Vercel Sandbox vs Docker Cloud Sandboxes
Both run each sandbox in a microVM with its own kernel, and both stop a session at 24 hours. Vercel Sandbox is built for many short runs in 19 regions, while Docker Cloud Sandboxes moves the sbx sandbox from your laptop to the cloud and keeps its memory when it stops.
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.
Docker Cloud Sandboxes
Docker Cloud Sandboxes runs Docker's sbx coding-agent microVMs on Docker-managed compute instead of your laptop.
Each sandbox is a microVM with its own Linux kernel and its own Docker Engine, started from the same sbx CLI you use locally, with Claude Code, Codex and other agents ready to run. You can move a sandbox from your laptop to the cloud and back, publish HTTPS ports and SSH in. It launched on September 24, 2026, is billed pay-as-you-go on a personal Docker account, and is built for developers who want their local agent sandboxes to keep going off their machine.
- Launched
- September 24, 2026
- Session length
- 1 hour by default, extendable to 24 hours from creation
- Default quota
- 10 concurrent and 50 stored sandboxes per account
- 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 | Docker Cloud Sandboxes: 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 agents for days and many at once; both stop each session at 24 hours and neither has a desktop to check the UI. | 244th of 367, with limits $3,351 a month | 280th of 367, with limits $4,928 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 cannot do it in one session on either, since both end sessions at 24 hours. | 257th of 366, with limits $3,657 a month | 276th of 366, with limits $5,110 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 Vercel fits short code bursts well because it bills CPU only while code uses it; Docker is a compromise here, and bochka's start limits slow big bursts. | 22nd cheapest of 345 $216 a month | 119th of 345, with limits $233 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 bochka ranks first and Vercel Sandbox ranks 15th for sandboxes for your users; Docker's default of 10 at once and personal account make it a compromise. | 15th cheapest of 361 $1,267 a month | 136th of 361, with limits $1,628 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; Docker's default of 10 sandboxes at once holds it back. | 3rd cheapest of 360 $15,761 a month | 114th of 360, with limits $7,000 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 | 167th of 364, with limits $1,400 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 bochka ranks 4th for CI runners and exposes /dev/kvm for Android and VM builds, which neither Vercel nor Docker offers. | 107th cheapest of 377 $1,144 a month | 172nd of 377, with limits $672 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 all month needs no session cap; Vercel and Docker both restart it at least once a day, while bochka runs without a cap. | 276th of 368, with limits $145 a month | 127th of 368, with limits $204 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 Computer-use agents need a screen; bochka has a 60fps desktop with Chromium, while Vercel is headless and Docker is terminal only. | 235th of 369, with limits $952 a month | 268th of 369, with limits $1,400 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 | 277th of 367, with limits $700 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 | 262nd of 346, with limits $350 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 | 190th of 338, with limits $7,000 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 | 248th of 360, with limits $350 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 | Docker Cloud Sandboxes | bochka |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Firecracker microVM with its own kernel | MicroVM with its own Linux kernel and its own Docker Engine; hypervisor not named | 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 | 1 hour by default, at most 24 hours from creation; resuming starts a new timer | No cap on paid plans; you set the time to live |
| Sandboxes at once | 10 on Hobby; on Pro, vCPU allocation starts at 150 a minute and climbs toward 5,000 with steady use | 10 by default; no published way to raise it | 100 on the $20 plan, up to 2,000 on higher plans, self-serve |
| Stop and resume | Filesystem snapshot on stop; processes and memory start fresh | Stop keeps memory and files; resume picks up where it left off | Disk saved every minute and on stop; resume boots the machine again |
| Saved state | Snapshots billed per GB a month, kept 30 days after last use by default | Stopped state is free, but snapshots are deleted after 7 days of non-use | A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk |
| Fork with memory | No memory snapshots | Snapshot a running sandbox with disk or disk and memory, then restore it as a new sandbox | Fork a running sandbox with its disk |
| Docker inside | Yes, with sudo | Yes, its own Docker Engine; agent runs as a non-root user with sudo | Yes, with root and systemd |
| Nested virtualization | No | Not documented | Yes, /dev/kvm for Android emulators and VMs |
| Desktop and browser | None; headless Linux only | Terminal sessions only | 60fps Linux desktop with Chromium, computer-use and browser-control APIs |
| Inbound access | Public URLs for up to 15 ports, no built-in auth; no SSH, raw TCP or public IP | Public HTTPS URL per published port, not protected by Docker sign-in; SSH with Docker-issued certificates | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected by default; raw TCP; dedicated IPv4 or IPv6 |
| Outbound rules | Allow-all, deny-all or a domain and CIDR allowlist, changeable while running; static IPs on Enterprise | Allow and deny rules by host at a proxy, with allow-all, balanced and deny-all presets | Open internet, no provider-side allowlist; firewall inside the VM |
| Coding agents | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and pi preinstalled; you start them as commands | Claude Code, Codex, Copilot, OpenCode and more, run and attached to from the sbx CLI | Seven agents preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API to drive them from outside |
| Keys kept outside the sandbox | Credentials brokering injects headers for any HTTPS domain you allow | Cloud proxy sets the auth header for built-in AI services and custom hosts | Credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; switch a credential to another account when credits run out |
| Where it runs | 19 regions across the US, Europe, Asia, South America, Africa and Australia | Regions not published; the same microVM and CLI also run on your laptop | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Vercel Sandbox | Docker Cloud Sandboxes | bochka |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | 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 | 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 | No | No |
| Wake on request | No | Not published | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | No | Not published | 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 | Yes | 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 | Not published | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | No | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Not published | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | No | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | No | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | No | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
On the same Node.js build-and-test benchmark 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. Docker Cloud Sandboxes has no comparable measurement yet: it launched in September 2026 and is not in these benchmark runs.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Docker Cloud Sandboxes 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 | Docker Cloud Sandboxes, 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 | $49 · Docker Agentic Platform (pay-as-you-go) | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $236 · Pro · with limits | $204 · Docker Agentic Platform (pay-as-you-go) · 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 | $2,464 · Docker Agentic Platform (pay-as-you-go) · 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 | $700 · Docker Agentic Platform (pay-as-you-go) · 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 | $1,400 · Docker Agentic Platform (pay-as-you-go) · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Vercel Sandbox: Vercel charges CPU only while your code uses it, but memory for 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.
Docker Cloud Sandboxes: Docker bills per second for the size you pick, from $0.07 an hour for 1 vCPU / 2 GiB to $1.12 an hour for 16 vCPU / 32 GiB, with no monthly fee. A stopped sandbox costs nothing, and volumes and egress are free.
Docker Cloud Sandboxes: bochka charges a flat price per size, per second, only while the machine runs, and a stopped sandbox costs nothing. Plans start at $20 a month, and all of the fee is usage credit.
Limits in those scenarios
Both end a session at 24 hours, so one agent that never stops does not fit on either in a single session. Docker's default of 10 sandboxes at once rules it out for 50 agents in parallel, sandboxes for your users and 1,000 short jobs at once, and Docker publishes no way to raise it. Vercel fits all three of those. bochka has no session cap, but even its $2,000 plan queues the starts a 1,000-job burst needs.
| Scenario | Vercel Sandbox | Docker Cloud Sandboxes | bochka |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays | None that bite | 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 at high concurrency, or need to run close to users outside Europe.
- Many sandboxes at once. Useful for big bursts and rollouts: Pro has no small sandbox cap, and vCPU allocation grows toward 5,000 a minute.
- Regions all over the world. Useful if your users are spread out: Vercel Sandbox runs in 19 regions, from Virginia to Tokyo and Sydney.
- CPU billed only while used. Useful for code that waits a lot: Vercel charges CPU only while your code uses it, though memory is billed all session.
Use Docker Cloud Sandboxes when
you already run agents in sbx on your laptop and want a few of them to keep going in the cloud for up to a day, with memory kept across stops.
- Stop and fork with memory. Useful for agents that pause between steps: a stopped sandbox comes back with its memory and running processes.
- The same sandbox on your laptop. If you already run sbx locally, the cloud is the same microVM and CLI, and you can move a sandbox either way.
- No monthly fee. Useful for light use: you pay per second for the size you pick, and a stopped sandbox costs nothing.
Where bochka fits
Vercel Sandbox and Docker Cloud Sandboxes both end a session at 24 hours and give the agent only a terminal. If your agents work for days, need a screen or an emulator, or must be driven from your own app, look at bochka. It also ran the measured CPU benchmark about twice as fast as Vercel.
Agents can work for days
Both stop every session at 24 hours. Vercel resumes from a file snapshot with every process started over, and on Docker your code must stop and resume the sandbox before the mark. bochka has no session cap on paid plans.
A screen and a kernel to test on
Vercel is headless and Docker is terminal only, and neither offers /dev/kvm. An agent cannot click through the app it built or run an Android emulator, so you add a separate browser service. bochka has a 60fps desktop, Chromium and /dev/kvm.
Drive agents inside from outside
Vercel runs agents as plain commands and Docker has you attach to their terminal. To run them from your own app you write a wrapper and parse their text output. bochka gives one API to prompt, steer and stream events.
Use bochka when your agents work for days or by the dozen, need Docker, emulators or a desktop with a browser, and you want an API to drive the agents inside from outside. Compare it one to one: bochka vs Vercel Sandbox and bochka vs Docker Cloud Sandboxes.
Questions people ask
Is Vercel Sandbox cheaper than Docker Cloud Sandboxes?
For one coding agent on workdays, Docker is a little cheaper: $49 a month against $57 on Vercel. For 50 agents in parallel Vercel fits at $2,884 a month, while Docker does not fit because of its default of 10 sandboxes at once. bochka runs the workday agent for $20 a month and the 50 agents for $317 a month.
Which is faster, Vercel Sandbox or Docker Cloud Sandboxes?
Vercel Sandbox did 12.96 runs per second on a Node.js build-and-test benchmark at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. Docker Cloud Sandboxes has not been measured on it yet. bochka did 26.69 runs per second on the same test.
Can either run longer than 24 hours?
Not in one session. Vercel stops Pro sessions at 24 hours and resumes from a file snapshot with processes started over. Docker sandboxes expire 24 hours after creation at most, and resuming starts a new timer. bochka has no session cap on paid plans.
Can Vercel Sandbox and Docker Cloud Sandboxes run Docker?
Yes. Vercel runs Docker with sudo, and each Docker cloud sandbox has its own Docker Engine. bochka runs Docker too, with root and systemd, and also exposes /dev/kvm for Android emulators and VMs.
Which keeps memory when a sandbox stops?
Docker does: a stopped sandbox comes back with its memory and running processes, and you can fork one with its memory. Vercel keeps only the filesystem. bochka also keeps only the disk, saved every minute and on stop.
Where do they run?
Vercel Sandbox runs in 19 regions around the world. Docker does not publish its regions. bochka runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France.
Try bochka
Install the CLI, then run bochka new.
Product preview
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