Source-linked pricing comparison
E2B vs Modal: sandbox costs and resource sizing
Compare the smallest valid allocation for your workload, then check lifecycle and persistence requirements. Physical cores and vCPUs need a consistent interpretation before prices can be compared.
Pricing evidence reviewed 2026-09-07. Estimates use the published catalog and its disclosed assumptions, not a live quote.
Adjust your workload
100 new sandboxes per month, averaging 60.0 minutes each, with no resumes or suspended hours. Persistent disk may still bill for the month. Requests round up to a valid single-sandbox allocation.
These estimates bill allocated resources during running time. CPU busy percentage alone does not reduce the bill. Change running hours or requested resources to compare costs.
| Provider | Monthly USD | Billed vCPU | Billed memory GB | Billed disk GB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| E2B | $11.08 | 1 | 4.001 | 5.000 |
| Modal Sandboxes | $5.34 | 1 | 4.000 | 5.000 |
Gross usage excludes plan fees and credits. Taxes, egress, regional multipliers and unmodeled account usage are excluded. Eligibility uses average session duration; it cannot prove your longest run.
Customize this comparisonWhat can change the decision?
- Modal defines a physical core as two vCPUs; this calculator uses that published equivalence.
- A finished Modal Sandbox is terminal. Filesystem snapshots and Volumes differ from retaining a stopped running environment.
- Recurring account allowances and selected-region multipliers can change the bill.
When does the cheaper option change?
Gross usage USD per month. Only the selected axis changes; resources, creation counts, resumes and suspension remain fixed. Always-on references still bill 730 hours. Gaps mean the workload cannot be priced. Crossover ranges are sampled estimates, including any plan or eligibility discontinuities.
Solid: E2B · Dashed: Modal Sandboxes
No cost-order change in the sampled comparable range.
Show sampled costs
| Running hours | E2B | Modal Sandboxes |
|---|---|---|
| 1.0h | $0.111 | $0.053 |
| 19.2h | $2.13 | $1.03 |
| 37.5h | $4.15 | $2.00 |
| 55.7h | $6.17 | $2.97 |
| 73.9h | $8.19 | $3.94 |
| 92.1h | $10.20 | $4.92 |
| 110.3h | $12.22 | $5.89 |
| 128.6h | $14.24 | $6.86 |
| 146.8h | $16.26 | $7.83 |
| 165.0h | $18.28 | $8.80 |
| 183.3h | $20.30 | $9.78 |
| 201.5h | $22.32 | $10.75 |
| 219.7h | $24.34 | $11.72 |
| 237.9h | $26.36 | $12.69 |
| 256.1h | $28.37 | $13.67 |
| 274.4h | $30.39 | $14.64 |
| 292.6h | $32.41 | $15.61 |
| 310.8h | $34.43 | $16.58 |
| 329.1h | $36.45 | $17.56 |
| 347.3h | $38.47 | $18.53 |
| 365.5h | $40.49 | $19.50 |
| 383.7h | $42.51 | $20.47 |
| 401.9h | $44.52 | $21.45 |
| 420.2h | $46.54 | $22.42 |
| 438.4h | $48.56 | $23.39 |
| 456.6h | $50.58 | $24.36 |
| 474.9h | $52.60 | $25.33 |
| 493.1h | $54.62 | $26.31 |
| 511.3h | $56.64 | $27.28 |
| 529.5h | $58.66 | $28.25 |
| 547.8h | $60.67 | $29.22 |
| 566.0h | $62.69 | $30.20 |
| 584.2h | $64.71 | $31.17 |
| 602.4h | $66.73 | $32.14 |
| 620.6h | $68.75 | $33.11 |
| 638.9h | $70.77 | $34.09 |
| 657.1h | $72.79 | $35.06 |
| 675.3h | $74.81 | $36.03 |
| 693.5h | $76.82 | $37.00 |
| 711.8h | $78.84 | $37.97 |
| 730.0h | $80.86 | $38.95 |
Billing assumptions and first-party sources
E2B
The independent 100-concurrent-sandbox benchmark measured 1.09s median time to interactive. E2B says it charges per second of a running sandbox; no separately listed creation, pause, or resume meter is included. E2B’s current first-party architecture and SDK document Firecracker microVMs, full memory snapshots by default, traffic-triggered resume, configurable domain and IP egress controls, persistent volumes, self-hosting on AWS or GCP, and brokered workload-identity credentials resolved by the egress proxy; callers may also inject ordinary environment variables. Plan-adjusted mode selects free Hobby only when the implied average new-sandbox session is at most one hour and disk is at most 10 GiB; otherwise an eligible workload requires the published $150 Pro plan. Aggregate inputs cannot prove the longest individual session, and no resume reset is assumed. The current rate table labels every listed CPU and RAM configuration Hobby / Pro even though a separate Pro feature bullet says custom CPU and RAM; this model follows the explicit rate table. No first-party GPU support statement was found, so GPU remains unknown rather than being reported as unsupported.
Isolation: Firecracker microVM. Evidence reviewed 2026-09-07.
Official pricing · Resource constraints · Implementation evidence
Modal Sandboxes
Billed on max(resource request, usage) while a Sandbox is executing. CPU and container memory can burst above requests when the host has spare capacity. The calculator reserves the shared peak instead of assuming spare capacity is available, so it does not estimate the cheaper best-effort burst configuration. The default CPU soft limit is 16 physical cores above the request, not a guaranteed burst allowance. VM Sandbox memory is static; this row describes the standard container runtime. Modal publishes physical-core pricing and states that one physical core equals two vCPUs, so the rate and 0.125-physical-core floor are divided across two vCPUs. A finished Sandbox is terminal; preserving work requires a filesystem snapshot restored into a subsequent Sandbox or a separate Volume. Because Modal does not expose a retained stopped or suspended Sandbox state, the comparison marks idle-compute behavior not applicable and excludes the workload’s suspended hours. The normal 512 GiB ephemeral quota does not create a disk surcharge, while an explicitly increased ephemeral_disk request can raise billed memory at 20:1. Region selection multiplies sandbox CPU and RAM by 1.15 to 1.75 times; totals here use unpinned base rates. Plan-adjusted mode applies the recurring $30 Starter credit as an account-wide allowance.
Isolation: gVisor (default); full VM with VM Sandboxes. Evidence reviewed 2026-09-07.
How to use this comparison
First check that the workload fits the provider’s resource and lifecycle limits. Then compare gross usage and the eligible plan total. A lower modeled price does not establish equivalent persistence, isolation, reliability or performance. Unknown and unsupported results are kept out of numeric rankings.