CreateOS Sandbox vs Civo
Civo is a good home for cheap VMs, Kubernetes clusters and on-demand GPUs with no bandwidth bills. CreateOS Sandbox is built for a narrower job: running agent or untrusted code in a micro-VM per task, billed per second, with egress closed to a list you set. If your code needs a GPU, Civo has them and CreateOS does not.
Pricing at a Glance
CreateOS rates verified 17 October 2026. Civo 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
Civo
Civo lists Standard xSmall (1 vCPU, 1 GB, 25 GB NVMe) at $0.007440/hour ($5.43/month), with billing rounded up to the full hour, and GPUs from $1.29/hour for one L40S, as of 17 October 2026.
Where CreateOS Sandbox Fits Better
What CreateOS Sandbox brings to this matchup, with a plain note on where Civo has the edge.
Billing by the second; Civo rounds usage up to the nearest full hour.
Outbound traffic can be locked to named hosts, while Civo's default firewall in each region has all ports open.
Pause with memory state and fork from the paused copy; Civo's current docs show no instance snapshot or fork flow.
Where Civo is strong
Free, unlimited data transfer on compute, simple hourly prices from $0.00744/hour, Kubernetes clusters that launch in under 90 seconds (vendor-stated), and a wide GPU range up to B300.
Which to Pick
Pick CreateOS Sandbox if
- You need many short-lived, isolated environments per agent run, and hourly rounding would waste money.
- You want deny-by-default egress once a rule exists, enforced outside the VM.
- You want to pause and fork environments with memory intact.
Pick Civo if
- You want managed Kubernetes or plain VMs without paying for bandwidth.
- You need GPUs from L40S up to B300.
- You need a private cloud on your own hardware through Civo Enterprise or FlexCore.
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 | Civo |
|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Firecracker micro-VM with its own guest kernel | Full VM; hypervisor not named |
| 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) | Yes: REST API, open-source CLI, Terraform provider |
| Memory snapshot (pause and resume) | Yes: disk, memory and CPU state saved; vCPU stops billing, memory and storage still bill | Not published; stopped instances are still billed |
| Fork | Yes: fork a paused sandbox into many independent sandboxes | Not published; custom images supported |
| 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 | Default firewall has all ports open; custom firewalls by port, protocol, direction and CIDR; no hostname allowlist |
| Billing granularity | Per second while running: $0.03616363/vCPU-hr, $0.01159025/GiB-hr, storage $0.0001584/GB-hr | Hourly, rounded up to the full hour |
| Largest size | 8 vCPU / 16 GB on Enterprise; 8 vCPU / 8 GB on Pro | 64 vCPU / 128 GB (CPU-optimized Extra Large); GPU up to 8 x B300 |
| GPU | None; no GPU shapes | Yes: L40S, A100, H100, H200, B200, B300 (region-dependent) |
Common Questions
Does Civo charge for egress?
No. Civo states free, unlimited data transfer for compute, both ingress and egress (vendor-stated). CreateOS also has no egress fees, but each sandbox has a 50 GiB outbound budget by default, and traffic past it is dropped until you recharge with account credit.
Is a stopped Civo instance still billed?
Yes. Civo's billing docs say stopped instances are still billed, and usage rounds up to whole hours. On CreateOS, a paused sandbox stops vCPU billing while memory and storage keep billing, and charges accrue per second rather than per hour.
Can Civo or CreateOS run on my own hardware?
Both offer a form of it. Civo private cloud runs on your hardware through Civo Enterprise or on its FlexCore appliance. CreateOS self-hosting is enterprise-only: our team onboards your hardware, cloud account or on-premise machines into the managed data plane, and it is not a self-serve install.
Sources
Checked 17 October 2026.
- Civo: pricing, shapes, GPU, egress, free credit
- Civo: public IP, firewall choice, hourly billing
- Civo: egress default, rule model
- Civo: quotas
- Civo: billing rounding, stopped instances
- Civo: CLI, Terraform
- Civo: region codes
- Civo: start time, private cloud
- Civo: compliance
- CreateOS Sandbox pricing
- CreateOS egress rules
- CreateOS self-hosting
More comparisons
See CreateOS Sandbox for yourself
Book a demo, or explore the Sandbox and its pricing.