CreateOS Sandbox vs Railway
If your app already runs on Railway, its sandboxes are the natural pick: an agent can join the environment's private network, reach real Postgres or internal services, and you pay only for CPU actually used. Pick CreateOS Sandbox when the agent's processes must survive a pause, when outbound traffic needs an allowlist, or when you code in something other than TypeScript.
Pricing at a Glance
CreateOS rates verified 17 October 2026. Railway 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
Railway
- Compute
- $0.0694 /vCPU-hr
- Memory
- See below
Railway charges $50 per vCPU per month (about $0.00001929 per vCPU-second, on CPU actually used), $50 per GB of memory per month on memory in use, and $0.05 per GB of egress, drawn from plan included usage, as of 17 October 2026.
Where CreateOS Sandbox Fits Better
What CreateOS Sandbox brings to this matchup, with a plain note on where Railway has the edge.
Pause saves memory and CPU state as well as disk. Railway documents disk checkpoints only, and new sandboxes boot fresh from them.
Host, IP, CIDR and wildcard egress rules, enforced on the host outside the VM. Railway documents no egress allowlist.
No per-GB egress price, with a 50 GiB bandwidth budget per sandbox; Railway charges $0.05 per GB.
Official SDKs for Python, Go, Rust, C# and Java (pre-1.0) as well as TypeScript, where Railway ships a TypeScript SDK.
Where Railway is strong
Railway Sandboxes live inside the same environment as your existing Railway services, so an agent can join the private network and test against real databases, billed only on CPU actually used, on a platform with SOC 2 Type II and SOC 3 reports (vendor-stated).
Which to Pick
Pick CreateOS Sandbox if
- Agents run long processes you want to pause and resume intact.
- You must restrict which hosts sandbox code can reach.
- You want a public HTTPS URL on a sandbox that stays off any shared private network.
Pick Railway if
- Your services and databases already run on Railway and the agent needs to reach them privately.
- You want sandboxes up to 32 vCPU / 32 GB on Railway Pro.
- You prefer billing on CPU used rather than CPU allocated.
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 | Railway |
|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Firecracker micro-VM with its own guest kernel | Fully isolated virtual machine; hypervisor not named |
| Pause and resume | Saves disk, memory and CPU state; vCPU billing stops while paused, memory and storage still bill | No memory pause documented; named disk checkpoints, new sandboxes boot fresh |
| Fork | Fork a paused sandbox into many independent copies | Disk-level fork of a running sandbox; processes and memory 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 through a NAT gateway; no egress allowlist documented |
| Inbound access | Closed by default; opt-in HTTPS URL | Up to 10 HTTPS domains, set at creation, PRIVATE network mode only; SSH port forwarding |
| Largest size | 8 vCPU / 16 GB on Enterprise; 8 / 8 on Pro, 4 / 4 on Beginner, 1 / 1 on Free | Trial/Free 2 vCPU / 2 GB, Hobby 8 / 8, Pro 32 / 32 |
| Concurrency | 1 / 5 / 20 / 30 by plan (Free to Enterprise); paused sandboxes count | Per environment: Trial and Free 10, Hobby 50, Pro 100 |
| Session length | No cap; optional idle auto-pause from 60 s to 24 h, off by default | Idle timeout destroys the sandbox: Hobby/Pro default 30 min (can disable), Trial/Free up to 5 min |
| 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 on CPU used: about $0.0694 per vCPU-hour; $50 per GB-month memory; $0.05/GB egress |
| SDKs and interfaces | TypeScript, Go, Python, Rust, C#, Java (all but TypeScript pre-1.0), CLI, MCP, REST | TypeScript SDK (Node 22+), Railway CLI, GraphQL API, dashboard |
Common Questions
Can a Railway sandbox reach my Railway Postgres?
Yes, in PRIVATE network mode, where the sandbox joins the environment's private network. The default ISOLATED mode blocks private-network access to and from other services. CreateOS sandboxes cannot reach each other unless you place them on the same private network.
What happens when a Railway sandbox goes idle?
It is destroyed when its idle timeout expires: 30 minutes by default on Hobby and Pro, which can be disabled, and at most 5 minutes on Trial and Free. A CreateOS sandbox has no lifetime cap; optional idle auto-pause keeps disk, memory and CPU state instead of deleting it.
How does Railway bill sandbox CPU compared with CreateOS?
Railway bills on CPU actually used, at about $0.00001929 per vCPU-second, roughly $0.0694 per hour. CreateOS bills allocated vCPU per second at $0.03616363 per vCPU-hour while running. Lightly loaded agents may cost less on Railway; busy ones cost less on CreateOS.
Does Railway charge for sandbox egress?
Yes, $0.05 per GB. CreateOS has no per-GB egress price; each sandbox gets a 50 GiB outbound bandwidth budget by default, and once it is used up, outbound traffic is dropped until you recharge with account credit.
Sources
Checked 17 October 2026.
See CreateOS Sandbox for yourself
Book a demo, or explore the Sandbox and its pricing.