Freestyle vs Beam
Freestyle gives each agent a full KVM virtual machine with systemd and Docker that can pause with its memory and wake on the next request. Beam is a serverless GPU platform whose sandboxes are quick gVisor containers, with a separate line of CPU VMs.
The companies and products
Freestyle
Freestyle sells full Linux virtual machines for AI agents, built for long running, complex tasks.
Each Freestyle VM is a KVM virtual machine with its own kernel, booted from an Ubuntu base snapshot with systemd, Docker and coding agent CLIs preinstalled. VMs can be paused with their memory, snapshotted while running, forked and woken by the next request, and every VM starts behind a default-deny firewall. It is built for teams that give each agent or each user its own machine, driven from a TypeScript SDK, a CLI or an API.
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
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. “40th cheapest of 345” means 39 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 | Freestyle: price rank | Beam: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Freestyle and boat both give a full VM with Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm, while a Beam sandbox is a gVisor container without systemd; boat's CPUs did about 2.8 times Freestyle's work. | 241st of 367, with limits $3,311 a month | 69th of 367, with limits $551 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB | 263rd of 366, with limits $4,195 a month | 115th of 366, with limits $651 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 Beam fits short code runs best of the three: sandboxes start in a second or two, bill per second and go away when their timer ends. | 40th cheapest of 345 $482 a month | 8th cheapest of 345 $117 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; Beam costs less than Freestyle here, Freestyle can wake a paused user VM on its next request, and boat gives each user a full VM with hosting. | 16th cheapest of 361 $1,358 a month | 3rd cheapest of 361 $290 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 Freestyle can snapshot a running VM with its memory and boot copies from it; Beam can restore a memory snapshot into new sandboxes too. | 107th of 360, with limits $6,600 a month | 341st of 360, with limits $939 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 | 53rd cheapest of 364 $1,046 a month | 13th cheapest of 364 $251 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 Beam runs CI jobs for much less than Freestyle, but jobs that need /dev/kvm for Android emulators or VM images need Freestyle or boat. | 168th of 377, with limits $625 a month | 12th cheapest of 377 $171 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB A machine you keep all month fits a Beam VM, which keeps a 50 GiB root disk while stopped, or a boat sandbox, which keeps its disk for free. | 98th cheapest of 368 $151 a month | 13th cheapest of 368 $21 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 ships a desktop: Freestyle has guides to install one yourself and Beam has no desktop product, while boat streams a 60fps desktop with computer use built in. | 234th of 369, with limits $940 a month | 111th of 369, with limits $237 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 | 257th of 367, with limits $482 a month | 195th of 367, with limits $176 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 | 278th of 346, with limits $482 a month | 200th of 346, with limits $131 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 | 183rd of 338, with limits $6,560 a month | 42nd of 338, with limits $923 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 | 272nd of 360, with limits $482 a month | 175th of 360, with limits $155 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 Beam has GPU sandboxes and serverless GPUs up to H100, H200 and B200; Freestyle offers private GPU sandboxes only on Enterprise, and boat is CPU only. | Can't run it | Cheapest of 98 $458 a month | 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 | Freestyle | Beam | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Full KVM VM with its own kernel per sandbox | gVisor container by default; separate Beam VMs are CPU microVMs with their own kernel | Full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts |
| CPU benchmark (4 vCPU / 8 GB) | 9.64 runs/s | No result on this test | 26.69 runs/s |
| Root, systemd and Docker | Yes; systemd is pid 1 and Docker runs from boot | Docker in sandboxes with docker_enabled; systemd only in Beam VMs | Yes, like a normal Ubuntu server |
| Nested virtualization | Yes, full KVM support | Not documented | Yes, /dev/kvm for Android emulators and VMs |
| Biggest machine | 32 vCPU / 64 GiB on Pro, 64 / 128 with custom limits | Max sandbox size not published | 16 vCPU / 32 GB on the $100 plan and above |
| Memory pause, fork and wake | Pauses with memory, clones a running VM, wakes a paused VM on the next request | Memory snapshot of a running sandbox, restored into new sandboxes; no wake on request | Forks a running sandbox with its disk; disk saved every minute, resume boots again |
| Idle billing | No idle timeout by default; a paused VM bills for its storage | A sandbox bills until terminated or its time to live ends; a stopped Beam VM has no compute charge | A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk |
| GPUs | Private GPU sandboxes on Enterprise | GPU sandboxes and serverless GPUs up to H100, H200 and B200 | No, CPU only |
| Desktop, browser and computer use | Guides to install GNOME or Xvfb, VNC and Chromium yourself | No desktop or browser product | Linux desktop streamed at 60fps, Chromium and computer use built in |
| Coding agents | claude, codex, opencode and openclaw preinstalled, run through exec or a terminal | None preinstalled; you install and run them through process exec | Seven agents preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Keeping API keys out of the sandbox | Credentials injected at the edge for HTTPS headers, Postgres and S3 | Secrets are environment variables inside the sandbox | Credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; switch to another account when credits run out |
| Inbound access | HTTPS on free style.dev names or your own domain, forward auth, other public protocols | Public HTTPS URL per exposed port with no built-in auth; no raw TCP | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected by default; raw TCP |
| Outbound rules | Default-deny firewall with allow rules by IP, VM, VPC or exact domain | Block all outbound traffic, or allow up to 10 CIDR ranges | Open internet, no provider-side allowlist |
| Regions | Not listed; the docs name a San Jose, US data center | US only, on AWS and Google Cloud | EU only (Germany, Finland, France) |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Freestyle | Beam | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | No | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | Yes | No | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | No | Yes |
| Browser | No | No | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | No | Yes |
| SSH | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | Yes | No | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | Yes | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Memory fork | Yes | Yes | No |
| Custom image (Docker or snapshot) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | Yes | No | No |
| Wake on request | Yes | No | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | Yes | No | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | No | No | No |
| Egress allowlist | Yes | Yes | No |
| Secret proxy | Yes | No | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | Yes | No | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | Yes | No | Yes |
| Agent harness API | No | No | Yes |
| MCP server | No | Yes | No |
| GPU | Yes | Yes | No |
| Windows | No | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | No | No |
| Self-hosting | No | Yes | No |
| BYOC | No | Yes | No |
| Open source | No | Yes | No |
| Scoped API keys | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | No | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | Yes | Not published | No |
| SSO | Yes | No | No |
| SOC 2 | Not published | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | Not published | Yes | No |
| EU data residency | No | Not published | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
On the hpc-sandbox-benchmarks Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, boat did 26.69 runs per second and Freestyle did 9.64, so boat did about 2.8 times the CPU work. Beam has no result on this test, so we cannot say how its CPUs compare. This test measures CPU speed only: Freestyle advertises VM starts in about 65 ms, and Beam's 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 has 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 | Freestyle, a month | Beam, 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 | $27 · Free | $5 · Developer | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $159 · Free | $22 · Developer | $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 | $2,139 · Pro | $410 · Team | $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 | $581 · Pro | $191 · Team | $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 | $1,305 · Pro · with limits | $259 · Team | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Freestyle: Freestyle bills per second for the vCPU, RAM and disk allocated to a VM, busy or idle, after monthly allowances of 200 vCPU-hours, 400 GiB-hours of RAM and 60,000 GiB-hours of storage. On Free those allowances are hard stops; Hobby and Pro have a $50 or $500 monthly minimum that counts as usage.
Beam: Beam sandboxes bill per second for each CPU core (two vCPU) and GiB of RAM until you terminate them or their time to live ends, so an idle tail is billed too. Developer has no fee; Team adds $89 a month with no usage credit, and there are no egress fees.
Beam: 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
Freestyle's Free allowances are hard stops, and its Pro plan allows 400 concurrent VMs, which is why it does not fit 1,000 short jobs at once. Beam's Developer plan allows 30 CPU containers at once, so 50 parallel agents need the Team plan, which allows 1,000. Beam publishes no price for disk beyond what a VM includes, so its scenarios count no disk cost. boat's start limits are lower: its $2,000 plan queues starts above 90 a minute.
| Scenario | Freestyle | Beam | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays | None that bite |
| None that bite |
| One agent that never stops | None that bite |
| None that bite |
| 50 agents in parallel | None that bite |
| None that bite |
| Sandboxes for your users | None that bite |
| None that bite |
| 1,000 short jobs at once |
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Which one should you use?
Use Freestyle when
your agents need a full VM with systemd and nested virtualization, when VMs must sleep with their memory and wake on the next request, or when you need domain-level outbound rules.
- A real VM, not a container. For agents that need systemd, Docker from boot or nested virtualization, every Freestyle sandbox is a full KVM VM.
- Pause with memory, wake on request. For VMs that sleep between requests, Freestyle resumes the same processes and can wake on the next incoming traffic.
- Domain-level network rules. Each VM starts with no network access, and you allow exactly the IPs, VMs, VPCs or domains it may reach.
Use Beam when
your agents need GPUs, when you run many short code runs and want the lowest bill, or when you want to self-host the open-source runtime.
- GPUs in the same platform. For work that needs a GPU, Beam offers GPU sandboxes and serverless GPUs from RTX 4090 up to H100, H200 and B200.
- Lower bills and big bursts. Beam costs less than Freestyle in every scenario here, and its Team plan fits 1,000 short jobs at once.
- Open source and your own cloud. Its Beta9 runtime is AGPL-3.0 and free to self-host, and it can run in your own cloud for a management fee.
Where boat fits
If your agents do real work for hours, like installs, builds, Docker, emulators and a browser, look at boat. Each sandbox is a full VM on fast CPUs with a desktop, coding agents and a credentials proxy built in, and a stopped sandbox costs nothing.
A full VM on fast CPUs
A Beam sandbox is a gVisor container with no systemd and no documented /dev/kvm. Freestyle is a full VM, but it did 9.64 runs/s on the CPU test against boat's 26.69, so every build waits about 2.8 times longer.
A desktop and browser, ready
Beam has no desktop or browser product, and on Freestyle you install GNOME or Xvfb, VNC and Chromium into your own snapshot, then build the screenshot and click layer yourself before an agent can use a web page.
Agents and keys driven from outside
On Freestyle you run agent CLIs through exec and parse the output; on Beam you install them yourself and secrets sit as environment variables the agent can read. boat has a prompt and steer API and keeps real keys in a proxy.
Use boat when your agents do real work for hours on a full VM with fast CPUs, Docker, /dev/kvm, a 60fps desktop and a browser, with an API to drive the agents inside from outside. Compare it one to one: boat vs Freestyle and boat vs Beam.
Questions people ask
Is Freestyle cheaper than Beam?
No. Beam costs less in all five scenarios on this page, such as $22 against $159 a month for one agent that never stops, and $410 against $2,139 for 50 agents in parallel. Beam publishes no price for extra disk, so its numbers count none.
Which is faster, Freestyle or Beam?
We cannot say for CPU work: Freestyle did 9.64 runs per second on the hpc-sandbox-benchmarks test at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, and Beam has no result on it. boat did 26.69 on the same test. For starts, Freestyle advertises about 65 ms and Beam says 1 to 3 seconds.
Can Beam and Freestyle run Docker?
Yes. Freestyle runs Docker from boot under systemd in a full VM, and Beam supports Docker inside a sandbox with docker_enabled. Only Freestyle documents nested virtualization for Android emulators and VMs, and boat has /dev/kvm too.
Is a Beam sandbox a VM like Freestyle's?
Not by default. Beam sandboxes are containers using runc and gVisor, with an opt-in microVM mode for CPU sandboxes, and Beam sells separate CPU VMs with systemd. Every Freestyle VM and every boat sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel.
Which one has GPUs?
Beam does, with GPU sandboxes and serverless GPUs from RTX 4090 up to H100, H200 and B200. Freestyle lists private GPU sandboxes only for Enterprise customers, and boat is CPU only.
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