CreateOS Sandbox vs Exoscale
Exoscale fits European and Swiss companies that need sovereign-hosted VMs or GPUs, per-second billing and compliance such as BSI C5. CreateOS Sandbox fits teams that need per-task micro-VMs for agent code with pause, fork and outbound allowlists. Both bill per second; the difference is the sandbox lifecycle on top.
Pricing at a Glance
CreateOS rates verified 17 October 2026. Exoscale 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
Exoscale
Standard instances run from 0.00729 per hour (Micro, 512 MB, 1 core) through 0.04666 (Medium, 4 GB, 2 cores) to 2.24 (Jumbo), the same figure in CHF, EUR and USD, billed per second, as of 17 October 2026.
Where CreateOS Sandbox Fits Better
What CreateOS Sandbox brings to this matchup, with a plain note on where Exoscale has the edge.
Pause keeps disk, memory and CPU state, and the paused sandbox can be forked; Exoscale publishes no persistence or fork details.
Egress rules by hostname, IP or CIDR switch a sandbox to deny-by-default, enforced on the host outside the VM.
devbox:1 and desktop:1 images ready for coding agents and computer use.
Where Exoscale is strong
Per-second billing with flat prices across zones and a European compliance set (BSI C5, ISO 27001, Swiss FDPA, vendor-stated), useful for regulated European workloads.
Which to Pick
Pick CreateOS Sandbox if
- You need sandboxes that pause mid-task and fork
- You want outbound traffic locked to named hosts
- You want a machine per agent run, destroyed afterwards
Pick Exoscale if
- Your data must stay in Swiss or EU zones such as CH-GVA-2 or DE-FRA-1
- You need BSI C5 or Swiss FDPA alignment (vendor-stated)
- You need GPUs like the RTX Pro 6000 or A40
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 | Exoscale |
|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Firecracker micro-VM with its own guest kernel | Full VM |
| Create and destroy by API | Yes: REST API, CLI, SDKs for TypeScript, Go, Python, Rust, C# and Java (all but TypeScript pre-1.0), and an MCP server with create, exec and destroy tools | API, CLI, Terraform, Packer, Pulumi and Kubernetes integrations |
| Memory snapshot (pause and resume) | Yes: pause saves disk, memory and CPU state; vCPU stops billing while paused, memory and storage still bill | Not published |
| Fork | Yes: fork a paused sandbox into new, independent sandboxes | Not published |
| 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 | Not published; security groups; outbound billed at 0.02 per GiB after about 1 TiB a month |
| Billing granularity | Per second while running, no minimums: $0.03616363 per vCPU-hour, $0.01159025 per GiB-hour | Per second, flat across zones |
| Largest size | 8 vCPU / 16 GB on Enterprise (8 / 8 Pro, 4 / 4 Beginner, 1 / 1 Free) | Standard Jumbo 24 cores / 225 GB; CPU-optimized Titan 40 cores / 128 GB |
| GPU | No GPU shapes | Yes: A30, V100, A40, A5000, RTX 3080 Ti, RTX Pro 6000; B300 on request; manual account validation |
Common Questions
Does Exoscale bill per second like CreateOS?
Yes. Exoscale bills compute per second at flat rates across its zones, so billing granularity is the same on both. The differences are elsewhere: CreateOS adds pause with memory, fork and per-sandbox egress allowlists, and Exoscale offers GPUs and many more European zones.
Which compliance certifications do Exoscale and CreateOS hold?
Exoscale lists GDPR, Swiss FDPA, BSI C5 and ISO 27001 (vendor-stated). CreateOS is SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certified, with reports available under NDA. Check each vendor's reports against your own audit requirements.
How does Exoscale price outbound traffic?
Outbound traffic is billed at 0.02 (CHF, EUR or USD) per GiB after a free 1.42 GiB per hour per instance, about 1 TiB a month; inbound and inter-zone traffic are free. CreateOS charges no egress fees and gives each sandbox a 50 GiB budget by default.
Sources
Checked 17 October 2026.
See CreateOS Sandbox for yourself
Book a demo, or explore the Sandbox and its pricing.