CreateOS Sandbox vs Google Cloud Build
Google Cloud Build is the natural choice for building and deploying artifacts close to your Google Cloud resources, with private pools inside your VPC. CreateOS Sandbox is the choice for interactive agent sessions that need to stay alive, pause, resume and expose a port. A build is a batch job on a fresh worker; a sandbox is a machine your agent keeps.
Pricing at a Glance
CreateOS rates verified 17 October 2026. Google Cloud Build 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
Google Cloud Build
Cloud Build charges per build-minute, with partial minutes billed by the second: $0.003/minute for e2-medium (1 vCPU/4 GB) up to $0.096/minute for e2-standard-32 in us-central1, plus 2,500 free minutes per month, as of 17 October 2026.
Where CreateOS Sandbox Fits Better
What CreateOS Sandbox brings to this matchup, with a plain note on where Google Cloud Build has the edge.
No session cap, against Cloud Build's 24-hour maximum build timeout.
Pause and resume with memory intact, then fork; Cloud Build starts each build on a fresh worker.
An opt-in inbound HTTPS URL into a running sandbox. Builds are not addressable services.
Where Google Cloud Build is strong
Deep Google Cloud integration. Private pools can sit inside your VPC with VPC Service Controls and no public IPs, and machines scale to 32 vCPU / 128 GB with partial minutes billed by the second.
Which to Pick
Pick CreateOS Sandbox if
- Your agent session runs longer than a build or must survive between steps
- You need inbound access to a running environment
- You want a shell and exec into a live machine from your agent's code
Pick Google Cloud Build if
- You build containers and deploy them to Google Cloud
- You need builds inside your VPC with VPC Service Controls
- You need up to 32 vCPU per build
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 | Google Cloud Build |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | API-created sandboxes for agent-written and untrusted code | Building container images and running CI/CD pipelines on Google Cloud |
| Isolation | Firecracker micro-VM with its own guest kernel | Not published on pricing or schema pages; a Google-managed VM per build with step-level containers |
| Ephemeral per-run environments | Yes. Create a sandbox per task by API, SDK, CLI or MCP and destroy it after | Yes; each build gets a fresh worker and nothing carries between builds by default |
| Pause and resume | Yes. Saves disk, memory and CPU state; vCPU stops billing while paused, memory and storage still bill | No pause or resume; default build timeout 60 minutes, maximum 24 hours |
| Outbound network | Open with no rules; deny-by-default once any rule exists (host, IP, CIDR, wildcard), enforced on the host outside the VM | Default pool has public internet access; private pools can peer into a VPC, use VPC Service Controls and disable public IPs |
| 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 build-minute, partial minutes billed by the second |
| Run untrusted code | Yes, the core use case; each sandbox is its own micro-VM | Not published as a use case; builds are batch jobs |
Common Questions
How long can a Google Cloud Build run?
Up to 24 hours. The default build timeout is 60 minutes, and you can raise it to the 24-hour maximum. A CreateOS sandbox has no lifetime cap and runs until you destroy it, pause it or it auto-pauses after an idle period you choose.
Can Cloud Build restrict outbound network access?
Yes, with private pools. They can peer into a VPC, support VPC Service Controls and run without public IPs; the default pool has public internet access. CreateOS sandboxes use per-sandbox allowlists by host, IP, CIDR or wildcard, enforced on the host outside the VM.
How many Cloud Builds can run in parallel?
The default pool allows up to 30 concurrent builds, and private pools go to 100 or more within regional CPU quotas, queuing when full. CreateOS returns a 429 when you exceed your plan's concurrent sandbox cap of 1, 5, 20 or 30, with no queue.
Sources
Checked 17 October 2026.
See CreateOS Sandbox for yourself
Book a demo, or explore the Sandbox and its pricing.