# Blaxel vs Freestyle: standby sandboxes and hibernating VMs

Runtime Cloud (withruntime.com) charges $0.64 for the benchmark. Blaxel sleeps when idle. Freestyle keeps VMs up.

## Which is better, Blaxel or Freestyle?

It depends on whether your sandboxes mostly sleep or mostly stay up. For agents that wait on a model between steps, Runtime has the lowest running cost: $0.64 for the benchmark, against $3.45 on Blaxel and $2.25 on Freestyle. It also has the lowest paused storage cost of the three. Pick Blaxel for large fleets that wake in about 25 ms. Pick Freestyle for VMs bigger than Runtime offers, which run until you stop them.

## At a glance

|             | Blaxel                                                               | Freestyle                                                                    | Runtime                                                           |
| ----------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Isolation   | Lightweight virtual machines                                         | Full Linux virtual machines                                                  | Firecracker microVM, own kernel                                   |
| Billing     | $0.0000115 per GB-second active, CPU included | $0.04032 per vCPU-hour, $0.0129 per GiB-hour | $0.025 per measured vCPU-hour, $0.0075 per GiB-hour |
| Idle        | Standby when connections close; ~25 ms resume                        | Hibernates with memory                                                       | Pause or idle pause; memory kept while you have credit            |
| Kept asleep | Snapshot at $0.20 per GB-month                    | Storage only                                                                 | $0.08 per GB-month                              |
| Free start  | Up to $200 of credit                               | 200 vCPU-hours and 400 GiB-hours a month                                     | 100 free hours of a 1 GB machine in the first 30 days, no card                |

## Two ways to go quiet

Blaxel's standby is automatic. About 15 seconds after the connections close, compute
stops. The sandbox resumes in about 25 ms. Freestyle's hibernation is a VM-level pause that
keeps memory. Runtime offers both behaviors in one sandbox: an
idle pause you set with `idlePauseSeconds`, which wakes on the next request,
and paused state kept while you have credit.

## Cost for the same job

The benchmark runs 60 seconds a run, with 4 GB of active memory on Blaxel and a
32 GiB disk on Freestyle:

```
Blaxel     Memory 1,000 × 75 s × 4 × $0.0000115                 = $3.45

Freestyle  CPU    1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 2 × $0.04032           = $1.34
           Memory 1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 4 × $0.0129            = $0.86
           Disk   1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 32 × $0.000086         = $0.05
           Total                                                  $2.25

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
```

Neither rival reads CPU use, so a job busy for the whole minute still costs $3.45 on Blaxel, $2.25 on Freestyle and $1.33 on Runtime.

## Which one to pick

- **Blaxel** for huge fleets that sit idle and wake in milliseconds.
- **Freestyle** for long-lived VMs with live forks.
- **Runtime** for the lowest running cost and the cheapest paused storage.

See [Runtime vs Blaxel](/docs/blaxel-alternative) and
[Runtime vs Freestyle](/docs/freestyle-alternative).

## Runtime Cloud

Runtime runs the benchmark for 81% less than Blaxel and 72% less than
Freestyle. 1,000 one-minute runs of a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox with 20
CPU-seconds of work cost $3.45 on Blaxel, $2.25 on Freestyle and $0.64 on Runtime.

Open an account with `npx withruntime login`, and try your own job on free usage first. Existing projects move across with the [migration guide](/docs/migrate).

## Sources

Blaxel rates checked 25 October 2026; Freestyle rates checked 25 October 2026.

- [Blaxel pricing](https://blaxel.ai/pricing), [Blaxel sandboxes](https://docs.blaxel.ai/Sandboxes/Overview)
- [Freestyle pricing](https://www.freestyle.sh/pricing), [Freestyle VM pricing and limits](https://www.freestyle.sh/docs/vms/pricing-and-limits)
- Runtime [pricing](/docs/pricing)

Facts on this page were checked on 26 October 2026.