Beam vs Upstash Box
Beam is a serverless GPU platform whose sandboxes are gVisor containers that can run Docker and attach a GPU. Upstash Box is a container built for one AI agent, with coding agents built in, that pauses when idle and bills only the CPU it uses.
The companies and products
Beam
Beam is a serverless cloud for GPU inference, sandboxes and background jobs, built on its open-source runtime Beta9.
Beam runs functions, REST endpoints, task queues, pods, sandboxes and VMs on CPUs and GPUs, all from a Python or TypeScript SDK. A sandbox is a container isolated with gVisor that starts in a second or two, lives until you terminate it or its time to live runs out, and can be saved as a filesystem image or a memory snapshot. Beam VMs are a separate CPU product: a microVM with its own kernel, systemd and a root disk that stays when it stops. Much of Beam is a GPU serverless platform for AI teams.
- Bring your own cloud
- Management fee per vCPU and GB of RAM, on top of your own cloud bill
Upstash Box
Upstash Box is a cloud computer for AI agents from Upstash, the company known for serverless Redis, Vector and QStash.
Each box is a Docker container with its own filesystem, shell, git and an optional coding agent such as Claude Code, Codex or OpenCode, which you drive from TypeScript or Python SDKs. A box pauses when it sits idle, keeps its files, and you pay for the CPU it actually uses. Upstash built it to run its own Context7 service and opened it to everyone in March 2026.
Which use cases each one fits
For each use case, Battleships prices every sandbox provider on the same workload and sorts them from the cheapest monthly bill up. “8th cheapest of 345” means 7 of the other 344 providers run that workload, with every feature it needs, for less. “With limits” means the provider runs it but misses something, so it is listed after every full match. Open a use case for its whole ranking and what each provider misses.
| Use case and its workload | Beam: price rank | Upstash Box: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month A software factory needs Docker for databases and test services: Beam sandboxes can run it with docker_enabled, an Upstash box cannot, and boat runs it in a full VM with systemd and /dev/kvm. | 69th of 367, with limits $551 a month | 61st of 367, with limits $464 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB | 115th of 366, with limits $651 a month | 103rd of 366, with limits $475 a month | 5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month |
| Code interpreter bursts 100 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 200,000 sessions of 1 min a month Both fit short code runs well: Beam sandboxes start in a second or two and end on a timer, and an idle Upstash box costs no CPU. | 8th cheapest of 345 $117 a month | 10th cheapest of 345 $119 a month | 186th of 345, with limits $2,000 a month |
| Sandboxes for your users 300 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 23 min a month All three fit; Upstash wakes a user's paused box on the next request, Beam gives each user a quick container, and boat gives each one a full VM with hosting. | 3rd cheapest of 361 $290 a month | 2nd cheapest of 361 $222 a month | Cheapest of 361 $209 a month |
| RL rollouts 1,000 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 1,000,000 sessions of 3 min a month | 341st of 360, with limits $939 a month | 352nd of 360, with limits $8,068 a month | 34th of 360, with limits $2,000 a month |
| Agent evals 250 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 15,000 sessions of 20 min a month Beam fits eval fleets better than Upstash here, since its Team plan runs 1,000 CPU containers at once and bills per second. | 13th cheapest of 364 $251 a month | 52nd cheapest of 364 $1,011 a month | 10th cheapest of 364 $200 a month |
| CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month CI jobs that build containers fit Beam, which can run Docker in a sandbox, better than Upstash; jobs that need /dev/kvm for Android or VM images need boat. | 12th cheapest of 377 $171 a month | 120th cheapest of 377 $1,520 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB All three make a cheap always-on box; Upstash's keep-alive box is a flat price, a Beam VM keeps its 50 GiB root disk, and boat gives a full VM with Docker. | 13th cheapest of 368 $21 a month | 10th cheapest of 368 $20 a month | 18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month |
| Computer-use agents 50 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 20,000 sessions of 15 min a month Neither Beam nor Upstash has a desktop for computer use; Upstash has a headless Chromium, and boat streams a Linux desktop at 60fps. | 111th of 369, with limits $237 a month | 73rd of 369, with limits $76 a month | 6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month |
| Browser-use agents 50 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 10 min a month | 195th of 367, with limits $176 a month | 49th of 367, with limits $38 a month | 7th cheapest of 367 $200 a month |
| Scraping & bots (startup scale) 50 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 100,000 sessions of 3 min a month | 200th of 346, with limits $131 a month | 37th cheapest of 346 $400 a month | 6th cheapest of 346 $90 a month |
| Mass scraping & bots (undetectable) 1,000 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 3,000,000 sessions of 2 min a month | 42nd of 338, with limits $923 a month | 200th of 338, with limits $8,000 a month | 71st of 338, with limits $1,800 a month |
| Parallel red teaming 200 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 5,000 sessions of 30 min a month | 175th of 360, with limits $155 a month | 225th of 360, with limits $259 a month | 2nd cheapest of 360 $200 a month |
| GPU eval jobs 10 at once · 8 vCPU / 32 GB · 500 sessions of 30 min a month Only Beam has GPUs, from RTX 4090 to H100 and B200; Upstash Box and boat are CPU only. | Cheapest of 98 $458 a month | Can't run it | Can't run it |
| macOS agents 5 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 1,000 sessions of 20 min a month | Can't run it | Can't run it | Can't run it |
Key features
| Feature | Beam | Upstash Box | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isolation | gVisor container by default; separate Beam VMs are CPU microVMs with their own kernel | Docker container per box on AWS | Full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts |
| Docker inside | Yes, in sandboxes with docker_enabled | Not documented; the box is itself a Docker container | Yes, Docker and systemd run as on any Linux server |
| Nested virtualization | Not documented | No; boxes are containers | Yes, /dev/kvm for Android emulators and VMs |
| GPUs | GPU sandboxes and serverless GPUs up to H100, H200 and B200 | No, CPU only | No, CPU only |
| Idle and resume | A sandbox runs and bills until you terminate it or its time to live ends; Beam VMs keep their disk while stopped | Pauses itself when idle and keeps its files; an idle running box costs no CPU | Disk saved every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing |
| Wake on request | No | Yes; a request to a public URL resumes a paused box | No; a stopped sandbox is started by API |
| Fork and snapshots | Memory snapshot of a running sandbox with its processes, restored into new sandboxes | Filesystem snapshot of a running box, then start many new boxes from it | Fork a running sandbox with its disk |
| Desktop and browser | No desktop or browser product | Managed headless Chromium with AI page actions and CDP; no desktop | Linux desktop streamed at 60fps with Chromium and computer-use tools |
| Coding agents | None preinstalled; you install and run them through process exec | Claude Code, Codex and OpenCode built in, with run and stream APIs, webhooks and scheduled prompts | Claude Code, Codex and other agents preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Keeping API keys out of the sandbox | Secrets are environment variables inside the sandbox | Host proxy injects headers into outbound HTTPS, set when the box is created | Credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; switch a credential to another account when credits run out |
| Inbound access | Public HTTPS URL per exposed port with no built-in auth; no raw TCP | HTTPS URL per port, public unless you add a token or basic auth; SSH through a gateway; no raw TCP | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected by default; raw TCP |
| Outbound rules | Block all, or allow up to 10 CIDR ranges, changeable while running | Allow all, deny all, or allow and deny by domain and CIDR, changeable on a running box | Open internet, no provider-side allowlist |
| Regions | US only | US only (AWS us-east-1) | EU only (Germany, Finland, France) |
| Self-hosting | Beta9 runtime is AGPL-3.0 and free to self-host; bring your own cloud for a fee | No | No |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Beam | Upstash Box | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | No | No | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | No | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | No | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Systemd | No | Not published | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | No | Yes |
| Browser | No | Yes | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | No | Yes |
| SSH | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | No | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Memory fork | Yes | No | No |
| Custom image (Docker or snapshot) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | No | Yes | No |
| Wake on request | No | Yes | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | No | No | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | No | No | No |
| Egress allowlist | Yes | Yes | No |
| Secret proxy | No | Yes | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | No | Yes | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | No | Yes | Yes |
| Agent harness API | No | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes | Yes | No |
| GPU | Yes | No | No |
| Windows | No | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | Yes | No |
| Self-hosting | Yes | No | No |
| BYOC | Yes | No | No |
| Open source | Yes | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Not published | No |
| SSO | No | No | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | No | No |
| EU data residency | Not published | No | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for either: Beam and Upstash Box have no result on the StarSling hpc-sandbox-benchmarks CPU test, so we cannot say which is faster at CPU work. boat did 26.69 runs per second on that test at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts. Beam's own guide says its sandboxes cold-boot in 1 to 3 seconds.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Beam and Upstash Box have no published run in this suite yet, so there is no like-for-like number to compare.
Pricing in five scenarios
Each bill is priced from the providers' public price lists by the open Battleships engine, with the cheapest plan that runs the scenario.
| Scenario | Beam, a month | Upstash Box, a month | boat, a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, 8 hours a day, 22 days a month, files kept between days | $5 · Developer | $21 · Pay as You Go | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $22 · Developer | $21 · Pay as You Go | $26 · $20/mo |
| 50 agents in parallel 50 machines of 4 vCPU / 8 GB at once, 8-hour sessions, 1,100 sessions a month, Docker inside | $410 · Team | $900 · Pay as You Go · with limits | $317 · $20/mo × 3 seats |
| Sandboxes for your users 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 30,000 sessions of 10 minutes a month, up to 300 at once | $191 · Team | $306 · Pay as You Go | $200 · $100/mo × 2 seats |
| 1,000 short jobs at once 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 1,000 at once, 3 minutes each, 200,000 jobs a month | $259 · Team | $1,822 · Pay as You Go | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Beam: Beam sandboxes bill per second for each CPU core (two vCPU) and GiB of RAM you request, until you terminate them or their time to live ends, so an idle tail is billed too. Developer has no fee; Team costs $89 a month plus usage, and there are no egress fees.
Upstash Box: A standard box bills only the CPU it uses, at $0.10, $0.20 or $0.40 per active CPU hour for Small, Medium and Large, plus $0.10 per GB-month of storage, and RAM is free. A keep-alive box costs a flat $8, $16 or $32 a month.
Upstash Box: Plans start at $20 a month, and the whole fee is usage credit. You pay per second while a sandbox runs, and a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Limits in those scenarios
Upstash does not run Docker inside a box, so the 50-agent scenario does not fit there, and its disks stop at 5, 10 or 20 GB by size. Beam's Developer plan allows 30 CPU containers at once, so 50 agents need Team, and Beam publishes no price for extra disk, so the scenarios count none. For 1,000 short jobs at once, Beam costs $259 a month against $1,822 on Upstash, while boat's $2,000 plan queues the starts.
| Scenario | Beam | Upstash Box | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays |
|
| None that bite |
| One agent that never stops |
|
| None that bite |
| 50 agents in parallel |
|
| None that bite |
| Sandboxes for your users |
|
| None that bite |
| 1,000 short jobs at once |
|
|
|
Which one should you use?
Use Beam when
your agents need GPUs or Docker in a short-lived sandbox, when you run large bursts of short jobs, or when you must self-host.
- GPUs and Docker in one platform. For agents that need a GPU or Docker, Beam sandboxes can attach a GPU and run Docker with docker_enabled.
- Memory snapshots and big bursts. Teams running many short jobs can snapshot a running sandbox with its processes and start up to 1,000 CPU containers on Team.
- Open source and your own cloud. Its Beta9 runtime is AGPL-3.0 and free to self-host, or it can run in your own cloud for a management fee.
Use Upstash Box when
your agents mostly wait, need to wake on an incoming request, should come with a coding agent built in, or must stay inside a domain allowlist.
- Idle costs no CPU. Agents that mostly wait cost little: Upstash bills only the CPU a box uses, and RAM is not billed.
- Wakes on the next request. User-facing agents that are quiet most of the day pause on their own and wake when a request reaches their URL.
- Agents built in, with domain rules. Claude Code, Codex and OpenCode come built in, and outbound traffic can be limited by domain as well as CIDR.
Where boat fits
Beam and Upstash Box both hand an agent a container in the US. If your agents do real work over hours or days, with Docker, emulators, a desktop and services others connect to, look at boat: each sandbox is a full VM whose disk is saved every minute and kept for free when it stops.
A full VM, not a container
An Upstash box cannot run Docker inside, so the 50-agent scenario does not fit there. Beam can run Docker but has no systemd in sandboxes and no /dev/kvm, so emulators and nested VMs fail on both.
A desktop the agent can see
Beam has no browser or desktop, and Upstash gives only a headless Chromium. A computer-use agent on either cannot see a screen, so desktop apps and a human watching along are out of reach unless you build it yourself.
Keys outside, hosting with control
On Beam, secrets sit as environment variables inside the sandbox, where one prompt injection can leak them. boat keeps keys in a credentials proxy for any HTTPS API and serves 50 token-protected ports plus raw TCP, which neither offers.
Use boat when your agents need a real machine: Docker, systemd, emulators, a desktop, hosting and a disk that is still there the next time it starts. Compare it one to one: boat vs Beam and boat vs Upstash Box.
Questions people ask
Is Beam cheaper than Upstash Box?
In most scenarios on this page, yes. Beam costs $410 against $900 a month for 50 agents in parallel, which also does not fit Upstash without Docker, and $259 against $1,822 for 1,000 short jobs at once. Upstash costs less only for one agent that never stops, $21 against $22.
Which is faster, Beam or Upstash Box?
We cannot say: neither has a result on the StarSling hpc-sandbox-benchmarks CPU test. boat did 26.69 runs per second on it at 4 vCPU / 8 GB.
Can Beam or Upstash Box run Docker?
Beam can run Docker inside a sandbox with docker_enabled. Upstash's docs do not offer it, since each box is itself a Docker container. boat runs Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm in a full VM.
Do Beam and Upstash Box have GPUs?
Beam does, from RTX 4090 up to H100, H200 and B200. Upstash Box is CPU only, and so is boat.
Which keeps files when the agent stops?
An Upstash box pauses when idle and keeps its files. A Beam sandbox ends with its time to live unless you save an image, use a volume or pick a Beam VM, which keeps its root disk. boat saves the disk every minute and keeps it while stopped.
Where do Beam and Upstash Box run?
Both run in the US: Beam lists no region outside the United States, and Upstash Box runs in AWS us-east-1. boat runs in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France.
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