Vercel vs E2B

Vercel Sandbox runs agent-generated code in Firecracker microVMs and bills CPU only while code is actively running. Suited to teams on Vercel and agents that spend most of their time waiting on LLM calls. A 2 vCPU / 4 GiB sandbox lists at $0.341 an hour on Vercel against $0.166 on E2B, 106% more.

active-cpu-billingfirecrackermanagedpersistent

Verified 11 Nov 2026

Visit Vercel Compare with E2B and others

Vercel against E2B, line by line

E2B baseline sources

Field	-E2B (baseline)	+Vercel	Change
2 vCPU + 4 GiB, per hour	$0.166 (source: E2B Pricing)	$0.341 (source: Vercel Sandbox pricing and quotas)	+106%
vCPU, per hour	$0.0504 (source: E2B Pricing)	$0.128 (source: Vercel Sandbox pricing and quotas)	+154%
Memory, per GiB-hour	$0.0162 (source: E2B Pricing)	$0.0212 (source: Vercel Sandbox pricing and quotas)	+31%
Billed on	wall clock (source: E2B Pricing)	active CPU (source: Vercel Sandbox pricing and quotas)	differs
Isolation	Firecracker microVM (source: E2B homepage)	Firecracker microVM (source: Vercel Sandbox docs)	same
Max session	1 h (Hobby), 24 h (Pro) (source: E2B Pricing)	45 min (Hobby), 24 h (Pro/Enterprise) per session; persistent sandboxes resume indefinitely (source: Vercel Sandbox pricing and quotas)	differs
Persistence	state kept, pause/resume, memory kept, fork (source: E2B homepage)	state kept, pause/resume (source: Vercel Sandbox pricing and quotas)	differs
Self-host	Yes, Apache-2.0 (source: E2B runtime (GitHub))	not published	Vercel: no figure
Your own cloud (BYOC)	Yes (source: E2B homepage)	not published	Vercel: no figure
GPU	No (source: E2B Pricing)	not published	Vercel: no figure
SDKs	Python, JavaScript/TypeScript (source: E2B Pricing)	JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, CLI (source: Vercel Sandbox pricing and quotas)	differs
SOC 2	Type II (source: E2B homepage)	Type II (source: Vercel Security)	same
Free tier	Hobby: $0 plan fee, one-time $100 usage credit, 10 concurrent sandboxes, 1-hour sessions. (source: E2B Pricing)	Hobby: 5 active CPU-hours, 420 GB-hours memory, 5,000 creations per month. (source: Vercel Sandbox pricing and quotas)	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 Vercel instead of E2B when

your agents idle between tool calls: Vercel bills CPU only while it is busy, while E2B meters wall-clock time.
you are prototyping: Hobby: 5 active CPU-hours, 420 GB-hours memory, 5,000 creations per month.

Stay on E2B when

pause has to keep running memory as well as files: E2B's pause saves both, and Vercel does not state memory state in our data.
price decides it: Vercel lists $0.341 an hour for the 2 vCPU / 4 GiB box against $0.166 on E2B at full CPU; idle time between tool calls bills less.
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 Vercel facts

Source per value

Isolation Isolation technology the vendor states for each sandbox.: Firecracker microVM 2
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.: active CPU 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.: $0.128 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.: $0.0212 1
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.: Yes 1
Free tier detail What the free tier or credit includes, as published.: Hobby: 5 active CPU-hours, 420 GB-hours memory, 5,000 creations per 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.: "Sandboxes start in milliseconds" (no figure published) 1
Max session length Longest single sandbox session by plan, as published.: 45 min (Hobby), 24 h (Pro/Enterprise) per session; persistent sandboxes resume indefinitely 1
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.: Not published
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).: JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, CLI 1
Regions Published regions or region count.: 19 regions (default iad1) 1
Max vCPU per sandbox vCPU Largest published vCPU count per sandbox on any self-serve or enterprise plan.: 32 1
Max memory per sandbox GiB Largest published memory per sandbox.: 64 1
Concurrency Published concurrent sandbox limits by plan.: 10 (Hobby), 10,000 (Pro/Enterprise) 1
SOC 2 SOC 2 status as stated by the vendor.: Type II 3
HIPAA Vendor offers HIPAA-compliant usage/BAA (on any plan).: Yes 3
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.: $0.3408 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.: 2.06 1
Status Preview, experimental, beta, sunset or self-hosting caveats the vendor documents.: Not published

Pricing model: usage
From: $0.128 active vCPU-hour
Pricing note: iad1 rates: $0.128 per active CPU-hour, $0.0212 per provisioned GB-hour, $0.60 per 1M creations, snapshots $0.08/GB-month. Pro usage draws on the $20/month plan credit first. Pricing checked 2026-11-09.

Sources

Vercel Sandbox pricing and quotas accessed 2026-11-09
Vercel Sandbox docs accessed 2026-11-09
Vercel Security accessed 2026-11-09

Vercel in the E2B comparisons

E2B alternatives with microVM or VM isolationWhich E2B alternatives give each sandbox its own kernel? 26 listed.

Compare with other E2B alternatives

All 41

Runloop vs E2B $0.317/hr, 1.91x E2B, microVM
Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Code Interpreter vs E2B $0.217/hr, 1.31x E2B, microVM
Tensorlake vs E2B $0.200/hr, 1.21x E2B, Firecracker microVM
AWS Lambda MicroVMs vs E2B no comparable hourly price, Firecracker microVM
Azure Container Apps Dynamic Sessions vs E2B no comparable hourly price, Hyper-V

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