Source-linked pricing comparison
Vercel Sandbox vs E2B: active CPU and idle costs
Waiting on a model response is different from stopping a sandbox. Vercel meters active CPU while provisioned memory still bills; E2B meters running resources. Change CPU utilization to see how this affects your workload.
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.
CPU busy time changes active CPU charges for Vercel Sandbox. Allocated-resource charges still depend on running time and billed size.
| Provider | Monthly USD | Billed vCPU | Billed memory GB | Billed disk GB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vercel Sandbox | $11.84 | 2 | 4.000 | 64.000 |
| E2B | $11.08 | 1 | 4.001 | 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?
- Use observed CPU busy time rather than assuming all running time consumes CPU.
- Short sessions can incur memory billing increments; runs and resumes matter.
- Retained snapshots, plan caps and required monthly spend can outweigh a compute-only saving.
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: Vercel Sandbox · Dashed: E2B
No cost-order change in the sampled comparable range.
Show sampled costs
| Running hours | Vercel Sandbox | E2B |
|---|---|---|
| 1.0h | $0.333 | $0.111 |
| 19.2h | $2.47 | $2.13 |
| 37.5h | $4.61 | $4.15 |
| 55.7h | $6.75 | $6.17 |
| 73.9h | $8.88 | $8.19 |
| 92.1h | $11.02 | $10.20 |
| 110.3h | $13.16 | $12.22 |
| 128.6h | $15.30 | $14.24 |
| 146.8h | $17.44 | $16.26 |
| 165.0h | $19.57 | $18.28 |
| 183.3h | $21.57 | $20.30 |
| 201.5h | $23.71 | $22.32 |
| 219.7h | $25.85 | $24.34 |
| 237.9h | $27.98 | $26.36 |
| 256.1h | $30.12 | $28.37 |
| 274.4h | $32.26 | $30.39 |
| 292.6h | $34.40 | $32.41 |
| 310.8h | $36.54 | $34.43 |
| 329.1h | $38.67 | $36.45 |
| 347.3h | $40.81 | $38.47 |
| 365.5h | $42.95 | $40.49 |
| 383.7h | $45.09 | $42.51 |
| 401.9h | $47.23 | $44.52 |
| 420.2h | $49.36 | $46.54 |
| 438.4h | $51.50 | $48.56 |
| 456.6h | $53.50 | $50.58 |
| 474.9h | $55.64 | $52.60 |
| 493.1h | $57.77 | $54.62 |
| 511.3h | $59.91 | $56.64 |
| 529.5h | $62.05 | $58.66 |
| 547.8h | $64.19 | $60.67 |
| 566.0h | $66.32 | $62.69 |
| 584.2h | $68.46 | $64.71 |
| 602.4h | $70.60 | $66.73 |
| 620.6h | $72.74 | $68.75 |
| 638.9h | $74.88 | $70.77 |
| 657.1h | $77.01 | $72.79 |
| 675.3h | $79.15 | $74.81 |
| 693.5h | $81.29 | $76.82 |
| 711.8h | $83.43 | $78.84 |
| 730.0h | $85.42 | $80.86 |
Billing assumptions and first-party sources
Vercel Sandbox
Billed on active CPU at the published default iad1 regional rates. Vercel labels provisioned memory and snapshot storage in GB without an explicit byte definition; the model assumes decimal GB, so the calculator converts its GiB inputs by bytes before applying those meters and plan limits. Each VM session rounds provisioned-memory time to one-minute increments; the model counts each new sandbox and each resume as one session and divides aggregate runtime equally between them. Persistent sandboxes automatically snapshot filesystem state on stop and start a new session on resume. The model interprets the Hobby 15 GB lifetime snapshot allowance as retained capacity; the documentation does not resolve capacity versus cumulative lifetime consumption, so plan eligibility under this interpretation is uncertain. Plan-adjusted mode treats each Hobby allowance as an independent hard cap and Pro as a $20 monthly usage minimum/credit, without carrying Hobby allowances into Pro. Enterprise resource sizes require custom account terms.
Isolation: Firecracker µVM. Evidence reviewed 2026-09-07.
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
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.