Pricing

Cost per hour

You pay per second, only while a sandbox runs. A stopped sandbox costs no machine time.

A stopped sandbox keeps its disk for 14 days. Then boat deletes the data, and the sandbox cannot resume. To keep a disk longer, save a saved snapshot before day 14. Read Keep a stopped sandbox longer than 14 days.

Size	Per hour	CPU	RAM	Disk
`small`	$0.018	2 vCPU	4 GB	51 GB
`default`	$0.036	4 vCPU	8 GB	51 GB
`large`	$0.072	8 vCPU	16 GB	111 GB
`xlarge` *	$0.200	16 vCPU	32 GB	251 GB

* xlarge needs the $100 plan or higher. Subscribe from Dashboard > Billing, then pass --type xlarge. You do not need to contact us.

default is the size that other providers call medium.
Start with default. Use small for light scripts. Use large or xlarge for big builds or many containers.
No size has a GPU.
“Disk” is the space for your own files. The OS and the pre-installed tools are not in it.
One default sandbox that runs a full month (730 h) costs $26.
Every size is a full Linux virtual machine with the same tools, snapshots, hosting and desktop. Only the machine changes.

default costs $0.036 an hour. E2B and Daytona charge $0.331 an hour for the same machine (9x). Modal charges $0.760 (21x). Read Compared to others. Pick the size when you create a sandbox. To change it, stop the sandbox, then resume it with a new size. A fork can also take a new size.

boat new --type small
boat stop bx_23456789
until [ "$(boat info bx_23456789 --json | jq -r .sandbox.state)" = "stopped" ]; do sleep 2; done
boat resume bx_23456789 --type large

Included at no cost

Automatic snapshots of your sandboxes, with no count limit. boat keeps them while a sandbox runs and for 14 days after it stops. Then it deletes them.
Saved snapshots included with your plan: 10 for every $20 of plan per seat, never fewer than 10. A saved snapshot has no auto-deletion date. You cannot save one during the free trial.
Network traffic. boat does not bill egress.
A public IPv6 address on every sandbox, and outbound IPv4. The IP address can change when a sandbox resumes.
Public URLs for the ports of a sandbox.

Plans

A plan is a monthly price that your card pays. It is not a fee. Every dollar comes back as VM time at the rates above. Example: the $20 plan includes 555 hours of default and lets you run 100 sandboxes at the same time. Your first plan starts with a 7-day free trial. A card is required.

Plan limits and included

Plan	Run at once	Included starts per min / hour / day	VM time included	Saved snapshots included
$20/mo	100	12 / 60 / 200	555 h of `default` ($20)	10
$100/mo	300	30 / 210 / 840	2,777 h of `default` ($100)	50
$500/mo	1,000	65 / 420 / 1,680	13,888 h of `default` ($500)	250
$2000/mo	2,000	90 / 600 / 2,400	55,555 h of `default` ($2000)	1,000

Create, fork and resume each count as one start. Above your included starts, a start costs $0.03 to $0.07. Read Extra starts.
Included VM time expires at the end of the billing period. boat does not carry it over.
Seats: an organization pays the plan price once per seat. A 5-seat organization on the $20 plan pays $100 a month. Each seat adds the plan’s included amounts. It adds the full limits on the $2000 plan, and 20% of them below. Read Seats, limits and caps.
boat raises limits only on custom plans above $2000 a month. Contact us for a custom plan.

Overage, paid from the wallet

boat uses the included amounts first. Then the wallet pays.

Overage	Price, paid from the wallet
VM time past the included time	$0.036 per hour of `default`. `small` $0.018, `large` $0.072, `xlarge` $0.200
Saved snapshots past the included count	$0.056 per snapshot per day ($1.68 for 30 days)
Extra starts	$0.03 to $0.07 per start
AI credentials proxy	$1 for each day it is on, plus $1 per 1,000 requests

Add money with Pay or auto top-up. A payment of $200 or more gets a bonus of 2% to 25%. Read Wallet.
Saved snapshots and the AI proxy also charge while your sandboxes are stopped. Delete a saved snapshot to stop its charge.
For an empty wallet, read Running out.

All limits, their error codes and how to raise them are on Limits and errors. Change plans from Dashboard > Billing or with boat billing plan 100. A change applies at once. Read Card, invoices and plan changes.

Compared to others

One default sandbox per hour, boat versus other sandbox providers

This table prices the same machine on E2B, Modal, Daytona and other sandbox providers, at full use and their public list prices. The sizes are the ones in the table above.

$/hour	`small`	`default`	`large`	`xlarge`
boat	$0.018	$0.036	$0.072	$0.200
Novita	$0.117 (6x)	$0.233 (6x)	$0.467 (6x)	$0.933 (5x)
Freestyle	$0.132 (7x)	$0.264 (7x)	$0.529 (7x)	$1.06 (5x)
exe.dev †	$0.140 (8x)	$0.280 (8x)	$0.560 (8x)	$1.12 (6x)
E2B	$0.166 (9x)	$0.331 (9x)	$0.662 (9x)	$1.32 (7x)
Daytona	$0.166 (9x)	$0.331 (9x)	$0.662 (9x)	$1.32 (7x)
Blaxel †	$0.166 (9x)	$0.331 (9x)	$0.662 (9x)	$1.32 (7x)
Cloudflare †	$0.180 (10x)	$0.360 (10x)	$0.720 (10x)	$1.44 (7x)
AWS AgentCore †	$0.217 (12x)	$0.434 (12x)	$0.867 (12x)	$1.73 (9x)
Islo	$0.300 (17x)	$0.600 (17x)	$1.20 (17x)	$2.40 (12x)
Deno Sandbox †	$0.300 (17x)	$0.600 (17x)	$1.20 (17x)	$2.40 (12x)
Fly.io Sprites †	$0.315 (18x)	$0.630 (18x)	$1.26 (18x)	$2.52 (13x)
Runloop	$0.317 (18x)	$0.634 (18x)	$1.27 (18x)	$2.53 (13x)
Vercel Sandbox †	$0.341 (19x)	$0.682 (19x)	$1.36 (19x)	$2.73 (14x)
Modal	$0.380 (21x)	$0.760 (21x)	$1.52 (21x)	$3.04 (15x)
Railway †	$0.417 (23x)	$0.833 (23x)	$1.67 (23x)	$3.33 (17x)

† exe.dev: Cloud Pool rate; Cloudflare: active CPU only; Vercel Sandbox: active CPU only; Blaxel: CPU included in the RAM price; Railway: active CPU and used RAM only; Fly.io Sprites: active CPU and used RAM only; AWS AgentCore: active CPU and used RAM only; Deno Sandbox: active CPU only.

”Active CPU” billing

Some providers bill only the CPU time that your code uses. They bill RAM in addition. Some bill the RAM that you reserve. Others (‡) bill the RAM in use. Their claim is “you will rarely max the box”. This is what it means for you:

You cannot know the price before you run. The same job costs a different amount each time. Builds, test suites, browsers and agents use mostly CPU.
RAM bills while you are idle. Reserved or in use, you pay for it every second that the sandbox runs.
They do not publish what their users use. So you cannot check what “rarely max the box” saves you.

The table above prices them at full use. That is the only rate they publish. boat has one price per size, per hour. You know it before you run anything. We publish our usage. This table shows how much CPU and RAM boat sandboxes used over the last 30 days. Each column prices that usage at the list rates of one provider.

One default sandbox per hour at real boat usage, boat versus active-CPU providers

Sandbox	boat	AWS AgentCore ‡	Cloudflare	Fly.io Sprites ‡	Railway ‡	Vercel Sandbox	Deno Sandbox
quietest 1%: CPU 0.37% busy, RAM 14.77% used	$0.036	$0.012 (0.3x)	$0.073 (2.0x)	$0.053 (1.5x)	$0.083 (2.3x)	$0.171 (5x)	$0.201 (6x)
median: CPU 8.79% busy, RAM 18.89% used	$0.036	$0.046 (1.3x)	$0.097 (2.7x)	$0.091 (2.5x)	$0.129 (4x)	$0.215 (6x)	$0.235 (7x)
average: CPU 11.11% busy, RAM 22.97% used	$0.036	$0.057 (1.6x)	$0.104 (2.9x)	$0.112 (3x)	$0.158 (4x)	$0.226 (6x)	$0.244 (7x)
busiest 1%: CPU 92.06% busy, RAM 36.1% used	$0.036	$0.357 (10x)	$0.337 (9x)	$0.384 (11x)	$0.456 (13x)	$0.641 (18x)	$0.568 (16x)

‡ bills RAM used, not RAM reserved. A sandbox that is almost idle can cost less with a provider that bills only busy CPU and used RAM. From the median sandbox up, boat is the cheapest. Are your sandboxes idle most of the time? Then stop them, and resume them when work arrives. Use boat stop / boat resume, or the API. A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk for 14 days.

Performance

We ran the hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite on the 4 vCPU / 8 GB machine of every provider. This is our default size. The main job is a Node.js build and test loop: bundle, lint, test, repeat. For the full results, read the 2026-08-24 leaderboard.

The same Node.js build and test loop, 1,000 runs, time it takes per provider

4 vCPU / 8 GB	Runs per second	Seconds per 1,000 runs	$/hour	$ per million runs
boat	27.7	36 s	$0.036	$0.36
Daytona	18.6	54 s (1.5x slower)	$0.331	$4.95 (14x)
Vercel Sandbox	13.0	77 s (2.1x slower)	$0.682	$14.61 (40x)
E2B	11.2	89 s (2.5x slower)	$0.331	$8.19 (23x)
Freestyle	9.6	104 s (2.9x slower)	$0.264	$7.62 (21x)
Modal †	9.6	105 s (2.9x slower)	$0.760	$22.07 (61x)

That boat row is the machine every sandbox runs on. † Modal: default runtime, cpu=4 in Modal units (the guest sees 4 CPUs; billed as 4 Modal cores) + 8 GiB. Its beta VM runtime did 15.1 runs per second. Priced as Modal bills that machine. Measured on 2026-09-29: Vercel Sandbox · 2026-08-24: boat, Freestyle · 2026-07-23: Daytona, Modal, E2B. Rows from different runs are indicative, not a like-for-like race.

The boat row is our standard machine, on AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts. Each sandbox is still a full virtual machine.
We measured it with the same suite on 2026-08-24.
Values are medians over several machines per provider. The 95% intervals are within ±20% of the medians.

Worked examples

You run	Per month
One `default` sandbox, 8 hours a day, 22 days	176 h × $0.036 = $6.34, covered by the $20 plan
One `default` sandbox 24/7	730 h × $0.036 = $26: the $20 plan plus $6 from the wallet
50 `default` sandboxes, 4 hours a day, 22 days	4,400 h × $0.036 = $158: the $100 plan (300 at once) plus $58 from the wallet
200 `small` sandboxes, 1 hour each, once	200 h × $0.018 = $3.60, covered by any plan

For the API

GET /limits gives the plan and the wallet:

Field	Means
`wallet.balanceDollars`	Money in the wallet. Below zero when you owe.
`planIncluded.vmHours`, `planIncluded.vmHoursRemaining`	Included VM time of this billing period, in hours of `default`. `periodEnd` is when it resets.
`overagePrices`	The overage prices above.

Each size uses VM time at its own rate:

Size	Hours of `default` per hour of run time
`small`	0.5
`default`	1
`large`	2
`xlarge`	5.56

boat usage <id> and GET /sandboxes/{id}/usage give the bill of one sandbox. The size is already applied.
creditBalanceHours, packBalanceDollars and the other pack… fields are deprecated. Read wallet and planIncluded.

For what happens when the wallet is empty, read Plan, wallet and running out. For team plans and caps, read Organizations.

Get started

Use cases

Connect to a sandbox

Run work and keep it running

Set up new sandboxes

Stop, resume and snapshots

Machines

Run agents inside

Teams

Security, isolation, data & compliance

Help

Cost per hour

Included at no cost