Vercel Sandbox vs Blaxel
Both run each sandbox in a Firecracker microVM with its own kernel. Vercel Sandbox is built for short runs of code in 19 regions, with sessions that stop after 24 hours, while Blaxel sandboxes sleep a few seconds after the last connection and wake in under 25 ms with their memory intact.
The companies and products
Vercel Sandbox
Vercel is a cloud platform for web apps and agents, and Vercel Sandbox is its product for running untrusted or agent-written code in isolated Linux microVMs.
Each sandbox is a Firecracker microVM with its own kernel, started from a Vercel image, your own OCI image, or a saved snapshot. You drive it with the JavaScript or Python SDK or the sandbox CLI: run commands, move files, open ports, and set network rules. It is aimed at code interpreters, app builders, test runs and agent tools, and Vercel's docs say it is not meant to run nonstop.
Blaxel
Blaxel is a San Francisco company that runs cloud infrastructure for AI agents, and since September 2026 it is part of Baseten.
You get sandboxes, batch jobs, MCP server hosting and a model gateway. Each sandbox is a Firecracker microVM with its own kernel that drops to standby when nothing is connected and resumes in under 25 ms with its memory and running processes. It is built for agent products that start many sandboxes and want them asleep most of the time.
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, founded 2024
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. “22nd cheapest of 345” means 21 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 | Vercel Sandbox: price rank | Blaxel: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Blaxel ranks 10th and fits with a desktop and a browser, while Vercel Sandbox ranks 244th because it has neither and stops each session at 24 hours; boat ranks 3rd and adds /dev/kvm for emulators. | 244th of 367, with limits $3,351 a month | 10th cheapest of 367 $2,373 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB Blaxel suits mostly idle assistants that sleep and wake on request, while Vercel's docs say its sandboxes are not designed to run continuously. | 257th of 366, with limits $3,657 a month | 12th cheapest of 366 $2,832 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 bursts well: Blaxel ranks 14th and Vercel Sandbox ranks 22nd, and boat's start limits make it a compromise here. | 22nd cheapest of 345 $216 a month | 14th cheapest of 345 $144 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 Vercel Sandbox ranks 15th and fits 300 users at once, while Blaxel's self-serve tiers stop at 200 at once; boat ranks 1st. | 15th cheapest of 361 $1,267 a month | 101st of 361, with limits $926 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 Vercel Sandbox ranks 3rd thanks to high concurrency on Pro, while Blaxel's 200 cap on self-serve tiers makes it a compromise. | 3rd cheapest of 360 $15,761 a month | 77th of 360, with limits $4,378 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 | 69th cheapest of 364 $1,508 a month | 136th of 364, with limits $704 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 | 107th cheapest of 377 $1,144 a month | 57th cheapest of 377 $431 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Neither fits a dev box well: Vercel restarts it every 24 hours and Blaxel has no native SSH, while boat is a plain machine you SSH into and leave on. | 276th of 368, with limits $145 a month | 265th of 368, with limits $114 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 Blaxel ranks 14th with a desktop and computer use built in, while Vercel Sandbox is headless; boat ranks 6th with a 60fps desktop you can embed. | 235th of 369, with limits $952 a month | 14th cheapest of 369 $634 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 Blaxel ships a browser with browser control and Vercel Sandbox has no browser feature, so Vercel is a compromise here. | 259th of 367, with limits $486 a month | 16th cheapest of 367 $317 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 | 277th of 346, with limits $468 a month | 16th cheapest of 346 $215 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 | 234th of 338, with limits $9,960 a month | 147th of 338, with limits $4,292 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 | 283rd of 360, with limits $554 a month | 3rd cheapest of 360 $217 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 | Vercel Sandbox | Blaxel | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Firecracker microVM with its own kernel | Firecracker microVM with its own kernel | Full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts |
| Longest session | 24 hours on Pro and Enterprise, 45 minutes on Hobby; resume starts a new session | No session cap; Tier 0 and 1 delete sandboxes after 7 or 30 days | No cap on paid plans (--no-auto-stop); default TTL 1 hour, changeable |
| Sleep and wake | No idle auto-stop; memory is billed until the session ends | Standby a few seconds after the last connection, wakes in under 25 ms with memory and processes | Stop keeps the disk and costs nothing; resume boots the VM again |
| Saving files | Filesystem snapshot on stop, kept 30 days after last use by default | Files live in memory (about half the RAM); one block volume can be attached at creation | A real disk, snapshotted every minute while running and on stop |
| Desktop, browser, computer use | None; headless Linux only | Desktop and browser with computer-use and browser-control support | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer-use and browser-control APIs, embeddable stream |
| Nested virtualization | No | No: Firecracker guests do not get /dev/kvm | Yes, /dev/kvm (Android emulator, VMs) |
| SSH and systemd | No native SSH; commands through the SDK or CLI | Root, terminal through bl connect, no native SSH | Real SSH, root and systemd |
| Docker inside | Yes, with sudo | Yes, with a Docker-in-sandbox image | Yes, with root and systemd |
| Custom images | Your own OCI images from a Dockerfile, via Vercel Container Registry | Custom images built from Docker images | Named snapshots (templates), shareable by code; no Dockerfile builds |
| Coding agents | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and pi preinstalled; you start them as commands | Claude Code image you drive from its terminal or your own harness | Claude Code, Codex, pi, OpenCode and more, with an API to prompt, steer and stream events |
| Inbound access | Public URLs for up to 15 ports, no built-in auth; no raw TCP or public IP | Preview URL per port, public or token-protected; no raw TCP or public IP | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected by default; raw TCP; dedicated IPv6 or IPv4 |
| Egress rules | Allow-all, deny-all or a domain and CIDR allowlist, changeable while running; static IPs on Enterprise | Domain allow and deny lists, method and path rules, static egress IPs | Open internet; filter inside the VM with nftables |
| Keys kept outside the sandbox | Credentials brokering injects headers for any HTTPS domain you allow | Proxy fills secrets into outbound HTTPS requests (public preview) | Credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register; switch a credential to another account when one runs out |
| Regions | 19 regions across the US, Europe, Asia, South America, Africa and Australia | Oregon, North Virginia, London, Frankfurt | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Vercel Sandbox | Blaxel | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | No | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | Not published | No | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | Yes | Yes |
| Browser | No | Yes | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | Yes | Yes |
| SSH | No | No | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Fork/clone | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Memory fork | No | Yes | 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 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Agent harness API | No | 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 | No | Yes | No |
| Open source | No | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Not published | Yes | Yes |
| Spend limits | Yes | No | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Not published | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | Yes | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Yes | Yes |
Performance
All three ran the hpc-sandbox-benchmarks Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU and 8 GB in the same run on September 29, 2026. boat did 26.69 runs per second, Blaxel 19.48 and Vercel Sandbox 12.96, so Blaxel did about 1.5 times the work of Vercel in the same time. This measures CPU speed only, not start time.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Blaxel measured on: Sandbox (active time, RAM-only pricing, CPU bundled).
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 | Vercel Sandbox, a month | Blaxel, 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 | $57 · Pro | $33 · Pay-as-you-go Tier 1 | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $236 · Pro · with limits | $120 · Pay-as-you-go Tier 1 | $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 | $2,884 · Pro | $1,489 · Pay-as-you-go Tier 1 | $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 | $828 · Pro | $396 · Pay-as-you-go Tier 2 · 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 | $3,152 · Pro | $876 · Pay-as-you-go Tier 2 · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Vercel Sandbox: Vercel charges for CPU only while your code uses it, but charges for memory for the whole time the sandbox runs, idle time included, plus a small fee per sandbox created and a monthly fee per GB of snapshots. The $20 Pro credit is shared with your other Vercel usage.
Blaxel: Blaxel charges for allocated RAM per second while a sandbox is active, meaning it has an open connection, with CPU included. In standby you pay only snapshot storage, and volumes are billed on their full size.
Blaxel: boat charges a flat price per size, per second, only while the machine runs; a stopped sandbox costs nothing. Plans start at $20 a month, and all of the fee is usage credit.
Limits in those scenarios
For one agent that never stops, Vercel ends each session at 24 hours and running processes start over, while Blaxel and boat keep going. For sandboxes for your users and 1,000 short jobs at once, Blaxel's self-serve tiers allow at most 200 sandboxes at once, standby ones included, so you need a sales tier; Vercel fits both on Pro. boat fits 300 users at once but not the 1,000-job burst, because even its $2,000 plan allows 600 starts an hour and 2,400 a day.
| Scenario | Vercel Sandbox | Blaxel | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays | None that bite | 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 | None that bite |
| Sandboxes for your users | None that bite |
| None that bite |
| 1,000 short jobs at once | None that bite |
|
|
Which one should you use?
Use Vercel Sandbox when
you run many short bursts of code in parallel, already build on Vercel, or need to run close to users far from the US and Europe.
- Regions all over the world. Useful if your users are spread out: Vercel Sandbox runs in 19 regions, from Virginia to Tokyo and Sydney.
- Room for big bursts. Pro allows thousands of sandboxes at once, so large parallel runs fit without a sales call.
- Fits a Vercel stack. If you already deploy on Vercel, sandboxes boot from your Dockerfile image and use your project's login tokens.
Use Blaxel when
your sandboxes sit idle most of the time and must wake in milliseconds with their memory, or your agents need a desktop and a browser.
- Sleeps in seconds, wakes in milliseconds. Useful if sandboxes sit idle most of the time: one sleeps after the last connection and wakes in under 25 ms.
- No 24-hour cut. A Blaxel sandbox has no session cap, so a long agent task is not stopped in the middle.
- A desktop and a browser. Computer-use and browser agents get a desktop and a browser built in, with no screen to build yourself.
Where boat fits
If your agents do real work for hours on one machine, look at boat. It is a whole Linux VM with a real disk, no session cap on paid plans, a 60fps desktop, and an API to drive the agents inside from outside.
A whole Linux machine
Neither Firecracker guest gets /dev/kvm, so an Android emulator or a VM will not start on Vercel or Blaxel. Neither has native SSH, so editors and scp need a workaround. boat has /dev/kvm, systemd and real SSH.
Work that runs all day on a disk that stays
Vercel stops each session at 24 hours and processes start over. Blaxel keeps files in memory, about half the RAM, unless you attach a volume at creation. boat has no session cap and saves its disk every minute.
A faster CPU
On the same benchmark boat did 26.69 runs per second, Blaxel 19.48 and Vercel Sandbox 12.96. Every install, build and test an agent waits on takes about 1.4 times as long on Blaxel and twice as long on Vercel.
Use boat when your agents work for hours on one machine: builds, tests, Docker, emulators and a desktop with a browser, on a faster CPU, with an API to drive the agents inside from outside. Compare it one to one: boat vs Vercel Sandbox and boat vs Blaxel.
Questions people ask
Is Vercel Sandbox cheaper than Blaxel?
No, Blaxel costs less in all five of our scenarios: one workday agent is $33 a month on Blaxel against $57 on Vercel, and 50 parallel agents are $1,489 against $2,884. But Blaxel's self-serve tiers cap you at 200 sandboxes at once, so the 300-user and 1,000-job scenarios need a sales tier, while Vercel fits them at $828 and $3,152. boat is $20 and $317 for the first two.
Which is faster, Vercel Sandbox or Blaxel?
On the same Node.js build-and-test benchmark at 4 vCPU and 8 GB, Blaxel did 19.48 runs per second and Vercel Sandbox 12.96, about 1.5 times the work. boat did 26.69 on the same test.
Can Vercel Sandbox and Blaxel run Docker?
Yes, both. Vercel lets you run Docker with sudo, and Blaxel has a Docker-in-sandbox image. Neither gives you /dev/kvm, so Android emulators and VMs do not run inside, while boat exposes /dev/kvm.
Can they run 24/7?
Vercel Sandbox cannot as one session: it stops after 24 hours on Pro, and its docs say sandboxes are not designed to run continuously. Blaxel has no session cap, but its lower tiers delete sandboxes after 7 or 30 days. boat has no session cap on paid plans.
Which one has a desktop for computer use?
Blaxel has a desktop and a browser with computer-use support. Vercel Sandbox is headless Linux only. boat streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium and computer-use and browser-control APIs.
Where do they run?
Vercel Sandbox runs in 19 regions around the world. Blaxel runs in Oregon, North Virginia, London and Frankfurt. boat runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France.
Try boat
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