CreateOS Sandbox vs GitHub Actions
GitHub Actions is the default for CI on GitHub: it is built in, has a huge marketplace and gives public repositories free minutes. CreateOS Sandbox is for agents that need a machine on request rather than on a push: created by API, reachable over HTTPS, billed per second and with no 6-hour ceiling. Many teams will keep Actions for CI and use sandboxes for agent execution.
Pricing at a Glance
CreateOS rates verified 17 October 2026. GitHub Actions 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
GitHub Actions
GitHub Actions bills per minute, rounding partial minutes up: Linux 2-core x64 $0.006, Windows 2-core $0.010, macOS $0.062, larger Linux up to $0.162 (64-core) and GPU Linux 4-core $0.052, with 2,000 to 50,000 included minutes by plan, as of 17 October 2026.
Where CreateOS Sandbox Fits Better
What CreateOS Sandbox brings to this matchup, with a plain note on where GitHub Actions has the edge.
Per-second billing, where Actions rounds every partial minute up.
No 6-hour job limit; a sandbox runs until you stop it.
Pause, resume and fork the same machine. Each Actions job starts on a fresh VM, carrying over only cache and artifacts.
An inbound HTTPS URL on request; Actions jobs take no inbound connections.
Where GitHub Actions is strong
Built into GitHub with a huge marketplace of reusable actions, so most repositories get CI with no extra vendor, and public projects run on free standard runners.
Which to Pick
Pick CreateOS Sandbox if
- Your agent needs a machine on request, not on a push
- Sessions can exceed 6 hours
- You want to serve a preview from the running machine
Pick GitHub Actions if
- Your code is on GitHub and you want CI triggered by repository events
- You want reusable marketplace actions
- You need GPU or macOS runners in the same workflow
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 | GitHub Actions |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | API-created sandboxes for agent-written and untrusted code | CI/CD and repository automation triggered by GitHub events |
| Isolation | Firecracker micro-VM with its own guest kernel | Full VM per job on GitHub-hosted runners; single-CPU runners in a container on a shared VM |
| Trigger model | API, SDK, CLI or MCP call, on demand | Repository events and schedules; REST and GraphQL APIs |
| Session length | No cap; optional idle auto-pause from 60 s to 24 h, off by default | Up to 6 hours per job on GitHub-hosted runners |
| Pause and resume | Yes. Saves disk, memory and CPU state; vCPU stops billing while paused, memory and storage still bill | Not published; each job gets a fresh VM, cache and artifacts carry over |
| Outbound network | Open with no rules; deny-by-default once any rule exists (host, IP, CIDR, wildcard), enforced on the host outside the VM | Not published on the pages consulted; outbound internet available, static IPs and private networking on larger runners |
| Billing | Per second: $0.03616363/vCPU-hr, $0.01159025/GiB-hr, storage $0.0001584/GB-hr; no egress fees (50 GiB bandwidth budget per sandbox by default) | Per minute, partial minutes rounded up |
Common Questions
Can a GitHub Actions job run for more than 6 hours?
Not on GitHub-hosted runners: each job can run up to 6 hours, and on self-hosted runners jobs can queue for up to 24 hours. A CreateOS sandbox has no lifetime cap, and an idle auto-pause from 60 seconds to 24 hours is there if you want one.
How does billing granularity differ between Actions and CreateOS?
GitHub Actions rounds partial minutes up to the next whole minute, so a 10-second job is billed as one minute. CreateOS bills per second while a sandbox runs, at $0.03616363 per vCPU-hour and $0.01159025 per GiB-hour, with no minimums.
How many jobs can run at once on GitHub Actions?
Standard runners allow 20 concurrent jobs on Free, 40 on Pro, 60 on Team and 500 on Enterprise, with lower macOS limits; larger runners allow 1,000. CreateOS allows 1, 5, 20 or 30 concurrent sandboxes by plan, paused ones included.
Sources
Checked 17 October 2026.
See CreateOS Sandbox for yourself
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