Vercel Sandbox vs Deno Sandbox
Both run code in Firecracker microVMs and bill CPU only while code runs. Vercel Sandbox gives bigger machines that last up to 24 hours in 19 regions, while Deno Sandbox gives a fixed 2 vCPU machine that starts in under 200 ms and lives up to 30 minutes.
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.
Deno Sandbox
Deno Sandbox is part of Deno Deploy, the hosting platform from the company behind the Deno runtime, and runs untrusted or AI-generated code in Linux microVMs.
Each sandbox is a Firecracker microVM with 2 vCPU, up to 4 GB of memory and a 10 GB disk that is wiped when it ends, created from a TypeScript or Python SDK. Outbound traffic goes through a proxy that can enforce a host allowlist and swap placeholder secrets for real ones. It is built for short runs of agent or user code, and a sandbox can be promoted to a Deno Deploy app.
- Isolation
- Firecracker microVM per sandbox
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 | Deno Sandbox: price rank | bochka: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month A software factory runs installs, builds and Docker for hours, which outlasts Deno's 30 minutes and is cut at 24 hours on Vercel; bochka fits it fully. | 244th of 367, with limits $3,351 a month | 290th of 367, with limits $5,665 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An assistant that lives on its machine all month fits neither: Vercel restarts every 24 hours and Deno ends after 30 minutes and wipes its disk. | 257th of 366, with limits $3,657 a month | 287th of 366, with limits $5,803 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 suit short code bursts and bill CPU only while code runs; Vercel Sandbox ranks 22nd and fits fully, while Deno's 20-at-once Builder cap makes it a compromise. | 22nd cheapest of 345 $216 a month | 141st of 345, with limits $329 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 sandboxes for your users at scale; Deno caps Builder at 20 sandboxes at once per region, and bochka ranks first on cost. | 15th cheapest of 361 $1,267 a month | 148th of 361, with limits $1,863 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 for many short parallel rollouts thanks to high concurrency; Deno's per-region caps hold it back, and bochka's start limits make it a compromise. | 3rd cheapest of 360 $15,761 a month | 122nd of 360, with limits $7,963 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 | 296th of 364, with limits $1,563 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 that runs Docker fits Vercel, which supports Docker with sudo; Deno does not document Docker, and bochka adds /dev/kvm for Android emulators. | 107th cheapest of 377 $1,144 a month | 304th of 377, with limits $731 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB A dev box that stays on needs a disk that persists and no lifetime cap; Vercel restarts daily, Deno lasts 30 minutes, and bochka keeps running. | 276th of 368, with limits $145 a month | 179th of 368, with limits $200 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 Vercel nor Deno has a desktop, so computer use means building one yourself; bochka streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium and a computer-use API. | 235th of 369, with limits $952 a month | 280th of 369, with limits $1,583 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 | 284th of 367, with limits $783 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 | 286th of 346, with limits $573 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 | 247th of 338, with limits $11,923 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 | 283rd of 360, with limits $554 a month | 251st of 360, with limits $367 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 | Deno Sandbox | bochka |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| Machine size | Up to 8 vCPU / 16 GB on Pro, 32 vCPU / 64 GB on Enterprise | 2 vCPU fixed, 768 MB to 4 GB memory, 10 GB disk | 4 vCPU / 8 GB by default, up to 16 vCPU / 32 GB on the $100 plan and above |
| Longest session | 24 hours on Pro and Enterprise, 45 minutes on Hobby; resume starts a new session | Up to 30 minutes; longer work can be promoted to a Deno Deploy app | No cap on paid plans; you set the time to live |
| Disk between runs | Filesystem snapshot on stop, billed per GB a month, kept 30 days after last use by default | Root disk wiped when the sandbox ends; opt-in volumes of 300 MB to 20 GB, Chicago only | Whole disk saved every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Docker with sudo; no nested virtualization | Root access; Docker and nested virtualization not documented | Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm for Android emulators and VMs |
| Custom images | Your own OCI images from a Dockerfile, via Vercel Container Registry | Read-only volume snapshots that new sandboxes can boot from | Named snapshots (templates), shareable by code; no Dockerfile builds |
| Desktop and browser | None; headless Linux only | No desktop; a VS Code editor in the browser and SSH | 60fps desktop with Chromium, computer-use and browser-control APIs |
| Coding agents | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and pi preinstalled; you start them as commands | A root image with Claude Code, run through the shell command API | Seven agents preinstalled, 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 | HTTPS URL per exposed port, public without authentication; SSH | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected by default; raw TCP |
| Outbound rules | Allow-all, deny-all or a domain and CIDR allowlist, changeable while running; static IPs on Enterprise | Host allowlist per sandbox, enforced by a proxy outside the VM | Open internet, no provider-side allowlist; firewall inside the VM |
| Keeping API keys out of the sandbox | Credentials brokering injects headers for any HTTPS domain you allow | Placeholder secrets swapped for real ones on requests to approved hosts | Credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; switch a credential to another account when credits run out |
| Sandboxes at once | High; vCPU allocation starts at 150 a minute and climbs toward 5,000 with steady use | 3 per region on Pro, 20 per region on Builder | Hundreds on larger plans; the $2,000 plan allows 600 starts an hour |
| Regions | 19 regions across the US, Europe, Asia, South America, Africa and Australia | Amsterdam and Chicago | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
| CPU speed (Node.js build-and-test loop) | 12.96 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB | Not measured; the fixed 2 vCPU shape cannot run the 4 vCPU test | 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Vercel Sandbox | Deno Sandbox | bochka |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | No | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | No | Yes |
| Browser | No | No | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | No | Yes |
| SSH | No | Yes | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | Yes | No | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | Yes | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | Yes | No | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Memory fork | No | No | No |
| Custom image (Docker or snapshot) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | Yes | No | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | No | 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 | 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 | No | No |
| GPU | No | No | No |
| Windows | No | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | No | No |
| Self-hosting | No | No | No |
| BYOC | No | 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 | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Not published | No |
| SSO | Yes | No | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | Yes | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
On the StarSling hpc-sandbox-benchmarks Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, bochka did 26.69 runs per second and Vercel Sandbox did 12.96, so bochka finished about twice as many runs in the same time. Deno Sandbox has no comparable measurement: it is not in that benchmark, and its fixed 2 vCPU shape could not run the 4 vCPU test. 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. Deno Sandbox 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 | Deno Sandbox, a month | bochka, 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 | $53 · Pro · with limits | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $236 · Pro · with limits | $200 · Builder · 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 | $2,884 · Pro | $2,779 · Builder · 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 | $828 · Pro | $783 · Builder · 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 | $1,563 · Builder · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Vercel Sandbox: Vercel charges for CPU only while your code uses it, but for memory the whole time the 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.
Deno Sandbox: Sandboxes need Pro at $20 a month or Builder at $200 a month; the fee is not credit but includes CPU, memory and egress allowances shared with your Deno Deploy apps. Past those, CPU costs $0.10 per hour of active CPU time and memory $0.025 per GiB-hour for the whole life of the sandbox.
Deno Sandbox: bochka charges a flat price per size, per second, only while the machine runs; 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
Deno Sandbox fits none of the five scenarios as written: it is fixed at 2 vCPU / 4 GB, a sandbox lives up to 30 minutes, and Builder allows 20 at once per region, short of 50 agents, 300 user sandboxes or 1,000 jobs. Vercel fits four of the five; only the always-on agent breaks, because each session ends at 24 hours and processes start over on resume. bochka fits four of the five, but not 1,000 short jobs at once, where even its $2,000 plan allows 600 starts an hour and 2,400 a day.
| Scenario | Vercel Sandbox | Deno Sandbox | bochka |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 or day-long jobs that need more than 2 vCPU, Docker or your own Dockerfile image, or regions outside Europe and the US Midwest.
- Longer sessions on bigger machines. Useful for work past a few minutes: Pro sessions last up to 24 hours on machines up to 8 vCPU / 16 GB.
- Regions all over the world. Useful if your users are spread out: Vercel Sandbox runs in 19 regions, from Virginia to Tokyo and Sydney.
- Images from your Dockerfile. Useful if you already have a Dockerfile: build it into an OCI image and boot sandboxes straight into it.
Use Deno Sandbox when
you run short pieces of untrusted code that must start in milliseconds and reach only the hosts you allow, especially if you already deploy on Deno Deploy.
- Starts in under 200 ms. Good for short bursts of code: a sandbox starts fast enough to create one per request.
- Locked-down outbound traffic. Useful for untrusted code: each sandbox can be limited to a list of hosts, enforced by a proxy outside the VM.
- A path to Deno Deploy. Fits teams already on Deno Deploy: a sandbox can be promoted to a Deploy app and bills on the same meters.
Where bochka fits
Vercel Sandbox and Deno Sandbox are both built for short runs of code. If what you are really running is agents that work for hours on one machine, with Docker, a desktop and a disk that is still there tomorrow, bochka is built for that.
A machine that stays
Deno ends a sandbox after 30 minutes and wipes its disk, and Vercel stops every session at 24 hours and starts processes over. bochka has no session cap on paid plans and saves the disk every minute.
Docker, emulators and a desktop
Neither has nested virtualization or a desktop, and Deno does not document Docker. On bochka an agent gets Docker, systemd, /dev/kvm for Android emulators, and a 60fps desktop with Chromium to check the app it built.
Agents you drive from outside
Both preinstall Claude Code, but you run it as shell commands and parse its output yourself. bochka runs seven coding agents and gives you one API to prompt them, steer them and stream their events.
Use bochka when your agents work for hours on one machine: builds, tests, Docker, emulators and a desktop with a browser, on a disk that is still there tomorrow, with an API to drive the agents inside from outside. Compare it one to one: bochka vs Vercel Sandbox and bochka vs Deno Sandbox.
Questions people ask
Is Vercel Sandbox cheaper than Deno Sandbox?
Deno comes out a little lower in our scenarios, for example $53 a month against $57 for one workday agent, but it fits none of them as written because of its 30-minute lifetime, 2 vCPU size and concurrency caps. Vercel fits four of the five. bochka costs $20 a month for that workday agent.
Which is faster, Vercel Sandbox or Deno Sandbox?
Deno says a sandbox starts in under 200 ms. For CPU work there is no head-to-head number: Vercel Sandbox did 12.96 runs per second on the Node.js build-and-test benchmark at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, and Deno is not in it. bochka did 26.69 on the same test.
How long can each one run?
A Vercel sandbox session lasts up to 24 hours on Pro and Enterprise and 45 minutes on Hobby, then resumes from a snapshot with processes started over. A Deno sandbox lives up to 30 minutes. A bochka sandbox has no session cap on paid plans.
Can Vercel Sandbox or Deno Sandbox run Docker?
Vercel Sandbox runs Docker with sudo, but has no nested virtualization. Deno's docs give root access but do not say Docker works, and do not mention nested virtualization. bochka runs Docker and systemd and exposes /dev/kvm for Android emulators and VMs.
Do they keep files between runs?
Vercel saves a filesystem snapshot on every stop and keeps it 30 days after last use by default. Deno wipes the root disk when a sandbox ends, unless you mount a volume, which is only available in Chicago. bochka saves the whole disk every minute and on stop.
Where do they run?
Vercel Sandbox runs in 19 regions around the world. Deno Sandbox runs in Amsterdam and Chicago. bochka runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France, and keeps data there.
Try bochka
Install the CLI, then run bochka new.
Product preview
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