CreateOS Sandbox vs Prime Intellect
Pick Prime Intellect for massive parallel RL rollouts or evaluation sweeps: default quotas of 1,024 active sandboxes and 102,400 creations per hour, at $0.02 per vCPU-hour. Pick CreateOS Sandbox when an agent's running processes must survive a pause, when you want an HTTPS URL straight to a sandbox port, or when your code is not in Python. Prime checkpoints files only, while CreateOS also saves memory and CPU state.
Pricing at a Glance
CreateOS rates verified 17 October 2026. Prime Intellect 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
Prime Intellect
- Compute
- $0.0200 /vCPU-hr
- Memory
- $0.0125 /GiB-hr
Prime Intellect charges launch rates, valid through 22 December 2026, of $0.02 per vCPU-hour, $0.0125 per GiB-hour of memory and $0.0002 per GiB-hour of disk, plus $0.10 per GiB-month for images and checkpoints, as of 17 October 2026.
Where CreateOS Sandbox Fits Better
What CreateOS Sandbox brings to this matchup, with a plain note on where Prime Intellect has the edge.
Pause keeps memory and CPU state, so running processes resume where they stopped. Prime documents filesystem checkpoints only.
Fork clones a paused sandbox's full snapshot, memory included; Prime forks carry files, not processes or memory.
Opt-in HTTPS URL to a sandbox port. Prime's sandbox guides document no port exposure and point to Prime Tunnels instead.
Native clients for TypeScript, Go, Rust, C# and Java besides Python (non-TypeScript SDKs pre-1.0); Prime publishes a Python SDK.
Where Prime Intellect is strong
Prime gives each account very large default quotas, 1,024 active sandboxes, 4,096 vCPUs and 102,400 creations per hour with more on request, plus RL-oriented tooling and a low $0.02 per vCPU-hour launch rate. That makes it a strong fit for parallel evaluation and training rollouts.
Which to Pick
Pick CreateOS Sandbox if
- Your agent keeps long-running processes that must survive a pause.
- You want a public HTTPS URL on a sandbox port without a separate tunnel product.
- Your orchestration code is TypeScript, Go, Rust, C# or Java.
Pick Prime Intellect if
- You run thousands of short-lived sandboxes at once for RL or evals.
- You need up to 16 vCPU / 64 GiB in a single sandbox.
- You already train with Prime Intellect and want rollouts on the same account.
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 | Prime Intellect |
|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Firecracker micro-VM with its own guest kernel | MicroVM booting an OCI/Docker image as root filesystem (vendor-stated) |
| Pause and resume | Saves disk, memory and CPU state; vCPU billing stops while paused, memory and storage still bill | Filesystem checkpoints only; memory pause and resume not documented |
| Fork | Fork a paused sandbox into many independent copies | Filesystem-level fork from a checkpoint; memory and processes not carried |
| 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 | Open by default; optional allowlist or denylist by domain, wildcard or IPv4/CIDR |
| Inbound access | Closed by default; opt-in HTTPS URL | No sandbox port exposure in sandbox guides; Prime Tunnels for public HTTPS |
| Largest size | 8 vCPU / 16 GB on Enterprise; 8 / 8 on Pro, 4 / 4 on Beginner, 1 / 1 on Free | 16 vCPU, 64 GiB RAM, 128 GiB disk |
| Concurrency | 1 / 5 / 20 / 30 by plan (Free to Enterprise); paused sandboxes count | 1,024 active sandboxes per account by default; higher on request |
| Session length | No cap; optional idle auto-pause from 60 s to 24 h, off by default | Default 60 min timeout, configurable 1 min to unlimited; optional idle timeout |
| 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) | $0.02 per vCPU-hour, $0.0125 per GiB-hour (launch rates to 22 December 2026) |
| GPU | No GPU | Up to 8 GPUs listed in limits; GPU sandboxes coming soon and need an account grant |
Common Questions
Can Prime Intellect pause a sandbox with its memory?
No memory pause is documented. Prime checkpoints the filesystem, not processes or memory, and restores checkpoints into new sandboxes. CreateOS pause saves disk, memory and CPU state; vCPU billing stops while paused, but memory and storage keep billing.
Is Prime Intellect cheaper than CreateOS for CPU?
Yes, per vCPU-hour: Prime's launch rate is $0.02 against CreateOS's $0.03616363, valid through 22 December 2026. Memory runs the other way, $0.0125 per GiB-hour at Prime and $0.01159025 at CreateOS. CPU-heavy RL sweeps will usually cost less on Prime.
How many sandboxes can I run at once on Prime and on CreateOS?
Prime allows 1,024 active sandboxes per account by default, with higher limits on request. CreateOS caps concurrency at 1, 5, 20 and 30 by plan, and paused sandboxes count toward that cap. For thousands of parallel rollouts, Prime is the better fit.
Does Prime support blocking outbound traffic?
Yes. Prime is open by default and accepts an allowlist or a denylist at creation, by domain, wildcard domain or IPv4/CIDR, replaceable on a running sandbox. CreateOS is also open by default and switches to deny-by-default once you add any rule; it has no denylist mode.
Sources
Checked 17 October 2026.
See CreateOS Sandbox for yourself
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