Beam Sandboxes vs ix

Beam Sandboxes costs $0.0675 per vCPU-hour and ix costs $0.0288 per vCPU-hour. Beam Sandboxes runs containers, offers GPUs and has no session limit. ix runs full VMs.

Updated

Beam Sandboxes

Isolation
Container
Free tier
Not listed
Max session
No limit

ix

Isolation
Full VM
Free tier
Not listed
Max session
Not listed

What is different

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

Beam Sandboxes
ix
vCPU, per hour
Beam Sandboxes: $0.0675
ix: $0.0288
RAM, per GiB-hour
Beam Sandboxes: $0.02304
ix: $0.0108
Billing
Beam Sandboxes: Per second
ix: Active CPU time only
Isolation
Beam Sandboxes: Container
ix: Full VM
SDKs
Beam Sandboxes: Python, TypeScript
ix: Python, TypeScript, Rust

Full comparison

18 fields, at each provider's list price

Pricing

vCPU, per hour
Beam Sandboxes: $0.0675
ix: $0.0288
RAM, per GiB-hour
Beam Sandboxes: $0.02304
ix: $0.0108
Storage
Beam Sandboxes: Not listed
ix: $0.101 per GiB-month stored
Free tier
Beam Sandboxes: Not listed
ix: Not listed
Paid plan from
Beam Sandboxes: Not listed
ix: Pay as you go
Billing
Beam Sandboxes: Per second
ix: Active CPU time only

Limits

Max session
Beam Sandboxes: No limit
ix: Not listed
Idle stop
Beam Sandboxes: Not listed
ix: Not listed
Largest sandbox
Beam Sandboxes: Not listed
ix: 100 vCPU · 256 GiB
Concurrent sandboxes
Beam Sandboxes: Not listed
ix: Up to 100

Platform

Isolation
Beam Sandboxes: Container
ix: Full VM
GPU
Beam Sandboxes:
ix: Not listed
Snapshots
Beam Sandboxes:
ix:
Pause and resume
Beam Sandboxes:
ix: Not listed

Developer

SDKs
Beam Sandboxes: Python, TypeScript
ix: Python, TypeScript, Rust
Integrations
Beam Sandboxes: Not listed
ix: MCP

Trust

License
Beam Sandboxes: Not listed
ix: Not listed
BYOC
Beam Sandboxes: In your AWS, GCP, or Azure account
ix: Not listed

Hourly cost

One sandbox running for one hour

Beam Sandboxes
ix
1 vCPU · 2 GiB
Beam Sandboxes: $0.114
ix: $0.050
2 vCPU · 4 GiB
Beam Sandboxes: $0.227
ix: $0.101
4 vCPU · 8 GiB
Beam Sandboxes: $0.454
ix: $0.202

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 pause and resume.
  • You need the sandboxes in your own cloud account.
  • You need SOC 2 Type II.

ix fits when

  • You want each sandbox to be a full VM.
  • You use MCP.
  • You want the lower list price: $0.101 against $0.227 an hour for 2 vCPU and 4 GiB.
  • Your code waits a lot: CPU is billed only while it is in use.

More comparisons

See all comparisons

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