CreateOS Sandbox vs Zenrows
Choose Zenrows when the goal is getting data out of sites that block ordinary headless browsers; proxies, fingerprinting and retries are bundled and failed requests are not charged. Choose CreateOS Sandbox when an agent needs its own machine to run code for longer than a 15-minute browser session.
Pricing at a Glance
CreateOS rates verified 17 October 2026. Zenrows 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
Zenrows
Browser Sessions cost 5 credits per minute plus 25,000 credits per GB of residential bandwidth, on credit plans from Free (5,000 credits/month) and Build at $19/month up to Scale at $2,999/month, as of 17 October 2026.
Where CreateOS Sandbox Fits Better
What CreateOS Sandbox brings to this matchup, with a plain note on where Zenrows has the edge.
Sandboxes are not time-boxed; Zenrows browser sessions last 1 to 15 minutes.
Shell access, file transfer and managed processes inside a Firecracker micro-VM.
Dollar prices per second rather than plan credits: $0.03616363 per vCPU-hour and $0.01159025 per GiB-hour on every plan.
Where Zenrows is strong
Zenrows is built for getting past anti-bot protection: residential proxies, fingerprinting and retries come bundled, and failed requests are not charged.
Which to Pick
Pick CreateOS Sandbox if
- Your agent runs code, tests or servers, not only page fetches.
- Work runs longer than 15 minutes at a stretch.
- You want your own outbound allowlist instead of a managed proxy pool.
Pick Zenrows if
- You scrape protected sites and need country or world-region proxy targeting.
- You want to pay only for successful requests.
- Each browser session finishes in under 15 minutes.
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 | Zenrows |
|---|---|---|
| What you get (browser vs full Linux machine) | Full Linux micro-VM; the desktop:1 image adds an XFCE desktop, Google Chrome and a computer-use API | Scraping API plus CDP browser sessions routed through residential proxies |
| Isolation | Firecracker micro-VM with its own guest kernel, root filesystem and network identity | Not published |
| Session length | No lifetime cap; optional idle auto-pause from 60 s to 24 h, off by default | Session TTL 1 to 15 minutes |
| Run arbitrary code | Yes: exec, shell, files and managed processes; devbox:1 ships Python 3.12, Node.js 24, Go, Rust and Docker | Scraping endpoints and CDP sessions; code execution environment not published |
| Outbound network | Open with no rules; deny-by-default once any host, IP, CIDR or wildcard rule exists, enforced on the host outside the VM | Routed through managed residential proxies with country and world-region targeting; allowlist controls not published |
| Billing | Per second: $0.03616363/vCPU-hr, $0.01159025/GiB-hr, storage $0.0001584/GB-hr; no per-GB egress price, 50 GiB bandwidth budget per sandbox | Monthly credit plans: 5 credits per session minute plus 25,000 credits/GB residential; Free to Scale $2,999/mo |
| Pause and resume | Pause saves disk, memory and CPU state; vCPU stops billing, memory and storage still bill | Not published; long-term profile persistence not published |
| Interfaces | SDKs in TypeScript, Go, Python, Rust, C# and Java (all but TypeScript pre-1.0), CLI, MCP server, REST API | Puppeteer or Playwright over CDP, REST API, CLI, MCP server |
Common Questions
Does Zenrows solve CAPTCHAs inside Browser Sessions?
No. Its Browser Sessions FAQ says CAPTCHAs are not solved there and viewport changes are blocked. CreateOS Sandbox lists no CAPTCHA solving either; it gives the agent a full Linux VM, with Chrome in the desktop:1 image, and leaves site access to your code.
How is Zenrows priced compared with CreateOS?
Zenrows sells monthly credit plans, charging 5 credits per browser minute plus 25,000 credits per GB of residential bandwidth, and the dollar value of a credit varies by plan. CreateOS bills per second in dollars for vCPU, memory and storage, at the same rate on every plan.
Can I keep a Zenrows browser open for an hour?
Not according to its docs: a Browser Session's TTL runs from 1 to 15 minutes. A CreateOS sandbox has no lifetime cap and can auto-pause after an idle period you set, anywhere from 60 seconds to 24 hours.
Sources
Checked 17 October 2026.
See CreateOS Sandbox for yourself
Book a demo, or explore the Sandbox and its pricing.