Beam vs E2B

Beam is a serverless GPU and CPU cloud with a Sandboxes product for untrusted code, built on its open-source beta9 engine. For teams that want sandboxes and GPU inference on one bill. A 2 vCPU / 4 GiB sandbox lists at $0.140 an hour on Beam against $0.166 on E2B, 15% less.

gpumanagedopen-sourceself-hostable

Verified 11 Nov 2026

Visit Beam Compare with E2B and others

Beam against E2B, line by line

E2B baseline sources

Field	-E2B (baseline)	+Beam	Change
2 vCPU + 4 GiB, per hour	$0.166 (source: E2B Pricing)	$0.140 (source: Beam Pricing)	−15%
vCPU, per hour	$0.0504 (source: E2B Pricing)	$0.05 (source: Beam Pricing)	−1%
Memory, per GiB-hour	$0.0162 (source: E2B Pricing)	$0.01 (source: Beam Pricing)	−38%
Billed on	wall clock (source: E2B Pricing)	wall clock (source: Beam Pricing)	same
Isolation	Firecracker microVM (source: E2B homepage)	container (source: Beam Pricing)	differs
Max session	1 h (Hobby), 24 h (Pro) (source: E2B Pricing)	not published	Beam: no figure
Persistence	state kept, pause/resume, memory kept, fork (source: E2B homepage)	not published	Beam: no figure
Self-host	Yes, Apache-2.0 (source: E2B runtime (GitHub))	Yes, AGPL-3.0 (source: Beam Pricing)	differs
Your own cloud (BYOC)	Yes (source: E2B homepage)	Yes (source: Beam Pricing)	same
GPU	No (source: E2B Pricing)	Yes (source: Beam Pricing)	differs
SDKs	Python, JavaScript/TypeScript (source: E2B Pricing)	not published	Beam: no figure
SOC 2	Type II (source: E2B homepage)	Type II (source: Beam Pricing)	same
Free tier	Hobby: $0 plan fee, one-time $100 usage credit, 10 concurrent sandboxes, 1-hour sessions. (source: E2B Pricing)	Developer: $20/month, includes $20 in credits each month. (source: Beam Pricing)	differs

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 Beam instead of E2B when

your bill is the problem: the same 2 vCPU / 4 GiB box lists at $0.140 an hour here against $0.166 on E2B, 15% less.
you need GPUs: Beam documents GPU sandboxes, and E2B lists CPU-only sandboxes.
you want to run the sandbox layer yourself under a AGPL-3.0 licence (E2B's runtime is Apache-2.0 and self-hostable too).

Stay on E2B when

you run model-written code you do not control and want a dedicated kernel per sandbox: E2B uses Firecracker microVMs, Beam uses container.
pause has to keep running memory as well as files: E2B's pause saves both, and Beam does not state memory state in our data.

All Beam facts

Source per value

Isolation Isolation technology the vendor states for each sandbox.: container 1
Other isolation options Alternative runtimes the vendor offers besides the default (e.g. VM runtime, gVisor for GPU).: microVM with use_vm=True 1
Deployment Managed cloud service, self-hosted software, or both.: both 1
Billing basis What the meter counts: wall-clock allocated resources, active CPU only, requests/plan quota, session-hours, or free software.: wall clock 1
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.: $0.05 1
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.: $0.01 1
Sandbox from $/sandbox-hr Smallest published per-sandbox hourly price, where the vendor publishes one.: $0.06 1
Paid plan from $/mo Cheapest paid platform plan fee (before usage).: $20.00 1
Free tier A free plan, free monthly allowance or sign-up credit exists.: No 1
Free tier detail What the free tier or credit includes, as published.: Developer: $20/month, includes $20 in credits each month. 1
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.: Not published
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).: Not published
Pause / resume A sandbox can be paused, suspended, hibernated or put in standby and resumed later.: Not published
Memory state kept Pause/hibernate preserves running memory state, not only the filesystem.: Not published
Fork / branch A running or snapshotted sandbox can be cloned into new sandboxes.: Not published
GPU GPU sandboxes are offered.: Yes 1
Self-host Can run on your own hardware or cluster (open source or licensed).: Yes 1
BYOC / VPC Vendor-managed deployment inside your own cloud account.: Yes 1
Open source Core sandbox runtime is published under an open-source licence.: Yes 2
Licence Open-source licence of the runtime, if any.: AGPL-3.0 2
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.: Not published
Max memory per sandbox GiB Largest published memory per sandbox.: Not published
Concurrency Published concurrent sandbox limits by plan.: Not published
SOC 2 SOC 2 status as stated by the vendor.: Type II 1
HIPAA Vendor offers HIPAA-compliant usage/BAA (on any plan).: Yes 1
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.: $0.14 1
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.: 0.85 1
Status Preview, experimental, beta, sunset or self-hosting caveats the vendor documents.: Not published

Pricing model: usage
From: $0.06 sandbox-hour (1 vCPU, 1 GiB)
Pricing note: Sandboxes from $0.06/h (1 vCPU/1 GiB), billed per ms while running: $0.05/vCPU-h and $0.01/GiB-h; 2 vCPU/8 GiB = $0.18/h. Developer $20/mo with $20 credits, Team $89/mo + usage. BYOC management fee $0.019/vCPU-h and $0.009/GB-h. Pricing checked 2026-11-09.

Sources

Beam Pricing accessed 2026-11-09
Beam beta9 runtime (GitHub) accessed 2026-11-09

Beam in the E2B comparisons

E2B alternatives cheaper than E2BWhich sandboxes cost less than E2B for the same box? 10 listed.
Self-hosted E2B alternativesWhich E2B alternatives can I run on my own hardware or cluster? 9 listed.
E2B alternatives with GPU sandboxesWhich E2B alternatives offer GPU sandboxes? 7 listed.

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