162. Even with every CPU busy the whole time, the example job costs $1.33 on Runtime and $2.76 on Daytona.
• A microVM every time. Every Runtime sandbox is a Firecracker microVM with its own kernel, and every one can pause with its memory. Daytona's default sandbox is a container. Pausing with memory needs its VM class.
• Disk included while running. Daytona charges for disk past 5 GiB whether the sandbox runs or not. Runtime's disk is part of a running sandbox.
• A one-line switch. withruntime/daytona runs code written for Daytona's SDK, in JavaScript and Python: sessions, files, git, snapshots built from Daytona's Image, and the code interpreter. Credit you add within 30 days of signing up is matched, up to $1,000 in total.
• Teams at no extra charge. Single sign-on over SAML or OIDC (Okta, Microsoft Entra ID, Google Workspace), SCIM, roles and an audit log come with every account (single sign-on). Daytona's single sign-on is OIDC, on its Enterprise plan.
• Custom domains built in. A paid account serves a sandbox port at your own hostname, with HTTPS, from one command (custom domains). On Daytona, a preview under your own domain needs a preview proxy you deploy and run yourself.
• Your agent sets itself up. It runs npx withruntime sandboxes run -- ..., shows you a link, and starts once you approve in the browser. No API key goes into a prompt or a config file. The MCP server reuses the same connection.
• Guardrails for agents. Give an agent a read-only key or a daily spending limit per key. Cap any sandbox's total cost with maxTotalCostMicros. Every write takes an idempotency key, and the SDKs retry with it. A lost response never creates a second sandbox.

Also included: a code interpreter, network allow and deny lists, secrets the sandbox never sees, custom images, volumes backed up daily, snapshots and forks with memory, private previews, a Linux desktop, metrics, webhooks, OpenTelemetry export, S3, R2 and GCS bucket mounts, MCP servers from a catalog, and identity tokens for AWS and Google Cloud. Paid accounts add TCP ports, dedicated outbound addresses and WireGuard private networks. See products.

Daytona's figures come from its public pricing and documentation, checked 25 October 2026.

Take 1,000 runs of a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox. Each run lasts 60 seconds and keeps the CPU busy for 20 CPU-seconds. This is an agent that spends most of its time waiting for a model.

• Saving: 77%, or $2.12 per 1,000 runs.
• Per month: at 100,000 runs, $63.89 on Runtime against $276.00 on Daytona.
• Busier work: with both CPUs busy for the whole minute, $1.33 on Runtime against $2.76 on Daytona. At this size, Runtime is cheaper however busy the sandbox is.

Disk, network, taxes and free credits are excluded from both. runtime compare --from daytona prices your own usage the same way. It prices sandboxes the free usage paid for at the standard rates, so free usage never counts as a saving. On Runtime, inbound traffic is free. Each account's first 100 GiB out a month is free, then $0.02 per GB (10⁹ bytes). See pricing for Runtime's terms.

Give your coding agent the one instruction in migration. It replaces the Daytona calls on a branch, tests them on the free usage, and tells you what you save each month. Your old code stays on the main branch until you merge.

Change one import

Runtime's SDK runs code written for Daytona's SDK. Change the import and set RUNTIME_API_KEY, or run npx withruntime login once:

TypeScriptimport { Daytona } from "withruntime/daytona"; // was: from "@daytona/sdk"

Pythonfrom withruntime.daytona import Daytona  # was: from daytona import Daytona

Sandboxes get Daytona's defaults: 1 vCPU, 1 GiB of memory and a 3 GiB disk, pausing after 15 minutes without calls. stop() pauses a sandbox with its files and its memory, and start() carries on. Sandboxes use the free usage first, then prepaid credit.

PTY sessions, computer use, a user from your image, an autoStopInterval over an hour (or 0), and list filters and sorting work as on Daytona. A call Runtime handles differently, such as GPUs or other regions, throws NotSupportedError before anything happens. It names what to use instead. DAYTONA.md in the package lists every mapping.

Or port the calls

The calls map one to one. Daytona:

JavaScriptimport { Daytona } from "@daytonaio/sdk";const daytona = new Daytona();const sandbox = await daytona.create();const response = await sandbox.process.executeCommand("python3 -c 'print(sum([125, 250, 375]))'");await sandbox.delete();

Runtime:

TypeScriptimport { Sandbox } from "withruntime";const box = await Sandbox.create();try {  await box.files.write("/workspace/invoice.py", "print(sum([125, 250, 375]))\n");  console.log((await box.exec("python3 /workspace/invoice.py", { check: true })).stdout);} finally {  await box.stop();}

• GPUs and Windows. Daytona offers GPU sandboxes and Windows machines. Runtime runs Linux on CPUs.
• Regions. Daytona runs in the US and the EU. Runtime runs in one US region.

Checked 23 September 2026; single sign-on and custom domains checked 27 September 2026.

• Daytona pricing
• Daytona organization SSO
• Daytona custom preview proxy
• Daytona sandboxes
• Daytona on microVMs, pause and fork
• Runtime pricing, security and products