Vercel Sandbox vs Islo

Both run each sandbox as a microVM with its own kernel. Vercel Sandbox is built for short runs of untrusted code in 19 regions, with sessions capped at 24 hours; Islo is built for coding agents that run for hours in US West or your own cloud, behind a gateway that controls and logs every outbound call.

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.

Isolation: Firecracker microVM with a dedicated kernel per sandbox
Default image: Ubuntu with Node.js 24, Python 3.14, and Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and pi preinstalled
SDKs: JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, and a CLI
Regions: 19 regions, default iad1 (US East)
Longest session: 24 hours on Pro and Enterprise, 45 minutes on Hobby; a stopped sandbox resumes from its last snapshot
Biggest sandbox: 8 vCPU / 16 GB on Pro, 32 vCPU / 64 GB on Enterprise
Compliance: SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS; HIPAA for Enterprise

Islo

Islo is an agent sandbox from Incredibuild: each coding agent gets its own microVM, with network rules and credentials handled at a gateway.

An Islo sandbox is a Linux microVM with its own kernel, built from a container image, with Claude Code, Cursor CLI and Codex preinstalled. Outbound traffic can pass through a gateway that allows or blocks hosts, injects credentials and logs every request. It is built for teams that run coding agents, evals and RL rollouts in the background, on Islo's cloud or in their own cloud account.

Maker: Incredibuild, a build acceleration company based in Tel Aviv
Launched: May 4, 2026
Isolation: A microVM with its own kernel for each agent computer
Regions: US West on Islo's cloud; BYOC puts the control plane and sandboxes in your own cloud account
Billing: CPU per core, memory per GB and disk per GB while a sandbox runs, billed per hour; signup credits with no card
Compliance: No certification named on its site; compliance documents on request from support

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	Islo: price rank	bochka: price rank
Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Neither has /dev/kvm or a desktop for an agent to check the UI it built, and Vercel also stops each session at 24 hours; bochka ranks 3rd here with both.	244th of 367, with limits $3,351 a month	326th of 367, with limits $7,402 a month	3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month
Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB Islo fits always-on assistants because it has no session cap and can pause an idle one with its memory; Vercel stops each session at 24 hours. bochka also runs with no session cap.	257th of 366, with limits $3,657 a month	30th cheapest of 366 $9,928 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 Short code bursts suit Vercel Sandbox, which bills CPU only while code uses it; Vercel Sandbox ranks 22nd here, while Islo needs a raised concurrency limit and ranks 153rd.	22nd cheapest of 345 $216 a month	153rd of 345, with limits $503 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 fits 300 user sandboxes at once, while Islo's Team plan is reported at 50 running sandboxes; bochka ranks first on cost for the same work.	15th cheapest of 361 $1,267 a month	171st of 361, with limits $3,160 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 Many short parallel rollouts fit Vercel Sandbox best thanks to high concurrency and fast starts; Vercel Sandbox ranks 3rd, and Islo's 50 running sandboxes on Team make it a compromise.	3rd cheapest of 360 $15,761 a month	167th of 360, with limits $15,265 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	198th of 364, with limits $2,456 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	119th cheapest of 377 $1,507 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 up all day fits Islo and bochka; on Vercel it restarts every 24 hours and loses its running processes.	276th of 368, with limits $145 a month	112th cheapest of 368 $402 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 are headless with no screen or computer-use API; bochka streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium that agents can see and click.	235th of 369, with limits $952 a month	310th of 369, with limits $2,210 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	113th of 367, with limits $1,105 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	66th cheapest of 346 $748 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	265th of 338, with limits $14,966 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 Islo's gateway rules and request logs help with parallel red teaming, where Islo ranks 47th and Vercel Sandbox ranks 283rd; bochka ranks 2nd.	283rd of 360, with limits $554 a month	47th of 360, with limits $746 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	Islo	bochka
Isolation	Firecracker microVM with its own kernel	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 published cap; runs until you stop it or a lifecycle policy you set at creation fires	No cap on paid plans (--no-auto-stop); default TTL 1 hour, changeable
Pause and resume	Filesystem snapshot on stop; processes and memory start fresh on resume	Pause keeps files, processes and memory; can pause after idle time and wake on the next exec, file access or webhook	Snapshot every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing; resume reboots from disk
Desktop and computer use	None; headless Linux only	A browser inside the sandbox for testing; no desktop or computer-use API	60fps desktop and Chromium, computer-use and browser-control APIs, embeddable stream
Nested virtualization	No	No /dev/kvm or nested virtualization documented	Yes, /dev/kvm (Android emulator, VMs)
Docker inside	Yes, with sudo	Yes, with sudo	Yes, with root and systemd
Custom images	Your own OCI images from a Dockerfile, via Vercel Container Registry	Built from a container image	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, Cursor CLI and Codex preinstalled; factory lines run agent steps with events, steer and follow-ups, on a schedule, webhook or GitHub, Slack and Linear events	Claude Code, Codex, pi, OpenCode, Prime Agent, Kimi Code, Mistral Vibe, with an API to prompt, steer and stream events
Outbound internet rules	Allow-all, deny-all or a domain and CIDR allowlist, changeable while running; static IPs and VPC peering on Enterprise	Gateway profiles allow or deny by host, path and HTTP method, with default deny, rate limits, content filters and per-request logs	Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist, firewall inside the VM
Keeping keys out of the sandbox	Credentials brokering injects headers for any HTTPS domain you allow	Gateway injects stored credentials into outbound requests; credentials never reach the sandbox	Credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register; switch a credential to another account when one runs out
Reaching the sandbox	Public URLs for up to 15 ports, no built-in auth; no raw TCP or public IP	HTTPS share links anyone with the URL can open, expiring after a TTL (24 hours by default); SSH and port-forward through the CLI	HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected by default; raw TCP; its own IP
Sandboxes at once	High concurrency on Pro; vCPU allocation starts at 150 a minute and climbs toward 5,000 with steady use	Free 5 and Team 50 running sandboxes per launch coverage; paused ones do not count; more by contract	100 to 2,000 running sandboxes by plan, raised by adding seats
Regions	19 regions across the US, Europe, Asia, South America, Africa and Australia	US West, or inside your own cloud account with BYOC	EU only: Germany, Finland, France; EU data residency

Every feature Battleships tracks (43)

Feature	Vercel Sandbox	Islo	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	Yes	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	No	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	Yes	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	Yes	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	Yes	Yes
Audit logs	Not published	Yes	No
SSO	Yes	Yes	No
SOC 2	Yes	Not published	No
HIPAA	Yes	Not published	No
EU data residency	Yes	No	Yes
Zero data retention	Not published	Not published	Yes

Performance

Vercel Sandbox12.96 runs/s

IsloNot measured

bochka26.69 runs/s

On StarSling's hpc-sandbox-benchmarks Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, Vercel Sandbox did 12.96 runs per second and bochka did 26.69, so bochka finished about twice as many runs in the same time. Islo has no comparable measurement: it was not part of that run or the other public results we use.

Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Islo 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	Islo, 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	$101 · Free	$20 · $20/mo
One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month	$236 · Pro · with limits	$420 · Free	$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	$4,863 · Team	$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	$1,382 · Team · 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	$3,053 · Team · with limits	$2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits

Vercel Sandbox: Vercel charges for CPU only while your code uses it, but charges for memory 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.

Islo: Islo bills each CPU core and each GB of memory and disk while a sandbox runs, with no plan fee. An idle sandbox keeps billing until a pause-after-idle timer fires, which can only be set at creation, and egress has no published price.

Islo: 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

For one agent that never stops, Vercel ends each session at 24 hours; the sandbox resumes from its snapshot, but running processes start over, while Islo and bochka keep going. Islo's Team plan is reported at 50 running sandboxes, so 300 sandboxes for your users and 1,000 short jobs at once do not fit it without a custom contract; Vercel fits both. bochka also misses the 1,000-job burst: even the $2,000 plan allows 600 starts an hour and 2,400 a day. Islo publishes no egress price, so its totals here leave egress out.

Scenario	Vercel Sandbox	Islo	bochka
One coding agent, workdays	None that bite	egress price not published	None that bite
One agent that never stops	Pro: sessions capped at 24 h	egress price not published	None that bite
50 agents in parallel	None that bite	egress price not published	None that bite
Sandboxes for your users	None that bite	Team: max 50 concurrent egress price not published	None that bite
1,000 short jobs at once	None that bite	Team: max 50 concurrent egress price not published	max 2,400 starts/day (needs ~6,667) max 600 starts/hour (needs ~1,000) bursts above 90 starts/min are queued (a burst of 333 takes ~4 min to start)

Which one should you use?

Use Vercel Sandbox when

you run many short bursts of untrusted code, need high concurrency, or want sandboxes close to users around the world.

Big bursts of short jobs. Useful for code interpreters and RL rollouts: Vercel bills CPU only while code runs and handles 1,000 short jobs at once.
Regions all over the world. Useful if your users are spread out: Vercel Sandbox runs in 19 regions, from Virginia to Tokyo and Sydney.
Fits in if you already use Vercel. Useful for Vercel teams: sandboxes use your project's login tokens and boot from your own Dockerfile images.

Use Islo when

your agents run for hours, should pause with memory between tasks, and every outbound call must pass host rules and be logged, in US West or your own cloud.

Agents that run as long as they need. Useful for long agent tasks: Islo has no session cap, while Vercel ends each session at 24 hours.
Pause with memory, wake on request. Useful for agents that sit idle: Islo pauses them with memory kept and resumes on the next request.
Egress rules with a log of every call. Useful if you must control what agents reach: Islo allows or blocks by host, path and method, and logs each request.

Where bochka fits

Vercel Sandbox and Islo both give you a headless microVM with a shell. If your agents need to see a screen, boot an emulator, or host something people and clients can reach, look at bochka: a full VM with a desktop, /dev/kvm and ports you can host on, with no session cap on paid plans. In the same CPU benchmark bochka did 26.69 runs per second to Vercel Sandbox's 12.96.

A desktop agents can see and use

Both are headless: Vercel has no screen at all, and Islo has a browser for tests but no desktop or computer-use API. An agent cannot look at the app it built, so you install a VNC stack and control layer in every image.

Nested virtualization with /dev/kvm

Neither Vercel's Firecracker microVMs nor Islo's documented setup offer /dev/kvm, so Android emulators and tools that start their own VMs stop at first boot. bochka gives every machine /dev/kvm, root and systemd.

Ports you can host on

Vercel opens up to 15 ports with no built-in auth and no raw TCP; Islo share links open to anyone with the URL and expire after 24 hours by default. bochka serves 50 token-protected HTTPS ports plus raw TCP.

Use bochka when your agents work for hours on one machine and need more than a shell: a desktop for computer use, /dev/kvm for emulators, ports you can host on, and an API to drive the agents inside from outside, in the EU. Compare it one to one: bochka vs Vercel Sandbox and bochka vs Islo.

Questions people ask

Is Vercel Sandbox cheaper than Islo?

In our scenarios, mostly yes. One coding agent on workdays comes to $57 a month on Vercel vs $101 on Islo, and 50 agents in parallel come to $2,884 vs $4,863. Islo is slightly lower for 1,000 short jobs at once, $3,053 vs $3,152, but it does not fit that burst under its Team limit, and Islo totals leave out egress. bochka comes to $20, $317 and $2,000 for the same three.

Which is faster, Vercel Sandbox or Islo?

There is no measured comparison: Islo was not in the public CPU benchmark. Vercel Sandbox did 12.96 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, and bochka did 26.69 in the same run.

Can Vercel Sandbox or Islo run 24/7?

Islo can: it has no published session cap, and one agent running all month comes to $420. Vercel Sandbox stops each session at 24 hours and resumes from a snapshot with processes started over, at $236 for the month. bochka runs with no cap on paid plans, at $26.

Can Vercel Sandbox and Islo run Docker?

Yes, both run Docker inside their microVMs with sudo. Neither offers /dev/kvm for nested virtualization. bochka runs Docker with root and systemd, and adds /dev/kvm.

Do they have a desktop for computer use?

No. Vercel Sandbox is headless Linux only, and Islo has a browser for testing but no desktop or computer-use API. bochka streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium and has computer-use and browser-control APIs.

Where do they run?

Vercel Sandbox runs in 19 regions around the world, with iad1 in the US as the default. Islo runs in US West, or inside your own cloud account with BYOC. bochka runs only in the EU (Germany, Finland and France).

Try bochka

Install the CLI, then run bochka new.

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