Runtime vs Freestyle

• You pay for the CPU you use. Freestyle bills the vCPUs, memory and disk allocated to a VM for as long as it is allocated. Its pricing page says a reserved core is yours whether or not the guest is busy. 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.
• A written uptime promise. Paid accounts get 99% API uptime a month, measured from outside. If a month falls short, 10% of that month's charges is returned as credit automatically (Uptime Promise).
• Lower rates on both meters. $0.025 per vCPU-hour, against $0.04032, and $0.0075 per GiB-hour of memory, against $0.0129. With both CPUs busy the whole time, the example job costs $1.33 on Runtime and $2.25 on Freestyle.
• Scale without a plan. Freestyle runs 10 VMs at the same time on its free plan, 40 on the $50-a-month Hobby plan, and 400 on the $500-a-month Pro plan. A paid Runtime account runs 100 concurrent sandboxes, with no plan fee. It has prepaid credit from $10, and support raises the limit when you ask.
• Bigger sandboxes without Pro. A paid Runtime sandbox takes up to 16 vCPUs and 64 GiB. On Freestyle, 64 GiB needs the Pro plan. Hobby stops at 8 vCPUs and 16 GiB.
• 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).
• Secrets stay outside the sandbox. Code inside sees a placeholder. The real key is added at the egress proxy, only on HTTPS to the hosts you allow (security).
• 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. Read-only keys, a daily spending limit per key and maxTotalCostMicros on each sandbox keep an agent inside its budget. Every write takes an idempotency key.
• Python and JavaScript. Runtime has SDKs for both, a CLI and an MCP server.

Also included: a code interpreter, network allow and deny lists, 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 custom domains, TCP ports, dedicated outbound addresses and WireGuard private networks. See products.

Freestyle's figures come from its public pricing page and VM documentation. Last 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. Freestyle's VM keeps its default 32 GiB disk.

• Saving: 72%, or $1.61 per 1,000 runs.
• Per month: at 100,000 runs, $63.89 on Runtime against $224.99 on Freestyle, before any plan fee.
• Busier work: with both CPUs busy for the whole minute, $1.33 on Runtime against $2.25 on Freestyle. At this size, Runtime is cheaper however busy the sandbox is.

Plan fees, free allowances, data transfer, paused storage and taxes are excluded from both. 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 Freestyle 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.

A Freestyle snapshot you start VMs from maps to a Runtime snapshot or a custom image. A VM kept for weeks maps to a paused sandbox. It is kept while you have credit, or for a fixed number of days:

TypeScriptimport { Sandbox } from "withruntime";const box = await Sandbox.create({ timeoutSeconds: 3600 });await box.exec("pip install --quiet requests");await box.pause(); // memory, processes and files are keptawait box.setRetention(90); // a fixed 90 days insteadawait box.wake(); // later: it carries on where it stoppedawait box.stop();

A Freestyle VM runs commands as root. A Runtime sandbox runs them as the user runtime, who has passwordless sudo. To run everything as root, with no sudo in front of each command, pass user: "root":

TypeScriptimport { Sandbox } from "withruntime";await using box = await Sandbox.create();await box.exec("apt-get install -y jq", { user: "root" });await box.spawn("nginx -g 'daemon off;'", { user: "root" });

• More than 16 vCPUs in one VM. Freestyle's Pro plan goes to 32 vCPUs.
• Forking without a pause. Freestyle clones a running VM without pausing it. A Runtime fork pauses the source for the capture and has it running again when the call returns.
• The fastest start. Freestyle states VMs provision with a p99 under 400 ms.

Checked 26 October 2026.

• Freestyle pricing
• Freestyle VM pricing and limits
• Freestyle VMs
• Runtime pricing, security and products