CreateOS Sandbox vs StateSet Sandbox
Pick StateSet for large volumes of retryable agent runs, CI or batch jobs where preemption is acceptable: shared capacity costs $0.028 per hour for 4 vCPU / 8 GB, and paid plans allow thousands of concurrent sandboxes. Pick CreateOS Sandbox when untrusted code should run in its own micro-VM kernel, or when sessions outlast StateSet's 24-hour cap.
Pricing at a Glance
CreateOS rates verified 17 October 2026. StateSet Sandbox 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
StateSet Sandbox
- Compute
- $0.0055 /vCPU-hr
- Memory
- See below
StateSet charges per second: shared (preemptible) $0.0055 per vCPU-hour plus $0.00075 per GB-hour, or dedicated $0.128 per vCPU-hour plus $0.0106 per GB-hour on 50% of allocated size, with egress at $0.15 per GB; Pro is $49/month and Team $299/month, as of 17 October 2026.
Where CreateOS Sandbox Fits Better
What CreateOS Sandbox brings to this matchup, with a plain note on where StateSet Sandbox has the edge.
Each sandbox is a Firecracker micro-VM with its own guest kernel; StateSet runs Kubernetes pods with gVisor.
No session cap. StateSet stops sandboxes at 45 minutes on Hobby and 24 hours on Pro and Team, or 3 to 7 days for durable sandboxes.
No per-GB egress fee, with a 50 GiB bandwidth budget per sandbox; StateSet charges $0.15 per GB.
Pause saves disk, memory and CPU state; StateSet does not publish what survives a pause.
Where StateSet Sandbox is strong
StateSet has the lowest published price for shared compute in this set, $0.028 per hour for 4 vCPU / 8 GB on preemptible capacity, concurrency caps of 2,000 on Pro and 10,000 on Team, and a controller you can run in your own Kubernetes cluster (vendor-stated).
Which to Pick
Pick CreateOS Sandbox if
- You run untrusted code and want a VM kernel per sandbox rather than a pod.
- Agent sessions run longer than 24 hours.
- You want a known bandwidth budget instead of $0.15 per GB egress.
Pick StateSet Sandbox if
- Your jobs are retryable and can tolerate preemption for a much lower price.
- You need thousands of concurrent sandboxes.
- You want to run the controller in your own Kubernetes cluster.
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 | StateSet Sandbox |
|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Firecracker micro-VM with its own guest kernel | Kubernetes pod per sandbox with gVisor runtime support, non-root |
| Pause and resume | Saves disk, memory and CPU state; vCPU billing stops while paused, memory and storage still bill | Durable sandboxes on Pro and Team can pause, stopping compute billing; state kept not published |
| Fork | 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 | Not published; egress billed per GB |
| Concurrency | 1 / 5 / 20 / 30 by plan (Free to Enterprise); paused sandboxes count | Hobby 10, Pro 2,000, Team 10,000 |
| Session length | No cap; optional idle auto-pause from 60 s to 24 h, off by default | Hobby 45 min, Pro and Team 24 h; durable up to 3 days (Pro) or 7 days (Team) |
| 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) | Shared $0.0055 per vCPU-hour (preemptible); dedicated $0.128 on 50% of allocation; egress $0.15/GB |
| SDKs and interfaces | TypeScript, Go, Python, Rust, C#, Java (all but TypeScript pre-1.0), CLI, MCP, REST | TypeScript SDK, REST API; Python shown on homepage |
| Self-host or BYOC | Enterprise only, onboarded by our team | Run the controller in your own Kubernetes cluster (vendor-stated) |
Common Questions
Is StateSet Sandbox a microVM?
No. StateSet runs each sandbox as a Kubernetes pod with gVisor runtime support and non-root execution, which is container-based. CreateOS runs each sandbox as a Firecracker micro-VM with its own guest kernel, root filesystem and network identity.
What does a dedicated 4 vCPU / 8 GB sandbox cost on StateSet and on CreateOS?
StateSet Pro lists $0.2984 per hour for dedicated 4 vCPU / 8 GB, billed on 50% of allocation. At CreateOS list rates, 4 vCPU and 8 GiB cost about $0.237 per hour before storage. Shared StateSet capacity is far cheaper, at $0.028 per hour, but can be preempted.
How long can a StateSet sandbox run?
45 minutes on Hobby and 24 hours on Pro and Team, with durable sandboxes lasting up to 3 days on Pro or 7 days on Team. CreateOS has no session cap; sandboxes run until you pause or destroy them.
Sources
Checked 17 October 2026.
See CreateOS Sandbox for yourself
Book a demo, or explore the Sandbox and its pricing.