# Prime Sandboxes pricing in 2026: the rates, and a cost calculator

Prime Sandboxes bill $0.02 per vCPU-hour and $0.0125 per GiB-hour of memory while a sandbox runs, busy or idle.

**Runtime costs 58% less than Prime Sandboxes for an agent that waits on a
model.** 100,000 one-minute runs of a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox, each using 20
CPU-seconds, cost $63.89 a month on Runtime and $151.67 on Prime. Prime's CPU
rate is lower than Runtime's, but it is charged for every vCPU the whole time,
and its memory costs two thirds more. Rates checked 25 October 2026.

## How Prime Sandboxes bill

A Prime sandbox is billed while it runs, for the CPU, memory and disk it was
given. Its defaults are 1 vCPU, 1 GiB and 5 GiB of disk, and it can grow to 16
vCPUs, 64 GiB and 128 GiB of disk.

| Meter  | Prime, as published                    | For 2 vCPUs, 4 GiB and 5 GiB of disk  | Runtime                                |
| ------ | -------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------- |
| CPU    | $0.02 per vCPU per hour   | $0.04 an hour    | $0.025 per vCPU-hour of CPU used |
| Memory | $0.0125 per GiB per hour | $0.05 an hour | $0.0075 per reserved GiB-hour  |
| Disk   | $0.0002 per GiB per hour   | $0.001 an hour   | Included while it runs                 |

So the shape is $0.091 an hour on Prime, working or waiting. On Runtime it is
$0.03125 an hour while it waits and $0.08 with both CPUs busy, so Runtime costs
less at every level of use. The calculator keeps Prime's 5 GiB default disk for
every shape.

## Example workloads

A month of each, from the calculator above.

| Workload                                                         |                             Runtime |                   Prime Sandboxes |
| ---------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------: | --------------------------------: |
| Agent runs: 2 vCPU, 4 GiB, 60 s, 20 CPU-seconds, 100,000 a month |             $63.89 |   $151.67 |
| Waiting agents: 2 vCPU, 4 GiB, 30 min, 180 CPU-seconds, 10,000   | $162.50 | $455.00 |
| Tool calls: 1 vCPU, 2 GiB, 2 min, 30 CPU-seconds, 50,000         |   $35.42 |   $76.67 |
| Every CPU busy: 2 vCPU, 4 GiB, 60 s, 120 CPU-seconds, 100,000    |  $133.33 |  $151.67 |

The first three rows save 54% to 64%. The last is the closest Prime comes. With
the CPUs never idle, Runtime is 12% cheaper.

## Rollouts that wait on a model

Prime built its sandboxes for agentic reinforcement learning, where thousands
of rollouts each run a few tool calls between long waits for the policy model.
That is the shape where measured CPU pays most: a rollout that computes for 20
seconds of every minute costs 58% less on Runtime than on Prime. Runtime's forks help the same work, since one set-up environment
becomes up to 100 running copies with memory included. Prime's checkpoints and
forks save the filesystem only, so processes start fresh.

## What the calculator leaves out

- **The end of launch pricing.** Prime publishes these rates through
  22 December 2026. Runtime's rates are fixed in each resource's quote.
- **Free start.** Prime publishes none. Runtime gives 100 free hours of a 1 GB machine [in the first 30 days](/docs/included-usage), no card.
- **Network.** Left out on both sides.

## Price your own runs exactly

After a few runs on Runtime, the CLI prices those same sandboxes at Prime's
published rates:

```bash check
runtime compare --from prime
```

It reads your settled sandboxes from the last 30 days (`--days` up to 90). The
full comparison is [Runtime vs Prime Sandboxes](/docs/prime-sandboxes-alternative),
[agent evals and SWE-bench](/use-cases/agent-evals-and-swe-bench) shows
evaluation runs on Runtime, and the
[sandbox cost calculator](/calculators/sandbox-cost-calculator) prices every
provider for your shape.

## Sources

- [Prime Sandboxes overview](https://docs.primeintellect.ai/sandboxes/overview), checked 25 October 2026
- [Prime Sandboxes launch](https://www.primeintellect.ai/blog/sandboxes)
- Runtime [pricing](/docs/pricing)

Rival rates on this page were checked on 26 October 2026.