Vercel Sandbox vs Morph Cloud
Vercel Sandbox runs short sessions of untrusted code in Firecracker microVMs across 19 regions, and each session stops after 24 hours. Morph Cloud gives each agent a full VM with no session cap that can pause, branch and wake up again with its memory.
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.
Morph Cloud
Morph Cloud sells full virtual machines for AI agents that can be snapshotted, branched and restored with their memory, which it calls Infinibranch.
You get MorphVM instances as low-level building blocks and Devboxes as ready workspaces on top of them, with SSH, preview URLs and a tmux API for running coding agents you install yourself. Everything is billed in MCUs, where one MCU is 1 vCPU, 4 GB of RAM or 16 GB of disk for an hour. It is built for teams that fan agents out from one saved state, and it also sells managed GitHub Actions runners and a shared filesystem.
- Regions
- Not published
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 | Morph Cloud: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Neither has a ready desktop and browser for an agent to check the UI it built; boat ships both, plus coding agents you drive by API. | 244th of 367, with limits $3,351 a month | 198th of 367, with limits $2,288 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB Vercel's docs say sandboxes are not designed to run continuously; Morph has no session cap, and boat adds coding agents, a desktop and a credentials proxy. | 257th of 366, with limits $3,657 a month | 235th of 366, with limits $3,014 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; Morph ranks 16th and Vercel 22nd, while boat's start limits make it a compromise here. | 22nd cheapest of 345 $216 a month | 16th cheapest of 345 $154 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 Both fit sandboxes for your own users; Morph ranks 12th and Vercel 15th, and boat ranks first for the same work. | 15th cheapest of 361 $1,267 a month | 12th cheapest of 361 $905 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 ranks 3rd for many short parallel rollouts thanks to high concurrency and fast starts; Morph's memory branching suits rollouts that start from one running state. | 3rd cheapest of 360 $15,761 a month | 86th of 360, with limits $4,847 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 | 38th cheapest of 364 $675 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 Morph also sells managed GitHub Actions runners and ranks 39th, ahead of Vercel at 107th; boat ranks 4th with a runner you install inside a sandbox. | 107th cheapest of 377 $1,144 a month | 39th cheapest of 377 $355 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Morph fits a dev box that stays up all day, while Vercel restarts it every 24 hours with fresh processes. | 276th of 368, with limits $145 a month | 85th cheapest of 368 $116 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 Vercel has no desktop and Morph has a remote desktop you set up yourself; boat streams a 60fps desktop with a computer use API. | 235th of 369, with limits $952 a month | 182nd of 369, with limits $595 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 | 259th of 367, with limits $486 a month | 214th of 367, with limits $250 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 | 239th of 346, with limits $234 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 | 154th of 338, with limits $4,750 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 | 214th of 360, with limits $228 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 | Morph Cloud | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Firecracker microVM with its own kernel | Full VM 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 cap; a machine runs until you stop it or its optional TTL ends | No cap on paid plans (--no-auto-stop); default TTL 1 hour, changeable |
| Memory on resume | Not kept; a new session boots from the filesystem snapshot | Kept; a paused VM resumes with all its processes and bills only its snapshot | Not kept; the machine reboots with its disk |
| Fork a running machine | Yes, from a filesystem snapshot | Yes, with its memory, as many copies as you ask for, in under 250 ms | Yes, with its disk |
| Wake on request | No | Yes; a paused VM resumes on the next HTTP request, SSH or exec call | No; a stopped sandbox is started by API |
| Saving work automatically | Filesystem snapshot on every stop, billed per GB a month and kept 30 days after last use | Saved when you pause or snapshot; a plain stop deletes the instance | Disk saved every minute and on every stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing |
| Nested virtualization | No | Experimental | Yes, /dev/kvm for Android emulators and VMs |
| Docker inside | Yes, with sudo | Yes, including Docker in Docker and local Kubernetes | Yes, with root and systemd |
| Custom images | Your own OCI images from a Dockerfile, via Vercel Container Registry | Snapshots of a configured machine; no OCI images | Named snapshots (templates), shareable by code; no Dockerfile builds |
| Desktop, browser, computer use | None; headless Linux only | Browser-based remote desktop; you install the browser and any computer use agent yourself | 60fps desktop with Chromium, computer use and browser-control APIs |
| Coding agents | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and pi preinstalled; you start them as commands | You install the agent, then drive it through a tmux API that sends keys and reads the screen | Seven agents preinstalled, with an API to prompt, steer and stream events |
| Keys kept outside the sandbox | Credentials brokering injects headers for any HTTPS domain you allow | Responses Proxy for model APIs only; other secrets are handed to the machine | Credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; switch a credential to another account when credits run out |
| Egress rules | Allow-all, deny-all or a domain and CIDR allowlist, changeable while running | No provider-side allowlist documented | No provider-side allowlist; firewall inside the VM |
| Inbound access | Public URLs for up to 15 ports, no built-in auth; no raw TCP | Named HTTP services with optional API key auth; SSH through Morph's gateway; no raw TCP | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected by default; raw TCP |
| Regions | 19 regions across the US, Europe, Asia, South America, Africa and Australia | Not published | EU only: Germany, Finland, France, with zero data retention |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Vercel Sandbox | Morph Cloud | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | Yes | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | Not published | Yes | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | Yes | Yes |
| Browser | No | No | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | No | Yes |
| SSH | No | Yes | 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 | No | No |
| Secret proxy | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | Yes | No | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | Yes | No | Yes |
| Agent harness API | No | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes | No | No |
| GPU | No | No | No |
| Windows | No | Yes | No |
| Arm64 | No | No | No |
| Self-hosting | No | No | No |
| BYOC | No | No | No |
| Open source | No | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Not published | Yes | Yes |
| Spend limits | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Yes | No |
| SSO | Yes | Not published | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Not published | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | Not published | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | 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 Vercel Sandbox did 12.96, so boat finished about twice as many runs. Morph Cloud has no comparable measurement: it is not in that benchmark run. Morph says it restores a snapshot in under 250 ms, which measures start time, not CPU speed.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Morph Cloud 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 | Vercel Sandbox, a month | Morph Cloud, 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 | $32 · Developer | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $236 · Pro · with limits | $121 · Team | $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 | $1,459 · Scale | $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 | $325 · Scale | $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 | $869 · Scale | $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 a sandbox runs, 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.
Morph Cloud: Morph bills MCUs at $0.05 an hour each, where a machine uses the largest of its vCPUs, its RAM in 4 GiB steps or its disk in 16 GiB steps. Team ($40 a month) and Scale ($250 a month) are prepaid MCU bundles at a discount, and a paused VM bills only its snapshot.
Morph Cloud: boat charges a flat price per size, per second, only while the machine runs, and a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk. 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 does not fit: each session ends at 24 hours and running processes start over, while Morph keeps running. Morph prices disk beyond 16 GiB per vCPU at a rate our scenarios cannot pin down, and it does not publish egress prices. Morph's Developer pool of 64 vCPU holds only 16 machines at 4 vCPU, and one Vercel sandbox on Pro is at most 8 vCPU / 16 GB. For 1,000 short jobs at once, both Vercel and Morph fit, while boat's $2,000 plan queues the starts.
| Scenario | Vercel Sandbox | Morph Cloud | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays | None that bite |
| None that bite |
| One agent that never stops |
|
| 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 | None that bite |
|
|
Which one should you use?
Use Vercel Sandbox when
you run many short bursts of untrusted code close to users around the world, want egress rules you can change from outside, or already build images from a Dockerfile.
- Regions all over the world. Useful if your users are spread out: Vercel Sandbox runs in 19 regions, while Morph does not publish where it runs.
- Egress rules and keys you control from outside. A running sandbox can switch to deny-all or a domain allowlist, and its brokered credentials work for any HTTPS API.
- Images from your Dockerfile. Useful if you already have a Dockerfile: build it into an OCI image and boot sandboxes straight into it.
Use Morph Cloud when
your agents branch from one running state with its memory, sleep between requests and wake on demand, or run for days on one machine.
- Memory snapshots and branching. Useful for agents that fan out from one running state: Morph copies a live VM with its memory in under 250 ms.
- Machines that sleep and wake. A paused Morph VM bills only its snapshot and wakes on the next request, with every process still running.
- No session cap. Morph machines run until you stop them, while Vercel ends every session after 24 hours.
Where boat fits
Both Vercel Sandbox and Morph Cloud hand you a machine and leave the agent layer to you. If your agents work for hours on one machine, need a desktop and a browser to check their work, or call APIs with keys you do not want inside the sandbox, boat has those built in, runs no session cap on paid plans, and saves the disk every minute.
Coding agents you drive from outside
On Vercel you start agents as plain commands, and on Morph you drive them through tmux by sending keys and reading the screen. Either way you build and maintain the harness that knows when an agent is done or stuck.
A desktop and a browser ready to use
Vercel Sandbox is headless, and Morph's remote desktop needs you to install the browser and wire up the computer use loop. Without that, an agent cannot open the app it built to see if it works.
A full VM with /dev/kvm and work saved every minute
Vercel has no nested virtualization and Morph lists it as experimental, so Android emulators and VMs are off the table or a gamble. On Morph a plain stop deletes the instance, and on Vercel a 24-hour session restarts every process.
Use boat when your agents work for hours on one machine and need to arrive ready: coding agents you prompt and steer by API, a desktop with Chromium, /dev/kvm, real keys kept outside the machine, and hosting on many ports in the EU. Compare it one to one: boat vs Vercel Sandbox and boat vs Morph Cloud.
Questions people ask
Is Vercel Sandbox cheaper than Morph Cloud?
No, Morph costs less in all five of our scenarios. One workday agent costs $32 a month on Morph vs $57 on Vercel, 50 parallel agents cost $1,459 vs $2,884, and 1,000 short jobs at once cost $869 vs $3,152. boat costs $20 for the workday agent and $317 for the 50 agents.
Which is faster, Vercel Sandbox or Morph Cloud?
We cannot compare their CPU speed: Vercel Sandbox did 12.96 runs per second on our 4 vCPU benchmark, but Morph Cloud is not in that run. boat did 26.69 on the same test. Morph's under-250 ms snapshot restore is a start time, not a CPU score.
Can Vercel Sandbox or Morph Cloud run 24/7?
Morph can: a machine runs until you stop it or its optional TTL ends. Vercel ends each Pro session after 24 hours, and the resumed sandbox starts its processes fresh. boat has no session cap on paid plans and saves the disk every minute.
Can both run Docker and nested virtualization?
Both run Docker inside. Vercel's Firecracker microVMs have no nested virtualization, and Morph lists it as experimental. boat exposes /dev/kvm for Android emulators and VMs.
Can they keep a machine's memory between runs?
Morph can: it pauses, snapshots and branches a running VM with its memory, and a paused VM wakes on the next request. Vercel saves only the filesystem, so a resumed sandbox boots fresh. boat also keeps the disk but not the memory.
Do they have a desktop for computer use?
Vercel Sandbox is headless only. Morph has a browser-based remote desktop, but you install the browser and any computer use agent yourself. boat ships a 60fps desktop with Chromium and a computer use API.
Try boat
Install the CLI, then run boat new.
7-day free trial
More comparisons
- boat vs Vercel Sandbox
- boat vs Morph Cloud
- E2B vs Vercel Sandbox
- Daytona vs Vercel Sandbox
- Modal vs Vercel Sandbox
- Vercel Sandbox vs Cloudflare Sandbox
- Vercel Sandbox vs Blaxel
- Vercel Sandbox vs Runloop
- Vercel Sandbox vs Tensorlake
- Vercel Sandbox vs CodeSandbox SDK
- Vercel Sandbox vs Northflank
- Vercel Sandbox vs Fly.io Machines