# Sandbox cost calculator: Runtime, E2B, Daytona, Modal, Vercel and more

Enter a sandbox size, run length, CPU use and runs a month to see the monthly cost on Runtime and fourteen other providers.

**Runtime is the cheapest for an agent that waits on a model.** 100,000
one-minute runs of a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox doing 20 CPU-seconds of work each
cost $63.89 a month on Runtime, $276.00 on E2B, $276.00 on Daytona and $396.60 on Modal. Runtime bills the CPU
your code uses, not the CPUs it holds. Rival rates checked 25 October 2026.

## How the price is worked out

Every provider is priced on the same workload, at its published list rates.

| Part           | Runtime                                                      | Most other providers                           |
| -------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------- |
| CPU            | $0.025 per vCPU-hour of CPU used, floor 0.05 of a vCPU | Every allocated vCPU, for the whole run        |
| Memory         | $0.0075 per GiB-hour reserved                        | Per GiB-hour, allocated or in use              |
| Plan fee       | None                                                         | Some charge a monthly plan for longer sessions |
| Minimum top-up | $10 of prepaid credit                              | Varies                                         |

A CPU-second is one core busy for one second. An agent that sends a prompt and
waits for the answer is mostly idle: 20 CPU-seconds out of the 120 that 2 vCPUs
could do in 60 seconds. Build steps and test suites come close to the whole 120.

Enter whole numbers; commas for thousands are accepted. CPU-seconds cannot
exceed the number of vCPUs multiplied by seconds per run. An empty, malformed
or out-of-range field shows what to correct, and prices appear once every
field is valid.

## Example workloads

A month of each, CPU and memory only.

| Workload                                                         |                             Runtime |                             E2B |                             Daytona |                             Modal |                     Vercel Sandbox |
| ---------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------: | ------------------------------: | ----------------------------------: | --------------------------------: | ---------------------------------: |
| Agent runs: 2 vCPU, 4 GiB, 60 s, 20 CPU-seconds, 100,000 a month |             $63.89 |   $276.00 |   $276.00 |   $396.60 |   $212.44 |
| Every CPU busy: 2 vCPU, 4 GiB, 60 s, 120 CPU-seconds, 100,000    |  $133.33 |  $276.00 |  $276.00 |  $396.60 |  $568.00 |
| Long sessions: 4 vCPU, 8 GiB, 30 min, 720 CPU-seconds, 10,000    | $350.00 | $1,656.00 | $1,656.00 | $2,379.60 | $1,104.00 |
| Small checks: 1 vCPU, 1 GiB, 10 s, 5 CPU-seconds, 1,000,000      |   $55.56 |   $185.00 |   $185.00 |   $263.80 |   $236.67 |

Runtime costs less than all four in every row, even with every CPU busy for the
whole run.

## Why Runtime costs less

- **Measured CPU.** Time your agent spends waiting on a model costs only the
  floor, a twentieth of a vCPU. Other providers bill every vCPU for the whole
  run.
- **Lower rates on both meters.** $0.025 per vCPU-hour against E2B's and Daytona's $0.0504, and $0.0075 per GiB-hour of memory against their $0.0162, the same at both.
- **No plan fee.** Prepaid credit from $10, with no subscription, and 100 free hours of a 1 GB machine in the first 30 days to start, no card.
- **Pause instead of idling.** A paused sandbox keeps its files, memory and
  running processes for $0.08 per GB a month and uses no CPU or memory time.

## Price your own runs exactly

After a few runs on Runtime, the CLI prices the sandboxes you actually ran at
another provider's rates, with the date of those rates:

```bash check
runtime compare --from e2b
```

It reads your settled sandboxes from the last 30 days. The same figures come
from `GET /v1/usage/compare` and the `runtime_account` MCP tool with action
`compare`.

## Sources

Rival rates checked 25 October 2026, and on 26 October 2026 for AWS Lambda
MicroVMs, Freestyle and Prime Sandboxes. Their working and sources are on each
comparison page and in the [pricing guide](/docs/pricing). Runtime's rates are
in [pricing](/docs/pricing). Plan fees, storage, network, taxes, free credits
and negotiated discounts are left out of every figure.

- [Runtime vs E2B](/docs/e2b-alternative), [Runtime vs Daytona](/docs/daytona-alternative),
  [Runtime vs Modal](/docs/modal-sandbox-alternative),
  [Runtime vs Vercel Sandbox](/docs/vercel-sandbox-alternative),
  [Runtime vs AWS Lambda MicroVMs](/docs/aws-lambda-microvms-alternative),
  [Runtime vs Freestyle](/docs/freestyle-alternative),
  [Runtime vs Prime Sandboxes](/docs/prime-sandboxes-alternative)
- [E2B vs Daytona](/compare/e2b-vs-daytona), [E2B vs Modal](/compare/e2b-vs-modal),
  [E2B alternatives](/compare/e2b-alternatives), [Modal alternatives](/compare/modal-alternatives)