Railway vs Together Code Sandbox
Railway is an app platform whose sandboxes are self-serve VMs that are destroyed when they go idle. Together Code Sandbox runs VMs you can save with their memory, but Together has to enable it for your organization, and its only self-serve product is a Python Code Interpreter.
The companies and products
Railway
Railway is a cloud platform for deploying web apps, servers and databases, which now also sells sandboxes and cloud agents.
Railway's main product is app hosting: you deploy services and databases as containers on its own hardware. In 2026 it added Sandboxes, isolated Linux VMs you create from the CLI or a TypeScript SDK, run commands in and destroy, and Cloud Agents, a personal VM for running a coding agent, in early access. It suits teams already hosting on Railway who want throwaway machines next to their apps.
Together Code Sandbox
Together AI is a cloud for running and training AI models, and Code Sandbox is its product for running code in isolated VMs.
You build a snapshot from a Docker image or Dockerfile on Together's builder, then start sandboxes from it and run commands and file operations through the together-sandbox SDK or CLI. When a sandbox ends you can save its disk, and its memory too, as a new snapshot to start more sandboxes from. It is aimed at model-generated code, agent tool calls and reinforcement learning rollouts, and it must be enabled for your organization by Together. Together also sells Code Interpreter, a separate API that runs Python code in short sessions.
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. “16th cheapest of 366” means 15 of the other 365 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 | Railway: price rank | Together Code Sandbox: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month | 51st of 367, with limits $342 a month | 65th of 367, with limits $528 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB Railway fits an always-on assistant if you set the idle timeout to 0, with memory billing the whole time; Together's self-serve sessions end after an hour. | 16th cheapest of 366 $3,977 a month | 152nd of 366, with limits $1,095 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 Railway fits short code runs cleanly, billing for CPU used and destroying the sandbox after; Together's Code Interpreter runs only Python, in 60-minute sessions that keep nothing. | 36th cheapest of 345 $413 a month | 326th of 345, with limits $2,190 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 Railway allows 100 sandboxes per environment on Pro, and Together exposes every port publicly with preview URLs still coming soon; boat gives each user a token-protected HTTPS URL. | 42nd of 361, with limits $290 a month | 234th of 361, with limits $900 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 Together can save a sandbox with its memory and start many copies from it, which suits rollouts that branch from one warm state, but only once Together enables the VM product. | 78th of 360, with limits $4,450 a month | 315th of 360, with limits $21,900 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 Railway can fork a running sandbox and Together documents a Harbor guide for agent evals; boat ships the coding agents with an API to prompt, steer and follow each run. | 108th of 364, with limits $364 a month | 258th of 364, with limits $450 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 need Docker inside, which neither Railway's nor Together's sandbox docs mention and boat documents on every machine. | 113th cheapest of 377 $1,210 a month | 251st of 377, with limits $180 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Railway's Cloud Agents keep a disk and can sleep and wake, though they are early access; Together sandboxes have no idle detection or wake on request. | 66th cheapest of 368 $89 a month | 210th of 368, with limits $22 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 Both Railway and Together sandboxes are headless, so computer-use agents need the 60fps desktop and Chromium that boat streams. | 77th of 369, with limits $103 a month | 184th of 369, with limits $600 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 | 53rd of 367, with limits $93 a month | 301st of 367, with limits $900 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 | 60th cheapest of 346 $570 a month | 219th of 346, with limits $180 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 | 109th of 338, with limits $2,988 a month | 124th of 338, with limits $3,600 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 | 43rd of 360, with limits $574 a month | 167th of 360, with limits $150 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 | Can't run it | 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 | Railway | Together Code Sandbox | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Getting started | Self-serve on Free, Hobby or Pro, from the CLI or a TypeScript SDK | The VM SDK and CLI must be enabled for your organization by Together; Code Interpreter is self-serve from prepaid credits | Sign up and start a sandbox from the API, CLI or dashboard |
| Isolation | Sandboxes are isolated Linux VMs; app services are containers | A VM per sandbox on Together's infrastructure | Full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts |
| Machine size | Up to 8 vCPU / 8 GB on Hobby, 32 vCPU / 32 GB on Pro | 0.1 to 16 cores, 1 to 8 GB of memory per core; disk size fixed | 2 to 16 vCPU with 2 GB per vCPU, up to 16 vCPU / 32 GB on the $100 plan and above |
| When the sandbox goes idle | Destroyed after the idle timeout, 30 minutes by default, or never if set to 0 | Time to live counts from creation; no idle detection and no wake on request | You stop it; the disk is kept and a stopped sandbox costs nothing |
| Saving state | Named disk checkpoints you take by hand, with no memory | End a sandbox with a snapshot of its disk, or disk and memory; new sandboxes resume with processes running | Disk saved every minute and on stop; resume boots the machine again |
| Fork | Fork a running sandbox's filesystem | No live fork: the parent stops, then you start many sandboxes from its snapshot | Fork a running sandbox; the original keeps running |
| Docker, root and KVM | Root shell on Ubuntu; the sandbox docs do not mention Docker or /dev/kvm | Commands run as user 1000 by default, root on request; Docker inside and nested virtualization not documented | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine |
| Reaching the sandbox | Up to 10 public HTTPS domains, set only at creation; SSH and port forwarding | All ports public; preview URLs coming soon; experimental inbound allowlist; no SSH | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected by default; raw TCP; SSH |
| Coding agents | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and Pi preinstalled; you run them headless through exec | Run your own agent through execs; a Harbor guide for agent evals | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Keeping API keys out of the sandbox | Secrets go in as environment variables, or are signed in and saved in a checkpoint | No credentials proxy documented | Credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; switch a credential to another account when credits run out |
| Desktop and computer use | Headless: terminal, exec and SSH only | Headless: command and file access only | 60fps desktop with Chromium, computer use and browser control |
| What else runs next to it | Postgres, Redis and app services in the same project, on a private network the sandbox can join | Model inference, fine-tuning and GPU clusters on the same Together account and API key | Sandboxes only; host your own services inside a sandbox |
| Hosted Python runner | No separate product; run code in a sandbox | Code Interpreter API runs Python in sessions billed per 60 minutes | No separate product; run code through exec in a sandbox |
| Regions | US West, US East, Amsterdam and Singapore | Not published | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Railway | Together Code Sandbox | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | No | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | No | Yes |
| Browser | Yes | No | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | No | Yes |
| SSH | Yes | No | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Memory fork | No | 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 | No | No | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | No | No | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | No | No | No |
| Egress allowlist | No | No | No |
| Secret proxy | No | No | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | No | No | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | Yes | No | Yes |
| Agent harness API | Yes | No | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes | Yes | No |
| GPU | No | No | No |
| Windows | No | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | No | No |
| Self-hosting | No | No | No |
| BYOC | Yes | No | No |
| Open source | No | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | Yes | Not published | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | No | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for Railway or Together Code Sandbox: neither has a result in StarSling's hpc-sandbox-benchmarks. boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts, so we cannot say which of the three is fastest.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Railway and Together Code Sandbox 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 | Railway, a month | Together Code Sandbox, 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 | $16 · Hobby · with limits | $5 · Together pay-as-you-go (prepaid credits; Code Interpreter only) · with limits | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $70 · Hobby · with limits | $22 · Together pay-as-you-go (prepaid credits; Code Interpreter only) · with limits | $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 | $739 · Hobby · with limits | $264 · Together pay-as-you-go (prepaid credits; Code Interpreter only) · 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 | $223 · Pro · with limits | $900 · Together pay-as-you-go (prepaid credits; Code Interpreter only) · with limits | $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 | $781 · Pro · with limits | $6,000 · Together pay-as-you-go (prepaid credits; Code Interpreter only) · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Railway: Railway bills sandboxes per second at $50 per vCPU-month on CPU actually used and $50 per GB-month on memory in use, which keeps billing while a sandbox waits. The Hobby ($5) and Pro ($20) fees count toward usage, and sandbox disk has no published price, so our bills leave disk out.
Together Code Sandbox: Together lists Code Sandbox at $0.0446 per vCPU-hour and $0.0149 per GiB-hour, but the VMs must be enabled for your organization, so the tables price Code Interpreter: $0.03 per 60-minute session from prepaid credits.
Together Code Sandbox: Plans start at $20 a month, and the whole fee becomes usage credit spent per second while sandboxes run. A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Limits in those scenarios
Neither Railway nor Together is a clean fit in any scenario here. Railway is an app platform first with no published sandbox disk price, and it caps sandboxes per environment at 50 on Hobby and 100 on Pro, so 300 user sandboxes or 1,000 jobs at once need several environments. The Together column is Code Interpreter, whose sessions end after an hour, keep no disk and run only Python. On boat, the 1,000-job burst is queued above 90 starts a minute and needs more starts per day than the $2,000 plan allows.
| Scenario | Railway | Together Code Sandbox | 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 Railway when
you want self-serve sandbox VMs today, next to apps and databases you already host there, or in US and Asia regions.
- Sign up and start today. Useful if you need sandbox VMs now: Railway's are self-serve, while Together's VM product waits on Together enabling it.
- Your apps and databases in one place. Useful if your app already runs on Railway: sandboxes can join the private network of your Postgres and services.
- Regions in the US and Asia. Useful if your users are in the US or Asia: Railway runs in California, Virginia, Amsterdam and Singapore.
Use Together Code Sandbox when
you already run models on Together and want light sandboxes you can save with their memory and branch from, or a simple Python runner billed per session.
- Memory snapshots to branch from. Useful for rollouts and test variants: save a sandbox with its memory and start many copies with processes still running.
- Sandboxes next to your models. Handy if you already run inference or fine-tuning on Together: sandboxes and models share one account and API key.
- Very small machines and a Python runner. Good for many light jobs: sandboxes start at a tenth of a core, and a Python interpreter API bills per session.
Where boat fits
Railway and Together both give you headless VMs that are built to end: one is destroyed when idle, the other when its time to live runs out. If your agents work for hours, build with Docker, use a browser or serve apps to other people, boat gives each one a full machine that stops and keeps its disk, with the agent and its keys already set up.
A disk that survives the wait
A Railway sandbox is destroyed after 30 idle minutes by default, and turning that off keeps memory billing. Together's time to live counts from creation with no wake on request. A boat sandbox stops, keeps its disk and costs nothing stopped.
Docker, KVM and a desktop
Neither Railway's nor Together's sandbox docs mention Docker inside or /dev/kvm, and both are headless. Compose stacks, Android emulators and browser tests have to be installed and checked by hand there, with no screen to watch.
Agents you drive from outside
On Railway you shell each agent through exec, and on Together you bring your own harness. Both leave API keys inside the VM. boat adds a prompt, steer and events API and a credentials proxy that keeps real keys outside.
Use boat when your agents do real work for hours: a full VM that keeps its disk, with Docker, /dev/kvm, a desktop, private HTTPS hosting and coding agents you drive from outside while their keys stay out. Compare it one to one: boat vs Railway and boat vs Together Code Sandbox.
Questions people ask
Is Railway cheaper than Together Code Sandbox?
The only self-serve Together price is Code Interpreter, which does not fit these scenarios because sessions end after an hour. It looks lower for single agents, $264 against $739 a month for 50 agents, but Railway is lower at scale: $223 against $900 for sandboxes for your users, and $781 against $6,000 for 1,000 short jobs at once.
Which is faster, Railway or Together Code Sandbox?
We cannot say. Neither has a result in StarSling's public sandbox benchmark. boat did 26.69 runs per second there at 4 vCPU / 8 GB.
Can Railway or Together Code Sandbox run Docker?
Neither documents Docker inside a sandbox. Railway gives a root shell on Ubuntu, and Together runs commands as a normal user by default with root on request. boat runs Docker, systemd, root and /dev/kvm on every machine.
Can I sign up for Together Code Sandbox right away?
Only for Code Interpreter. The together-sandbox SDK and CLI must be enabled for your organization, so you ask Together for access. Railway sandboxes and boat are both self-serve.
What happens to the sandbox when work stops?
Railway destroys a sandbox after its idle timeout, 30 minutes by default, and keeps only checkpoints you took. Together runs a sandbox until you end it or its time to live runs out, and can save its disk and memory as a snapshot. A boat sandbox stops, keeps its disk and costs nothing while stopped.
Where do Railway and Together run?
Railway has regions in California, Virginia, Amsterdam and Singapore. Together does not publish regions for Code Sandbox. boat runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France.
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