CreateOS Sandbox vs AWS Lambda
Lambda is the mature pick for event handlers, APIs and data steps that finish within 15 minutes and fit a stateless function model. CreateOS Sandbox is the pick for interactive agent sessions that need a shell, files that persist, open ports and the ability to pause or fork. Both use Firecracker underneath; they expose it very differently.
Pricing at a Glance
CreateOS rates verified 17 October 2026. AWS Lambda 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
AWS Lambda
AWS lists US East x86 Lambda at $0.0000166667 per GB-second and $0.20 per 1M requests, with 1M requests and 400,000 GB-seconds free each month, as of 17 October 2026.
Where CreateOS Sandbox Fits Better
What CreateOS Sandbox brings to this matchup, with a plain note on where AWS Lambda has the edge.
No 15-minute limit: CreateOS sandboxes run until destroyed or paused.
A shell and an opt-in public HTTPS URL to a running sandbox, where Lambda is invoked through APIs, events or function URLs with no shell or arbitrary ports.
Pause and resume one running environment with its memory; Lambda SnapStart snapshots a published version, not a live invocation.
A hostname egress allowlist on the sandbox itself, where Lambda relies on VPC security groups and NACLs.
Where AWS Lambda is strong
Mature, deeply integrated event-driven compute with per-ms billing, a large free tier and scaling to thousands of concurrent Firecracker-isolated environments without capacity planning.
Which to Pick
Pick CreateOS Sandbox if
- An agent needs a persistent shell session longer than 15 minutes.
- You need to expose a dev server on a URL from inside the environment.
- You want to pause, resume or fork a live session.
Pick AWS Lambda if
- Your code is a short handler triggered by events or HTTP that finishes in under 15 minutes.
- You need to scale to thousands of concurrent executions per Region.
- You already depend on AWS event sources and IAM.
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 | AWS Lambda |
|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Firecracker micro-VM with its own guest kernel | Firecracker microVM per execution environment (vendor-stated) |
| Create and destroy by API | Yes: REST API, CLI, MCP server and SDKs for TypeScript, Go, Python, Rust, C# and Java (all but TypeScript pre-1.0) | Functions deployed via SDKs, CLI and SAM; environments created by invocation |
| Memory snapshot (pause and resume) | Yes: disk, memory and CPU state saved; vCPU stops billing, memory and storage still bill | SnapStart snapshots initialised memory and disk per published version; no pause of a running environment |
| Fork | Yes: fork a paused sandbox into many independent sandboxes | No per-invocation fork; SnapStart restores many environments from one version snapshot |
| Outbound network controls | Open with no rules; deny-by-default once any host, IP, CIDR or wildcard rule exists, enforced on the host outside the VM | Open by default; attach your VPC for security groups and NACLs; no hostname allowlist |
| Billing granularity | Per second while running: $0.03616363/vCPU-hr, $0.01159025/GiB-hr, storage $0.0001584/GB-hr | Per request plus per-ms GB-second |
| Largest size | 8 vCPU / 16 GB on Enterprise; 8 vCPU / 8 GB on Pro | 10,240 MB memory (1,769 MB equals one vCPU); 10 GB container image |
| GPU | None; no GPU shapes | Not published |
Common Questions
Is AWS Lambda a good place to run an AI agent's code?
For short, stateless steps under 15 minutes, it can be. For interactive agent sessions it is a poor fit: environments are recycled every few hours, there is no shell or arbitrary port, and a running environment cannot be paused. CreateOS sandboxes keep files, accept shells and can pause.
Do Lambda and CreateOS use the same isolation?
Both use Firecracker. AWS states each Lambda execution environment runs in a dedicated Firecracker microVM, and each CreateOS sandbox is a Firecracker micro-VM with its own guest kernel. The difference is the interface: invoked functions on Lambda, long-lived machines you control on CreateOS.
How many Lambda functions can run at once compared with CreateOS sandboxes?
Lambda allows 1,000 concurrent executions per Region by default, raisable to tens of thousands. CreateOS caps concurrent sandboxes at 1, 5, 20 or 30 by plan, with paused sandboxes counted, so Lambda wins clearly on raw fan-out.
Sources
Checked 17 October 2026.
- AWS Lambda: pricing, free tier
- AWS Lambda: Arm GB-second rate (AWS price list data behind the pricing page)
- AWS Lambda: quotas, memory, timeout
- AWS Lambda: lifecycle, cold start, reuse
- AWS Lambda: SnapStart
- AWS Lambda: egress default
- AWS Lambda: Firecracker isolation
- CreateOS Sandbox limits
- CreateOS sandbox security
- CreateOS egress rules
See CreateOS Sandbox for yourself
Book a demo, or explore the Sandbox and its pricing.