CreateOS Sandbox vs Exe.Dev
Pick exe.dev if you want many long-lived Linux VMs you drive over SSH for a flat monthly price. Pick CreateOS Sandbox if your agents need short-lived sandboxes created from an SDK, with memory-state pause, fork and an outbound allowlist enforced outside the VM.
Pricing at a Glance
CreateOS rates verified 17 October 2026. exe.dev 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
exe.dev
exe.dev Personal is $15 per month for a 2 vCPU / 4 GiB pool and 50 VMs, Work is $75 per month, and standalone VMs cost $0.105 per 2 vCPU / 4 GiB per hour, as of 17 October 2026.
Where CreateOS Sandbox Fits Better
What CreateOS Sandbox brings to this matchup, with a plain note on where exe.dev has the edge.
Pause keeps memory and CPU state, and a paused sandbox can be forked into many copies; exe.dev documents disk clones but no memory snapshot.
Outbound traffic can be locked to a host, IP or CIDR allowlist enforced on the host; exe.dev does not publish an egress policy.
Six language SDKs (TypeScript, Go, Python, Rust, C#, Java) on top of REST, CLI and MCP; exe.dev publishes no language SDK.
A Free plan to start, then per-second billing per vCPU-hour and GiB-hour with no monthly subscription.
Where exe.dev is strong
exe.dev gives you cheap, flat-priced Linux VMs with root, HTTPS URLs and an SSH-first workflow. Its pool model lets many VMs share one block of CPU and RAM, so idle machines add no cost, and it runs in nine regions across the US, Europe and Asia Pacific.
Which to Pick
Pick CreateOS Sandbox if
- Your product creates a sandbox per agent task from code and destroys it afterwards.
- You need to pause a running environment with its memory and fork it into parallel attempts.
- You must restrict what untrusted code can reach on the network.
Pick exe.dev if
- You want dozens of persistent personal VMs for side projects and agents at a predictable monthly price.
- Your workflow is SSH-native and you like driving machines with ssh exe.dev commands.
- You need regions such as Tokyo, Sydney or Singapore, or VMs larger than 8 vCPU / 16 GB.
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 | exe.dev |
|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Firecracker micro-VM with its own guest kernel | Full VM, one VMM process per VM, 'KVM-isolated VMs' (vendor-stated); hypervisor not named |
| What persists | Disk stays until you destroy the sandbox; pause also saves memory and CPU state | Persistent NVMe disk streamed to another server in the region; no memory snapshot documented |
| Create by API | Yes: REST API, six SDKs (TypeScript, Go, Python, Rust, C#, Java), CLI and MCP server | HTTPS API (POST /exec), SSH-driven CLI and MCP server; no language SDK published |
| Outbound network | Open with no rules; deny-by-default once any host, IP, CIDR or wildcard rule exists, enforced on the host outside the VM | Not published |
| Largest size | 8 vCPU / 16 GB on Enterprise; 8 / 8 on Pro, 4 / 4 on Beginner, 1 / 1 on Free | 16 vCPU / 32 GiB per VM on Personal; 32 vCPU / 64 GiB on Work; Enterprise custom |
| Billing | Per second: $0.03616363 per vCPU-hour, $0.01159025 per GiB-hour, storage $0.0001584 per GB-hour | Monthly pool subscription from $15/month; standalone VMs $0.105 per 2 vCPU / 4 GiB per hour |
| Self-host | Enterprise only, onboarded by our team | Enterprise: single-tenant hardware, BYOC, AWS and GCP VPC support; not open source |
| Built for | Sandboxes created by API for agent and untrusted code | Long-lived personal and team Linux VMs over SSH, plus standalone VMs for agent jobs |
Common Questions
Does exe.dev have a memory snapshot like CreateOS pause?
exe.dev does not document a user-facing memory snapshot. Its VMs keep a persistent disk and stopped standalone VMs keep that disk without vCPU or RAM charges. CreateOS pause saves disk, memory and CPU registers, so processes continue on resume, and memory and storage keep billing while paused.
Can I copy an exe.dev VM the way CreateOS forks a sandbox?
exe.dev offers a cp command that clones a VM's disk and config, with no live or memory fork documented. CreateOS forks a paused sandbox's full snapshot, including memory, into new independent sandboxes, each with its own id, IP and bandwidth ledger, while the source stays paused.
How is exe.dev priced compared with CreateOS Sandbox?
exe.dev charges a monthly subscription for a shared pool, starting at $15 per month for 2 vCPU / 4 GiB, with standalone VMs at $0.105 per 2 vCPU / 4 GiB per hour. CreateOS bills per second at $0.03616363 per vCPU-hour and $0.01159025 per GiB-hour, with a Free plan.
Which regions does exe.dev run in versus CreateOS?
exe.dev lists nine regions, including LAX, NYC, DAL, FRA, TYO, SYD, SGP and LON, with PDX closed to new accounts. CreateOS Sandbox runs in two managed regions, eu and us, chosen with the region field when you create a sandbox.
Sources
Checked 17 October 2026.
See CreateOS Sandbox for yourself
Book a demo, or explore the Sandbox and its pricing.