Vercel Sandbox vs Upstash Box
Vercel Sandbox runs each sandbox in a Firecracker microVM with its own kernel, in 19 regions, for sessions of up to 24 hours. Upstash Box gives each agent a Docker container in AWS us-east-1 that pauses when idle, wakes on the next request, and can stay on all month.
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.
Upstash Box
Upstash Box is a cloud computer for AI agents from Upstash, the company known for serverless Redis, Vector and QStash.
Each box is a Docker container with its own filesystem, shell, git and an optional coding agent such as Claude Code, Codex or OpenCode, which you drive from TypeScript or Python SDKs. A box pauses when it sits idle, keeps its files, and you pay for the CPU it actually uses. Upstash built it to run its own Context7 service and opened it to everyone in March 2026.
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 | Upstash Box: price rank | bochka: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Neither fits fully: Vercel stops each session after 24 hours and Upstash has no Docker inside, while bochka ranks 3rd with Docker, a desktop and no session cap. | 244th of 367, with limits $3,351 a month | 61st of 367, with limits $464 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An always-on agent fits Upstash's keep-alive box better than Vercel, whose sessions stop at 24 hours; bochka gives it a full VM that runs with no session cap. | 257th of 366, with limits $3,657 a month | 103rd of 366, with limits $475 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 well, since both bill CPU only while code uses it; Upstash Box ranks 10th and Vercel Sandbox ranks 22nd. | 22nd cheapest of 345 $216 a month | 10th cheapest of 345 $119 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 All three fit sandboxes for your users; bochka ranks 1st, Upstash Box ranks 2nd and Vercel Sandbox ranks 15th on cost for the same work. | 15th cheapest of 361 $1,267 a month | 2nd cheapest of 361 $222 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, while Upstash Box only fits as a compromise. | 3rd cheapest of 360 $15,761 a month | 352nd of 360, with limits $8,068 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 | 52nd cheapest of 364 $1,011 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 Both fit CI runners and land close together, while bochka ranks 4th and adds /dev/kvm for Android builds. | 107th cheapest of 377 $1,144 a month | 120th cheapest of 377 $1,520 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB A 24/7 dev box fits Upstash's flat-price keep-alive box; on Vercel it restarts every 24 hours and loses its running processes. | 276th of 368, with limits $145 a month | 10th cheapest of 368 $20 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 has a desktop for a computer-use agent to look at; bochka streams a full Linux desktop at 60fps. | 235th of 369, with limits $952 a month | 73rd of 369, with limits $76 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 | 49th of 367, with limits $38 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 | 37th cheapest of 346 $400 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 | 200th of 338, with limits $8,000 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 | 225th of 360, with limits $259 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 | Upstash Box | bochka |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Firecracker microVM with its own kernel | Docker container per box on AWS | Full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts |
| Docker inside | Yes, with sudo | Not documented; the box is itself a Docker container | Yes, Docker and systemd run as on any Linux server |
| Nested virtualization | No | No | Yes, /dev/kvm for Android emulators and VMs |
| Longest session | 24 hours on Pro and Enterprise, 45 minutes on Hobby; resume starts a new session | No cap documented; a box pauses when idle, and a keep-alive box stays on all month | No cap on paid plans (--no-auto-stop); default TTL 1 hour, changeable |
| Stop and resume | Filesystem snapshot on stop, stored per GB-month and kept 30 days after last use by default | Pauses itself when idle and keeps its files; storage keeps billing while paused | Disk saved every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing |
| Wake on request | No | Yes; a request to a public URL resumes a paused box | No; a stopped sandbox is started by API |
| Custom images | Your own OCI images from a Dockerfile, via Vercel Container Registry | Coming soon; environments are reused through filesystem snapshots | Named snapshots (templates), shareable by code; no Dockerfile builds |
| Biggest machine | 8 vCPU / 16 GB on Pro, 32 vCPU / 64 GB on Enterprise | Large: 8 vCPU / 16 GB, with a 20 GB disk | Up to 16 vCPU / 32 GB on the $100 plan and above |
| Desktop, browser, computer use | None; headless Linux only | Managed headless Chromium with AI page actions and CDP; no desktop | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer-use and browser-control APIs |
| Coding agents | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and pi preinstalled; you start them as commands | Claude Code, Codex and OpenCode built in, with run and stream APIs, webhooks and scheduled prompts | Claude Code, Codex, pi, OpenCode and more, 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 port, public unless you add a token or basic auth; SSH through a gateway; no raw TCP | 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 | Allow all, deny all, or allow and deny by domain and CIDR, changeable on a running box | Open internet, no provider-side allowlist; firewall inside the VM |
| Keys kept outside the sandbox | Credentials brokering injects headers for any HTTPS domain you allow | Host proxy injects headers into outbound HTTPS; set when the box is created | Credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; switch a credential to another account when one runs out |
| Regions | 19 regions across the US, Europe, Asia, South America, Africa and Australia | US only (AWS us-east-1) | EU only (Germany, Finland, France) |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Vercel Sandbox | Upstash Box | bochka |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | No | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | No | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Not published | 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 | No | 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 | 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 | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Not published | No |
| SSO | Yes | No | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | No | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | No | 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. Upstash Box has no result in that test, so there is no comparable measurement for it. 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. Upstash Box 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 | Upstash Box, 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 | $21 · 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 | $21 · Pay as You Go | $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 | $900 · 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 | $306 · Pay as You Go | $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 | $1,822 · Pay as You Go | $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 fee per sandbox created and per GB of snapshots. The $20 Pro credit is shared with your other Vercel usage.
Upstash Box: A standard box is billed per active CPU hour by size, plus storage per GB-month, and RAM is free. A keep-alive box costs a flat $8, $16 or $32 a month whether it is busy or not.
Upstash Box: 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, all of it 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. For 50 agents in parallel, Upstash does not fit because there is no Docker inside a box, and its egress price is not published. For 1,000 short jobs at once both fit, while bochka's $2,000 plan starts at most 600 an hour and 2,400 a day, so the burst is queued.
| Scenario | Vercel Sandbox | Upstash Box | 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, need Docker or your own image, or need to run close to users around the world.
- A real microVM with Docker. Each sandbox has its own kernel and can run Docker with sudo, which an Upstash container does not offer.
- Regions all over the world. Useful if your users are spread out: Vercel Sandbox runs in 19 regions, while Upstash Box runs only in us-east-1.
- Images from your Dockerfile. Useful if you already have a Dockerfile: build it into an image and boot sandboxes straight into it.
Use Upstash Box when
your agents mostly wait, need to wake on an incoming request or stay on all month cheaply, and can live without Docker in the US.
- Idle costs no CPU, and a request wakes the box. Good for agents that wait a lot: RAM is not billed, idle costs no CPU, and a request wakes a paused box.
- Boxes that stay on. A keep-alive box stays on all month for a flat price, with no 24-hour session cap to work around.
- Agent APIs built in. Claude Code, Codex and OpenCode come with run and stream APIs, webhooks and scheduled prompts.
Where bochka fits
Look at bochka when your agents need a whole machine for hours: Docker, emulators, a desktop and services that keep running. Vercel stops sessions at 24 hours and Upstash runs containers without Docker inside, and neither gives an agent a screen.
A full VM with Docker and /dev/kvm
Upstash boxes are containers with no Docker inside, so the 50-agent scenario does not fit there. Vercel runs Docker, but Firecracker has no nested virtualization, so Android emulators and VMs are out on both.
No session cap, disk saved every minute
On Vercel each session stops at 24 hours and every process starts over. Upstash keeps a box on only with a flat-price keep-alive box. bochka runs with no session cap on paid plans and stops cost nothing.
A desktop the agent can see
Vercel Sandbox is headless, and Upstash offers only a headless Chromium over CDP. bochka streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium and computer-use APIs, so an agent can open the app it built and check it.
Use bochka when your agents work for hours on one machine: Docker, emulators, a desktop with a browser and services that keep running, with an API to drive the agents inside from outside. Compare it one to one: bochka vs Vercel Sandbox and bochka vs Upstash Box.
Questions people ask
Is Vercel Sandbox cheaper than Upstash Box?
No, Upstash costs less in all five of our scenarios. One workday agent costs $21 a month on Upstash against $57 on Vercel, and sandboxes for your users cost $306 against $828. For 50 agents in parallel Upstash is $900 a month, but it does not fit because there is no Docker inside.
Which is faster, Vercel Sandbox or Upstash Box?
Only Vercel Sandbox has a CPU result in the hpc-sandbox-benchmarks test: 12.96 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. Upstash Box has no comparable measurement. bochka did 26.69 on the same test.
Can Upstash Box run Docker?
Its docs do not offer it: each box is itself a Docker container, and custom images are listed as coming soon. Vercel Sandbox runs Docker inside its microVM with sudo, and bochka runs Docker and systemd as on any Linux server.
Can Vercel Sandbox or Upstash Box run 24/7?
Upstash can: a keep-alive box stays on all month for a flat price. Vercel sessions last up to 24 hours on Pro, then stop, and the resumed sandbox starts its processes fresh. bochka has no session cap on paid plans.
Do they have a desktop for computer use?
No. Vercel Sandbox is headless Linux, and Upstash offers a headless Chromium with AI page actions and CDP but no desktop. bochka streams a 60fps Linux desktop with computer-use tools.
Where do they run?
Vercel Sandbox runs in 19 regions, with iad1 in the US as the default. Upstash Box runs only in AWS us-east-1, with more regions planned. bochka runs in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France.
Try bochka
Install the CLI, then run bochka new.
Product preview
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