Beam Sandboxes vs DigitalOcean MicroVMs

Beam Sandboxes costs $0.0675 per vCPU-hour and DigitalOcean MicroVMs costs $0.022 per vCPU-hour. Beam Sandboxes runs containers, offers GPUs and has no session limit. DigitalOcean MicroVMs runs Firecracker microVMs.

Updated Oct 15, 2026

Beam Sandboxes

Isolated, secure environments for running untrusted code at scale.

Isolation: Container
Free tier: Not listed
Max session: No limit

Visit site Beam Sandboxes profile

DigitalOcean MicroVMs

Lightweight virtual machines that run a container image in their own kernel and pause when idle.

Isolation: Firecracker microVM
Free tier: Not listed
Max session: Not listed

Visit site DigitalOcean MicroVMs profile

What is different

3 fields differ. The rest are the same or not listed.

Field

Beam Sandboxes

DigitalOcean MicroVMs

vCPU, per hour: Beam Sandboxes: $0.0675; DigitalOcean MicroVMs: $0.022
RAM, per GiB-hour: Beam Sandboxes: $0.02304; DigitalOcean MicroVMs: $0.0085
Isolation: Beam Sandboxes: Container; DigitalOcean MicroVMs: Firecracker microVM

Full comparison

18 fields, at each provider's list price

Beam Sandboxesbeam.cloud/pricing

DigitalOcean MicroVMsdocs.digitalocean.com/products/microvms/details/pricingdocs.digitalocean.com

Pricing

vCPU, per hour: Beam Sandboxes: $0.0675; DigitalOcean MicroVMs: $0.022
RAM, per GiB-hour: Beam Sandboxes: $0.02304; DigitalOcean MicroVMs: $0.0085
Storage: Beam Sandboxes: Not listed; DigitalOcean MicroVMs: $0.05 per GiB per month, charged when running or paused. Checkpoints are charged until deleted.
Free tier: Beam Sandboxes: Not listed; DigitalOcean MicroVMs: Not listed
Paid plan from: Beam Sandboxes: Not listed; DigitalOcean MicroVMs: Not listed
Billing: Beam Sandboxes: Per second; DigitalOcean MicroVMs: Per second

Limits

Max session: Beam Sandboxes: No limit; DigitalOcean MicroVMs: Not listed
Idle stop: Beam Sandboxes: Not listed; DigitalOcean MicroVMs: After 5 minutes
Largest sandbox: Beam Sandboxes: Not listed; DigitalOcean MicroVMs: 16 vCPU · 32 GiB
Concurrent sandboxes: Beam Sandboxes: Not listed; DigitalOcean MicroVMs: Not listed

Platform

Isolation: Beam Sandboxes: Container; DigitalOcean MicroVMs: Firecracker microVM
GPU: Beam Sandboxes:; DigitalOcean MicroVMs: Not listed
Snapshots: Beam Sandboxes:; DigitalOcean MicroVMs:
Pause and resume: Beam Sandboxes:; DigitalOcean MicroVMs:

Developer

SDKs: Beam Sandboxes: Python, TypeScript; DigitalOcean MicroVMs: Not listed
Integrations: Beam Sandboxes: Not listed; DigitalOcean MicroVMs: Not listed

Trust

License: Beam Sandboxes: Not listed; DigitalOcean MicroVMs: Not listed
BYOC: Beam Sandboxes: In your AWS, GCP, or Azure account; DigitalOcean MicroVMs: Not listed

Hourly cost

One sandbox running for one hour

Size

Beam Sandboxes

DigitalOcean MicroVMs

1 vCPU · 2 GiB: Beam Sandboxes: $0.114; DigitalOcean MicroVMs: $0.039
2 vCPU · 4 GiB: Beam Sandboxes: $0.227; DigitalOcean MicroVMs: $0.078
4 vCPU · 8 GiB: Beam Sandboxes: $0.454; DigitalOcean MicroVMs: $0.156

Compute only, at list rates.

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Which one fits

Based on the fields above

Beam Sandboxes fits when

You need GPUs.
You need the sandboxes in your own cloud account.
You need SOC 2 Type II.

DigitalOcean MicroVMs fits when

You want each sandbox in its own microVM.
You want the lower list price: $0.078 against $0.227 an hour for 2 vCPU and 4 GiB.

More comparisons

See all comparisons

Beam Sandboxes

DigitalOcean MicroVMs

What is different

Full comparison

Pricing

Limits

Platform

Developer

Trust

Hourly cost

Which one fits

Beam Sandboxes fits when

DigitalOcean MicroVMs fits when

More comparisons

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