AWS Lambda MicroVMs vs E2B
Stateful serverless Firecracker machines for user- and AI-generated code. A separate compute primitive from ordinary Lambda functions. AWS Lambda MicroVMs does not publish comparable vCPU and memory rates, so no hourly price is compared; E2B lists $0.166 an hour for a 2 vCPU / 4 GiB sandbox.
AWS Lambda MicroVMs against E2B, line by line
E2B baseline sources| Field | -E2B (baseline) | +AWS Lambda MicroVMs | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 vCPU + 4 GiB, per hour | $0.166 (source: E2B Pricing) | not published | AWS Lambda MicroVMs: no figure |
| vCPU, per hour | $0.0504 (source: E2B Pricing) | not published | AWS Lambda MicroVMs: no figure |
| Memory, per GiB-hour | $0.0162 (source: E2B Pricing) | not published | AWS Lambda MicroVMs: no figure |
| Billed on | wall clock (source: E2B Pricing) | not published | AWS Lambda MicroVMs: no figure |
| Isolation | Firecracker microVM (source: E2B homepage) | Firecracker microVM (source: aws.amazon.com/lambda/lambda-microvms) | same |
| Max session | 1 h (Hobby), 24 h (Pro) (source: E2B Pricing) | not published | AWS Lambda MicroVMs: no figure |
| Persistence | state kept, pause/resume, memory kept, fork (source: E2B homepage) | state kept, pause/resume, memory kept (source: aws.amazon.com/lambda/lambda-microvms) | differs |
| Self-host | Yes, Apache-2.0 (source: E2B runtime (GitHub)) | not published | AWS Lambda MicroVMs: no figure |
| Your own cloud (BYOC) | Yes (source: E2B homepage) | not published | AWS Lambda MicroVMs: no figure |
| GPU | No (source: E2B Pricing) | not published | AWS Lambda MicroVMs: no figure |
| SDKs | Python, JavaScript/TypeScript (source: E2B Pricing) | not published | AWS Lambda MicroVMs: no figure |
| SOC 2 | Type II (source: E2B homepage) | not published | AWS Lambda MicroVMs: no figure |
| Free tier | Hobby: $0 plan fee, one-time $100 usage credit, 10 concurrent sandboxes, 1-hour sessions. (source: E2B Pricing) | not published | AWS Lambda MicroVMs: no figure |
Prices are list prices for one hour of a 2 vCPU / 4 GiB sandbox: 2 × the vCPU rate + 4 × the memory rate. Each value links to the page it came from; not published means the vendor states no figure. How we compare.
Pick AWS Lambda MicroVMs instead of E2B when
- your stack already runs on that cloud: AWS Lambda MicroVMs is a first-party service there, so identity, billing and networking stay in one place.
Stay on E2B when
- you need a SOC 2 report: E2B states Type II, and AWS Lambda MicroVMs states none in our data.
- you want managed cloud, your own cloud account and self-hosting from one vendor: E2B offers all three, with BYOC on its Enterprise plan.
All AWS Lambda MicroVMs facts
Source per value- Isolation Isolation technology the vendor states for each sandbox.
- Firecracker microVM 1
- Other isolation options Alternative runtimes the vendor offers besides the default (e.g. VM runtime, gVisor for GPU).
- Not published
- Deployment Managed cloud service, self-hosted software, or both.
- managed 1
- Billing basis What the meter counts: wall-clock allocated resources, active CPU only, requests/plan quota, session-hours, or free software.
- Not published
- vCPU price $/vCPU-hr Published on-demand CPU rate normalised to USD per vCPU-hour (per-second rates multiplied by 3,600; per-core rates divided by vCPUs per core where the vendor defines it). Lowest public tier, default region. 0 means the vendor states no separate CPU charge.
- Not published
- Memory price $/GiB-hr Published memory rate normalised to USD per GiB-hour (GB treated as GiB where the vendor does not distinguish). 0 means the vendor states memory is free.
- Not published
- Sandbox from $/sandbox-hr Smallest published per-sandbox hourly price, where the vendor publishes one.
- Not published
- Paid plan from $/mo Cheapest paid platform plan fee (before usage).
- Not published
- Free tier A free plan, free monthly allowance or sign-up credit exists.
- Not published
- Free tier detail What the free tier or credit includes, as published.
- Not published
- Cold start ms Vendor-published create/boot time in milliseconds (a vendor claim, not our benchmark). Only filled when the vendor publishes a number; see startup_claim for percentile and conditions.
- Not published
- Resume time ms Vendor-published resume-from-pause/standby/snapshot time in milliseconds.
- Not published
- Startup claim The vendor's startup/resume wording with conditions, quoted or closely paraphrased.
- Launches from a pre-initialized snapshot; AWS gives no numeric start-time SLA. 1
- Max session length Longest single sandbox session by plan, as published.
- Not published
- Persistence / snapshots Filesystem state can be kept between runs (snapshots, persistent disks, volumes).
- Yes 1
- Pause / resume A sandbox can be paused, suspended, hibernated or put in standby and resumed later.
- Yes 1
- Memory state kept Pause/hibernate preserves running memory state, not only the filesystem.
- Yes 1
- Fork / branch A running or snapshotted sandbox can be cloned into new sandboxes.
- Not published
- GPU GPU sandboxes are offered.
- Not published
- Self-host Can run on your own hardware or cluster (open source or licensed).
- Not published
- BYOC / VPC Vendor-managed deployment inside your own cloud account.
- Not published
- Open source Core sandbox runtime is published under an open-source licence.
- Not published
- Licence Open-source licence of the runtime, if any.
- Not published
- SDKs / languages Official SDK languages (or supported execution languages where noted).
- Not published
- Regions Published regions or region count.
- Not published
- Max vCPU per sandbox vCPU Largest published vCPU count per sandbox on any self-serve or enterprise plan.
- 4 2
- Max memory per sandbox GiB Largest published memory per sandbox.
- 8 2
- Concurrency Published concurrent sandbox limits by plan.
- Not published
- SOC 2 SOC 2 status as stated by the vendor.
- Not published
- HIPAA Vendor offers HIPAA-compliant usage/BAA (on any plan).
- Not published
- 2 vCPU + 4 GiB per hour $/hr Hourly list price of one 2 vCPU / 4 GiB sandbox: 2 x the vCPU rate + 4 x the memory rate, from the two published rates. Left empty for self-hosted software and for vendors without both rates. Vendors that bill CPU only while busy (Vercel, Cloudflare, Upstash, Tensorlake, AWS AgentCore) cost less for idle agents than this shows.
- Not published
- Price vs E2B x E2B The 2 vCPU + 4 GiB hourly price divided by E2B's own ($0.1656 at $0.000014/vCPU-s and $0.0000045/GiB-s). Under 1 is cheaper than E2B.
- Not published
- Status Preview, experimental, beta, sunset or self-hosting caveats the vendor documents.
- Not published
- Pricing model
- usage
- Pricing note
- Per-second baseline compute while running (default 1 vCPU / 2 GB, up to 4x), active consumption above baseline; snapshots, storage and data transfer extra. Suspended state kept up to 8 hours.
Sources
- aws.amazon.com/lambda/lambda-microvms accessed 2026-11-11
- aws.amazon.com/lambda/pricing accessed 2026-11-11
AWS Lambda MicroVMs in the E2B comparisons
- E2B alternatives from AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Alibaba and CloudflareWhich cloud providers sell a first-party E2B alternative? 8 listed.
- E2B alternatives with microVM or VM isolationWhich E2B alternatives give each sandbox its own kernel? 26 listed.
Compare with other E2B alternatives
All 41- Azure Container Apps Dynamic Sessions vs E2B no comparable hourly price, Hyper-V
- Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Code Interpreter vs E2B $0.217/hr, 1.31x E2B, microVM
- Cloudflare Sandbox SDK / Containers vs E2B $0.180/hr, 1.09x E2B, Firecracker microVM
- Alibaba Cloud vs E2B $0.071/hr, 0.43x E2B, VM
- Agent Sandbox on GKE vs E2B no comparable hourly price, gVisor
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