CreateOS Sandbox vs OpenPond
OpenPond fits teams already using it for agent evals or continual learning, since its sandboxes carry spend budgets, receipts and cleanup rules in the SDK. CreateOS Sandbox fits teams that need documented isolation, egress controls and shapes above 4 vCPU and 8 GiB, at lower per-hour rates.
Pricing at a Glance
CreateOS rates verified 17 October 2026. OpenPond 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
Lower compute rate- Compute
- $0.0362 /vCPU-hr
- Memory
- $0.0116 /GiB-hr
OpenPond
- Compute
- $0.0720 /vCPU-hr
- Memory
- $0.0234 /GiB-hr
OpenPond bills $0.072 per vCPU-hour, $0.0234 per GiB-hour and $0.00012 per GiB-hour of VM disk, per second, with Starter at $10/month and Pro at $20/month plus usage, as of 17 October 2026.
Where CreateOS Sandbox Fits Better
What CreateOS Sandbox brings to this matchup, with a plain note on where OpenPond has the edge.
Isolation is documented as a Firecracker micro-VM with its own guest kernel; OpenPond does not publish its isolation technology.
Host-enforced egress allowlists; OpenPond does not publish egress controls.
Rates of $0.03616363 per vCPU-hour and $0.01159025 per GiB-hour, about half of OpenPond's $0.072 and $0.0234.
Shapes up to 8 vCPU and 16 GB on Enterprise; OpenPond's listed tiers stop at 4 vCPU and 8 GiB.
Where OpenPond is strong
Its sandboxes come with spend budgets, receipts and cleanup rules built into the SDK, and sit beside OpenPond's evals and RL tooling for teams improving their own agents.
Which to Pick
Pick CreateOS Sandbox if
- You must show reviewers the isolation boundary and egress policy.
- Your sandboxes need more than 4 vCPU.
- You want 20 concurrent sandboxes on Pro rather than 10.
Pick OpenPond if
- You already run agent evals or RL workflows in OpenPond.
- You want per-sandbox spend caps (maxSpendUsd) enforced by the SDK.
- You prefer an MIT-licensed desktop app and local runtime.
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 | OpenPond |
|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Firecracker micro-VM with its own guest kernel | Not published (vendor-stated: isolated cloud sandboxes) |
| Pause and resume | Pause saves disk, memory and CPU state; vCPU stops billing, memory and storage still bill | Stop, archive or delete; durable volumes kept separately; snapshots |
| Fork | Yes, fork a paused sandbox into many independent copies | Yes, fork a snapshot into a new sandbox |
| Outbound network default | 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 |
| Inbound access | Closed by default; opt-in public HTTPS URL | Preview URL per port, private or public |
| Largest size | 8 vCPU / 16 GB on Enterprise; 8 vCPU / 8 GB on Pro | Listed tiers up to 4 vCPU, 8 GiB, 40 GiB disk |
| Concurrency | 1 / 5 / 20 / 30 by plan; paused sandboxes count toward the cap | Free 1, Starter 10, Pro 10 |
| Session length | No cap; idle auto-pause 60 s to 24 h, off by default | Caller sets maxDurationSeconds, idleTimeoutSeconds and maxSpendUsd; platform maximum not published |
| Billing | Per second: $0.03616363 per vCPU-hour, $0.01159025 per GiB-hour, storage $0.0001584 per GB-hour; no egress fees, 50 GiB bandwidth budget per sandbox | Per second: $0.072 per vCPU-hour, $0.0234 per GiB-hour |
| SDKs and interfaces | TypeScript, Go, Python, Rust, C#, Java SDKs (all but TypeScript pre-1.0), CLI, MCP, REST | Server-side TypeScript SDK, CLI/TUI, agent SDK, public API |
Common Questions
Can I cap spending per OpenPond sandbox?
Yes. OpenPond lets the caller set maxSpendUsd alongside maxDurationSeconds and idleTimeoutSeconds on each sandbox. CreateOS Sandbox does not document a per-sandbox dollar cap; cost is bounded by plan concurrency caps and optional idle auto-pause.
Is OpenPond open source?
Partly. The desktop app, CLI and local runtime are MIT-licensed, while hosted sandboxes run only on OpenPond Cloud, and the repo does not currently accept contributions. CreateOS Sandbox is a managed service, with self-hosting for enterprise customers.
How many OpenPond sandboxes can run at once?
One on Free and 10 on Starter or Pro, with 5 or 100 retained sandboxes. CreateOS Sandbox allows 1 on Free, 5 on Beginner, 20 on Pro and 30 on Enterprise, and paused sandboxes count toward that number.
Sources
Checked 17 October 2026.
See CreateOS Sandbox for yourself
Book a demo, or explore the Sandbox and its pricing.