CreateOS Sandbox vs Sandbox as a Service
Sandbox as a Service is a good pick for solo developers who want a disposable VM over plain HTTP or MCP, with flat per-size prices from $0.09/hour. CreateOS Sandbox is the better pick once you need state that survives a pause, egress allowlists, sessions over 24 hours or compliance reports.
Pricing at a Glance
CreateOS rates verified 17 October 2026. Sandbox as a Service 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
Sandbox as a Service
Sandbox as a Service charges $0.09/hour for small (2 vCPU, 4 GB), $0.28/hour for medium (4 vCPU, 8 GB) and $0.55/hour for large (8 vCPU, 16 GB), billed per second from prepaid credit, as of 17 October 2026.
Where CreateOS Sandbox Fits Better
What CreateOS Sandbox brings to this matchup, with a plain note on where Sandbox as a Service has the edge.
Pause keeps disk, memory and CPU state; Sandbox as a Service destroys the sandbox, machine and disk at expiry.
Egress allowlists by host, IP, CIDR or wildcard; Sandbox as a Service publishes no allowlist control.
No session length cap, against a 24-hour hard cap that includes extensions.
CreateOS is SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certified, with reports available under NDA.
Where Sandbox as a Service is strong
It is very simple to adopt: plain HTTP or MCP, a real VM per sandbox, flat per-size prices from $0.09/hour, and an unusually candid published page on its own limits and security.
Which to Pick
Pick CreateOS Sandbox if
- Agent state must survive between runs.
- You must restrict where sandbox code can connect.
- Your security review asks for SOC 2 or ISO 27001 reports.
Pick Sandbox as a Service if
- You want the simplest start: one HTTP or MCP call and no SDK.
- Your jobs are disposable and finish well inside 24 hours.
- You like a flat price per size and credit that does not expire.
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 | Sandbox as a Service |
|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Firecracker micro-VM with its own guest kernel | Full VM per sandbox with its own kernel; hypervisor not named |
| Pause and resume | Pause saves disk, memory and CPU state; vCPU stops billing, memory and storage still bill | None; contents are not backed up and are destroyed at expiry |
| Fork | Yes, fork a paused sandbox into many independent copies | Not published |
| 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, except outbound SMTP and cloud metadata endpoints; no allowlist control published |
| Inbound access | Closed by default; opt-in public HTTPS URL | No inbound ports; preview URL for servers inside; auth not published |
| Largest size | 8 vCPU / 16 GB on Enterprise; 8 vCPU / 8 GB on Pro | 8 vCPU, 16 GB RAM, 160 GB disk |
| Concurrency | 1 / 5 / 20 / 30 by plan; paused sandboxes count toward the cap | 20 at once per account; 40 creations per minute |
| Session length | No cap; idle auto-pause 60 s to 24 h, off by default | Default 15 minutes; hard cap 24 hours |
| 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 from prepaid credit: $0.09 to $0.55 per hour by size |
| SDKs and interfaces | TypeScript, Go, Python, Rust, C#, Java SDKs (all but TypeScript pre-1.0), CLI, MCP, REST | REST API (OpenAPI) and MCP server; no official SDK or CLI |
Common Questions
Does Sandbox as a Service keep files after a session?
No. Its contents are not backed up, and the sandbox, machine and disk are destroyed at expiry; no pause or snapshot is published. CreateOS Sandbox can pause a sandbox with disk, memory and CPU state saved, then resume or fork it later.
What is the longest Sandbox as a Service session?
Sessions default to 15 minutes and have a hard cap of 1,440 minutes (24 hours) after creation, extensions included. CreateOS Sandbox has no lifetime cap, and idle auto-pause stays off unless you set it between 60 seconds and 24 hours.
Does Sandbox as a Service have compliance certifications?
No. The vendor states it has no SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS or HIPAA programme and no third-party penetration test. CreateOS is SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certified, with reports available under NDA.
Sources
Checked 17 October 2026.
See CreateOS Sandbox for yourself
Book a demo, or explore the Sandbox and its pricing.