CreateOS Sandbox vs Trigger.Dev
Pick Trigger.dev when your agent workflow is code you wrote and deployed ahead of time, and you want queues, retries and checkpointed waits around it. Pick CreateOS Sandbox when the code arrives at run time, from a model or a user, and needs its own micro-VM with a shell, an opt-in public URL and egress rules. A Trigger.dev task can also call a sandbox, so the two can work together.
Pricing at a Glance
CreateOS rates verified 17 October 2026. Trigger.dev 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
Trigger.dev
Trigger.dev charges a monthly plan (Free $0 with $5 usage, Hobby $10, Pro $50) plus per-second compute from $0.0000169/s for 0.25 vCPU/0.25 GB to $0.00068/s for 8 vCPU/16 GB, and $0.25 per 10,000 runs, as of 17 October 2026.
Where CreateOS Sandbox Fits Better
What CreateOS Sandbox brings to this matchup, with a plain note on where Trigger.dev has the edge.
Inbound HTTPS when you ask for it: a sandbox can expose a public URL, while Trigger.dev runs have no public ingress.
The isolation boundary is documented: a Firecracker micro-VM with its own guest kernel. Trigger.dev does not name its isolation technology.
Egress allowlists by host, IP, CIDR or wildcard, enforced on the host outside the VM. Trigger.dev does not publish an outbound default.
Fork a paused sandbox into several copies to try different branches of one agent run.
Where Trigger.dev is strong
Durable execution for long jobs. Runs have no maximum duration, retries and queues come built in, and a run that waits 60 seconds or more is checkpointed with CRIU so it stops using compute and concurrency.
Which to Pick
Pick CreateOS Sandbox if
- Your agent writes code at run time and needs a fresh Linux machine to run it
- You need to open a port to the internet or get a shell into the environment
- You want per-sandbox egress allowlists plus pause, resume and fork
Pick Trigger.dev if
- Your jobs are TypeScript tasks you deploy ahead of time and trigger from your app
- You need retries, queues and schedules without building them yourself
- You want to self-host under Apache 2.0
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 | Trigger.dev |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | API-created sandboxes for agent-written and untrusted code | Background jobs, scheduled tasks and multi-step agent workflows written in TypeScript |
| Isolation | Firecracker micro-VM with its own guest kernel | Not published (each run uses an isolated environment built from a container image; technology not named) |
| Ephemeral per-run environments | Yes. Create a sandbox per task by API, SDK, CLI or MCP and destroy it after | Each run gets its own environment; no user-facing filesystem persistence between runs published |
| Pause and resume | Yes. Saves disk, memory and CPU state; vCPU stops billing while paused, memory and storage still bill | Checkpoint-resume with CRIU during waits of 60 s or longer, including memory and open file descriptors |
| Outbound network | Open with no rules; deny-by-default once any rule exists (host, IP, CIDR, wildcard), enforced on the host outside the VM | Not published; static outbound IPs on paid plans |
| 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 by default) | Per-second compute by machine preset plus $0.000025 per run, on top of a monthly plan |
| Run untrusted code | Yes, the core use case; each sandbox is its own micro-VM | Not published as a use case; work is deployed ahead of time as tasks, no public ingress into a run |
Common Questions
Does Trigger.dev pause a run the way CreateOS pauses a sandbox?
Both save process state, for different reasons. Trigger.dev checkpoints a run with CRIU during waits of 60 seconds or longer, so waiting uses no compute or concurrency. CreateOS pauses a whole micro-VM on request or after an idle timeout you set; vCPU billing stops while memory and storage keep billing.
Is there a maximum run length on Trigger.dev?
No. Trigger.dev has no maximum run duration, and you can set maxDuration per project, task or run, or turn it off. CreateOS Sandbox has no session cap either: a sandbox runs until you destroy it, pause it or it auto-pauses after an idle period you chose.
Can a Trigger.dev task use CreateOS Sandbox?
Yes. A task can call the CreateOS REST API or TypeScript SDK to create a sandbox, run the model's code inside it, read the output and destroy it. Trigger.dev keeps the retries and queues; the sandbox holds the untrusted execution in its own micro-VM.
Sources
Checked 17 October 2026.
See CreateOS Sandbox for yourself
Book a demo, or explore the Sandbox and its pricing.