Vercel Sandbox vs Northflank
Vercel Sandbox is built for short runs of untrusted code in Firecracker microVMs, with sessions that stop after 24 hours. Northflank is a broad cloud platform where sandboxes run as long as you like, next to GPUs, databases and your own cloud account.
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.
Northflank
Northflank is a London developer platform for running services, jobs and databases on Kubernetes, and Sandboxes is its product for running untrusted code.
A Northflank sandbox is a container image deployed as a service: CPU sandboxes run in Kata microVMs with their own kernel, and GPU sandboxes run under gVisor. You create and drive them from the JavaScript or Python SDK, the CLI or the dashboard, on Northflank's cloud or inside your own. It suits teams that already want one platform for apps, databases, GPUs and sandboxes.
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 | Northflank: price rank | bochka: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Neither has a desktop or browser for an agent to check the app it built; Vercel stops each session at 24 hours and Northflank keeps only attached volumes, while bochka ranks 3rd with a full desktop and a whole disk that survives. | 244th of 367, with limits $3,351 a month | 159th of 367, with limits $1,477 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 for weeks is cut off every 24 hours on Vercel and loses files outside volumes on each Northflank pause; bochka ranks 5th here. | 257th of 366, with limits $3,657 a month | 173rd of 366, with limits $1,365 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 best of the three: it bills CPU only while code uses it and starts fast, while Northflank's small per-second plans are a cheaper compromise. | 22nd cheapest of 345 $216 a month | 84th of 345, with limits $115 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 ranks 15th and fits sandboxes for your users at scale, Northflank does not publish how many can run at once, and bochka ranks first. | 15th cheapest of 361 $1,267 a month | 89th of 361, with limits $815 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; Northflank's unpublished concurrency makes it a poor fit. | 3rd cheapest of 360 $15,761 a month | 342nd of 360, with limits $1,762 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 | 134th of 364, with limits $689 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 Northflank ranks 38th and Vercel 107th for CI; bochka ranks 4th and adds /dev/kvm for Android emulators and VM builds. | 107th cheapest of 377 $1,144 a month | 38th cheapest of 377 $352 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB | 276th of 368, with limits $145 a month | 151st of 368, with limits $59 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, so a computer-use agent needs a desktop you build and stream yourself; bochka ships a 60fps desktop with a computer-use API. | 235th of 369, with limits $952 a month | 151st of 369, with limits $371 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 | 200th of 367, with limits $194 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 | 196th of 346, with limits $117 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 | 83rd of 338, with limits $2,049 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 | 141st of 360, with limits $99 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 Northflank has GPU sandboxes from L4 to H100 and up; Vercel Sandbox and bochka are CPU only. | Can't run it | 4th cheapest of 98 $693 a month | 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 | Northflank | bochka |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Firecracker microVM with its own kernel | Kata microVM with its own kernel for CPU; gVisor for GPU | 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 documented cap; runs until you pause or delete it | No cap on paid plans (--no-auto-stop); default TTL 1 hour, changeable |
| What survives a stop | Filesystem snapshot on every stop, kept 30 days after last use by default, billed per GB a month | Only attached volumes, which bill while paused; the rest of the disk resets | The whole disk, saved every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing |
| Memory on resume | Not kept; processes start over | Not kept; processes are lost on pause | Not kept; the machine reboots with its disk |
| Desktop, browser, computer use | None; headless Linux only | None; access by SDK, browser terminal or SSH | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer-use and browser-control APIs, embeddable stream |
| Nested virtualization | No | Not documented inside a sandbox | Yes, /dev/kvm for Android emulators and VMs |
| Docker inside | Yes, with sudo | Yes, own kernel per sandbox | Yes, with root and systemd |
| Coding agents | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and pi preinstalled; you start them as commands | Harnesses with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode or Pi; you reach the agent through a terminal or SSH | 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 | Header injection for listed hosts in the network policy API | Credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; switch a credential to another account when credits run out |
| Inbound access | Public URLs for up to 15 ports, no built-in auth; no raw TCP or public IP | HTTPS ports on a code.run domain, private by default; public TCP and UDP need a separate load balancer | 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 | Network policies with allow lists by IP, CIDR or domain, documented for your own cluster | Open internet, no provider-side allowlist; firewall inside the VM |
| Biggest sandbox | 8 vCPU / 16 GB on Pro, 32 vCPU / 64 GB on Enterprise | Up to 20 vCPU / 40 GB, more on request; a resize restarts the sandbox | Up to 16 vCPU / 32 GB on the $100 plan and above |
| GPUs | No | L4, A100, H100, RTX PRO 6000 and more | No |
| Regions and your own cloud | 19 regions; Vercel's cloud only | US, Europe, Asia, Australia, South America and Africa; or your own AWS, GCP or Azure account | EU only (Germany, Finland, France), data kept in the EU |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Vercel Sandbox | Northflank | bochka |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | No | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Not published | 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 | No | 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 | No | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | No | Yes | 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 | Yes | No |
| Windows | No | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | Yes | No |
| Self-hosting | No | Yes | 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 | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | Yes | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes | 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, 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. Northflank has no result on that benchmark, so there is no comparable CPU measurement for it.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Northflank 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 | Northflank, 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 | $32 · Developer Sandbox (free tier) · 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 | $108 · Developer Sandbox (free tier) · 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 | $1,322 · Developer Sandbox (free tier) · 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 | $361 · Developer Sandbox (free tier) · 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 | $688 · Developer Sandbox (free tier) · 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, 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.
Northflank: Northflank bills per second for the plan size you pick, with no monthly fee, until you pause the sandbox; there is no idle auto-pause. Volumes cost $0.15 per GB a month even while paused, and outbound traffic costs $0.06 per GB.
Northflank: 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 the whole fee is usage credit.
Limits in those scenarios
For one agent that never stops, Vercel ends each session at 24 hours and the processes start over. On Northflank the limit in every scenario is what survives a stop: only attached volumes keep their files, and it does not publish how many sandboxes can run at once, so 300 or 1,000 at a time is not confirmed. Vercel fits the burst of 1,000 short jobs at once, while bochka does not: even its $2,000 plan queues starts above 90 a minute.
| Scenario | Vercel Sandbox | Northflank | 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 bursts of untrusted code, like code interpreters or RL rollouts, and want a firewall you can change while the sandbox runs.
- Fast, short bursts. For code interpreters and RL rollouts: Vercel starts sandboxes fast, at high concurrency, and bills CPU only while code uses it.
- A firewall you change live. A running sandbox can be switched to deny-all, or to a list of allowed domains, without a restart.
- Images from your Dockerfile. If you already deploy on Vercel, you can build an image from a Dockerfile and boot sandboxes straight into it.
Use Northflank when
you need GPUs next to the agent, sandboxes that run with no session cap, or sandboxes inside your own cloud account next to the rest of your apps.
- GPU sandboxes. For agents that train or run models: Northflank has GPU sandboxes from L4 to H100 and up.
- No session cap. A Northflank sandbox runs until you pause it, so long jobs are not cut off after a set number of hours.
- Your own cloud, one platform. For teams that must run in their own AWS, GCP or Azure account, next to their apps, jobs and databases.
Where bochka fits
Both Vercel Sandbox and Northflank give each sandbox its own kernel, but both are headless and neither keeps the whole machine the way an agent left it. If your agents work for hours on one machine, building, testing, running Docker and checking their work in a browser, bochka gives them a full VM with a desktop, a disk that survives every stop, and an API to drive the agents inside from outside.
The whole machine comes back
Vercel stops each session at 24 hours and restarts every process; Northflank wipes everything outside attached volumes on a pause, so agents reinstall their tools unless you plan volumes for each path. bochka saves the whole disk every minute, and stops are free.
A desktop and a browser inside
Both are headless, so an agent cannot open the web app it just built to check it unless you build an image with a desktop, a browser and a way to stream it. bochka ships a 60fps desktop, Chromium and computer-use APIs.
Agents you drive from outside
On Vercel you run the agents as plain commands, and on Northflank you reach them through a terminal or SSH, so you build the layer that prompts, steers and reads them. bochka gives you one API for that.
Use bochka when your agents work on one machine for hours or days and should find it as they left it: installs, Docker, emulators, a desktop and a browser, with the agents inside driven from your code. Compare it one to one: bochka vs Vercel Sandbox and bochka vs Northflank.
Questions people ask
Is Vercel Sandbox cheaper than Northflank?
In our five scenarios Northflank costs less: one workday agent is $32 a month against $57, and 50 parallel agents are $1,322 against $2,884. But on Northflank only attached volumes survive a stop, and running 300 or 1,000 at once is not confirmed, while Vercel fits those at $828 and $3,152. bochka costs $20 and $317 for the first two.
Which is faster?
Vercel Sandbox did 12.96 runs per second on the hpc-sandbox-benchmarks Node.js loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, and bochka did 26.69. Northflank has no result on that benchmark, so we cannot compare its CPU speed.
Can Vercel Sandbox or Northflank run 24/7?
Northflank can: a sandbox runs until you pause it, though a pause wipes files outside attached volumes. Vercel sessions stop after 24 hours, and its docs say sandboxes are not designed to run continuously. bochka machines can run with no cap on paid plans and keep their whole disk.
Can both run Docker?
Yes. Both give each sandbox its own kernel, and Vercel documents Docker with sudo. bochka runs Docker with root and systemd, and also exposes /dev/kvm for Android emulators and VMs, which neither documents.
Does either have GPUs?
Northflank does, with GPU sandboxes under gVisor from L4 to H100 and more. Vercel Sandbox and bochka run on CPUs only.
Do they have a desktop for computer use?
No. Both are headless Linux sandboxes you drive with commands, files and ports. bochka includes a 60fps desktop, Chromium, and computer-use and browser-control APIs.
Try bochka
Install the CLI, then run bochka new.
Product preview
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