CreateOS Sandbox vs PandaStack
Pick PandaStack if you fan agents out from one running state, want throwaway Postgres per task, or want an Apache-2.0 platform you can host yourself. Pick CreateOS Sandbox if sandboxes must run past PandaStack's plan lifetimes, sit behind an outbound allowlist, or expose a URL only when you choose to.
Pricing at a Glance
CreateOS rates verified 17 October 2026. PandaStack 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
PandaStack
- Compute
- $0.0540 /vCPU-hr
- Memory
- $0.0162 /GiB-hr
PandaStack bills per second at $0.054 per active vCPU-hour and $0.0162 per working-set GiB-hour, does not bill egress, and sells plans from $0 to $99 per month that convert to usage credit, as of 17 October 2026.
Where CreateOS Sandbox Fits Better
What CreateOS Sandbox brings to this matchup, with a plain note on where PandaStack has the edge.
No lifetime cap, against PandaStack limits of 1 hour on Free, 7 days on Pro and 30 days on Team.
Outbound allowlists by host, IP, CIDR or wildcard; PandaStack does not document an egress allowlist.
Inbound is closed until you enable an HTTPS URL; PandaStack preview URLs are tokenless and last until the sandbox is killed.
Where PandaStack is strong
PandaStack forks a running VM's memory and disk in about 400 ms per child (vendor-stated), bills on active CPU and resident memory with free egress, ships per-agent Postgres in its own microVM, and publishes the platform under Apache-2.0 so you can run it yourself.
Which to Pick
Pick CreateOS Sandbox if
- Agents need to run for more than 30 days, or for more than an hour on a free tier.
- Untrusted code must be held to a list of approved destinations.
- You want every exposed URL to be opt-in.
Pick PandaStack if
- You want to fork a running sandbox with memory without pausing it.
- You want an open-source platform to self-host, or per-agent Postgres databases.
- You need 50 or 500 concurrent sandboxes on Pro or Team.
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 | PandaStack |
|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Firecracker micro-VM with its own guest kernel, root filesystem and network identity | Firecracker microVM with its own guest kernel per sandbox, database and app; per-sandbox network namespace |
| Pause and resume | Saves disk, memory and CPU state; vCPU stops billing while paused, memory and storage still bill | Pause/resume and hibernate/wake; memory streamed on demand from object storage on restore |
| Fork | Fork a paused sandbox into many independent copies, each with its own id and IP | fork_tree restores N children with the parent's memory and disk in about 400 ms each (vendor-stated); fork() copies disk only |
| 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; egress is not billed but metered for fair use |
| Inbound access | Closed by default; opt-in public HTTPS URL, plus API-authenticated shell and port tunnels | Public preview URL per port; the sandbox UUID in the hostname is the credential, valid until killed |
| Largest size | 8 vCPU / 16 GB on Enterprise (Pro 8 vCPU / 8 GB, Beginner 4 / 4, Free 1 / 1) | 8 vCPU on every plan; RAM up to 4 GiB Free, 16 GiB Pro, 64 GiB Team |
| Concurrency | Free 1, Beginner 5, Pro 20, Enterprise 30; paused sandboxes count toward the cap | Free 5, Pro 50, Team 500, Enterprise unlimited |
| Session length | No lifetime cap; optional idle auto-pause from 60 s to 24 h, off by default | Free 1 hour, Pro up to 7-day TTL, Team up to 30-day TTL |
| 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 | Per second on active vCPU ($0.054/hr) and working-set memory ($0.0162/GiB-hr); egress not billed |
| Self-host or BYOC | Enterprise only, onboarded by our team; not open source | Open source under Apache-2.0 with self-hosting docs; Enterprise BYO-VPC or single-tenant |
Common Questions
What is the maximum lifetime of a PandaStack sandbox?
It depends on the plan: 1 hour on Free, up to a 7-day TTL on Pro and up to a 30-day TTL on Team, with apps and databases exempt on Free. CreateOS Sandbox sets no lifetime cap on any plan; it runs until you destroy or pause it.
Are PandaStack preview URLs protected?
Only by obscurity. PandaStack preview URLs are stable and tokenless, the sandbox UUID in the hostname acts as the credential, and the URL works until the sandbox is killed. CreateOS Sandbox keeps inbound closed until you enable an HTTPS URL, at create time or later.
Can I self-host PandaStack?
Yes, PandaStack's core platform is open source under Apache-2.0 and has self-hosting docs. CreateOS self-hosting is available to Enterprise customers only, onboarded by its team, and runs slower where nested virtualization is in the path.
Sources
Checked 17 October 2026.
See CreateOS Sandbox for yourself
Book a demo, or explore the Sandbox and its pricing.