CreateOS Sandbox vs Arker
Arker suits companies running large agent fleets that want VMs in the same cloud region as their backend, memory-and-disk fork as the basic operation, and a programmable network policy layer. CreateOS Sandbox suits teams that want to start self-serve today, with published per-second rates, a Free plan with no card, and SDKs in six languages. Arker has no free tier and shows rates only inside an account.
Arker points new users to early access, and its rates are shown only inside an account.
Pricing at a Glance
CreateOS rates verified 17 October 2026. Arker pricing as published on 17 October 2026. Rates billed per GB rather than per GiB, or as bundled sizes, are quoted as published rather than converted.
CreateOS Sandbox
- Compute
- $0.0362 /vCPU-hr
- Memory
- $0.0116 /GiB-hr
Arker
Pricing not published; Arker bills on run time rather than machine time, shows rates only inside an account, and offers no free tier, as of 17 October 2026.
Where CreateOS Sandbox Fits Better
What CreateOS Sandbox brings to this matchup, with a plain note on where Arker has the edge.
Rates you can read before signing up: $0.03616363 per vCPU-hour and $0.01159025 per GiB-hour, billed per second.
A Free plan with no card: 1 vCPU / 1 GB and 1 concurrent sandbox. Arker states it has no free tier.
SDKs in Go, Rust, C# and Java as well as TypeScript and Python (non-TypeScript pre-1.0), plus an MCP server.
Ready for vendor review: CreateOS is SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certified, with reports available under NDA.
Where Arker is strong
Arker places agent VMs in the same cloud region as your backend, on AWS, GCP or Arker metal, makes fork of memory and disk the basic operation, and adds a network policy layer that can inject secrets, gate requests on external approval or suspend the VM. It also offers fractional vGPU on some platforms.
Which to Pick
Pick CreateOS Sandbox if
- You want to price and try a sandbox without talking to sales.
- You want a free plan for prototypes.
- Your stack is Go, Rust, C# or Java.
Pick Arker if
- Your backend runs in AWS or GCP and agents must sit in the same region.
- You want network policies that gate requests on approval or inject secrets.
- You need GPU or fractional vGPU on the same platform.
Head-to-Head Comparison
Every dimension side by side, checked on 17 October 2026 against each vendor's own docs and pricing pages. "Not published" means we could not find it on the vendor's pages, not that the feature is missing.
| Dimension | CreateOS Sandbox | Arker |
|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Firecracker micro-VM with its own guest kernel | Full VM on Arker's custom hypervisor (vendor-stated) |
| Pause and resume | Saves disk, memory and CPU state; vCPU billing stops while paused, memory and storage still bill | Memory and disk persist by default; millisecond snapshot/restore (vendor-stated) |
| Fork | Fork a paused sandbox into many independent copies | Core primitive: fork copies disk and memory from a source VM |
| Outbound network default | Open with no rules; deny-by-default once any host, IP, CIDR or wildcard rule exists, enforced on the host outside the VM | Open until any policy exists; then unallowed outbound is blocked |
| Inbound access | Closed by default; opt-in HTTPS URL | Ports reachable with an org API key; inbound policies open public HTTPS URLs |
| Largest size | 8 vCPU / 16 GB on Enterprise; 8 / 8 on Pro, 4 / 4 on Beginner, 1 / 1 on Free | Varies by source VM and platform; no single published maximum |
| Session length | No cap; optional idle auto-pause from 60 s to 24 h, off by default | No fixed lifetime published |
| Billing | Per second: $0.03616363 per vCPU-hour, $0.01159025 per GiB-hour, storage $0.0001584 per GB-hour; no egress fees (50 GiB bandwidth budget per sandbox) | Run time, not machine time; rates shown only in account |
| Self-host or BYOC | Enterprise only, onboarded by our team | Private regions in a customer VPC or on-prem cluster |
| GPU | No GPU | Yes on some platforms (e.g. H200); fractional vGPU 0.125 to 1 |
Common Questions
How much does Arker cost?
Arker does not publish rates. Its homepage says to see pricing in your account, billing is on run time rather than machine time, and there is no free tier. CreateOS lists $0.03616363 per vCPU-hour and $0.01159025 per GiB-hour, billed per second.
How does Arker's egress default compare with CreateOS?
They match closely. Arker is open until a machine has any policy, then blocks outbound traffic no policy allows, and the cloud metadata address is always blocked. CreateOS is open with no rules and deny-by-default once any rule exists, enforced on the host outside the VM.
Which regions does Arker run in?
Public regions are arker eu, arker us-west, aws eu-north-1, aws us-east-1, aws us-west-2 and gcp us-central1, with others on request. CreateOS has two managed regions, eu and us.
Sources
Checked 17 October 2026.
See CreateOS Sandbox for yourself
Book a demo, or explore the Sandbox and its pricing.