Beam Sandboxes vs Smol Machines

Beam Sandboxes costs $0.0675 per vCPU-hour and Smol Machines costs $0.05 per vCPU-hour. Beam Sandboxes runs containers, offers GPUs and has no session limit. Smol Machines runs microVMs.

Updated

Beam Sandboxes

Isolation
Container
Free tier
Not listed
Max session
No limit

Smol Machines

Isolation
MicroVM
Free tier
$100 credit, one time
Max session
Not listed

What is different

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

Beam Sandboxes
Smol Machines
vCPU, per hour
Beam Sandboxes: $0.0675
Smol Machines: $0.05
RAM, per GiB-hour
Beam Sandboxes: $0.02304
Smol Machines: $0.0162
Billing
Beam Sandboxes: Per second
Smol Machines: Active CPU time only
Isolation
Beam Sandboxes: Container
Smol Machines: MicroVM
GPU
Beam Sandboxes:
Smol Machines: No
Snapshots
Beam Sandboxes:
Smol Machines: No
SDKs
Beam Sandboxes: Python, TypeScript
Smol Machines: TypeScript, Python, Rust

Full comparison

18 fields, at each provider's list price

Pricing

vCPU, per hour
Beam Sandboxes: $0.0675
Smol Machines: $0.05
RAM, per GiB-hour
Beam Sandboxes: $0.02304
Smol Machines: $0.0162
Storage
Beam Sandboxes: Not listed
Smol Machines: $0.0001 per GiB-hour
Free tier
Beam Sandboxes: Not listed
Smol Machines: $100 credit, one time
Paid plan from
Beam Sandboxes: Not listed
Smol Machines: Pay as you go
Billing
Beam Sandboxes: Per second
Smol Machines: Active CPU time only

Limits

Max session
Beam Sandboxes: No limit
Smol Machines: Not listed
Idle stop
Beam Sandboxes: Not listed
Smol Machines: Not listed
Largest sandbox
Beam Sandboxes: Not listed
Smol Machines: 32 vCPU · 32 GiB
Concurrent sandboxes
Beam Sandboxes: Not listed
Smol Machines: Up to 1,000

Platform

Isolation
Beam Sandboxes: Container
Smol Machines: MicroVM
GPU
Beam Sandboxes:
Smol Machines: No
Snapshots
Beam Sandboxes:
Smol Machines: No
Pause and resume
Beam Sandboxes:
Smol Machines:

Developer

SDKs
Beam Sandboxes: Python, TypeScript
Smol Machines: TypeScript, Python, Rust
Integrations
Beam Sandboxes: Not listed
Smol Machines: Not listed

Trust

License
Beam Sandboxes: Not listed
Smol Machines: Apache-2.0
BYOC
Beam Sandboxes: In your AWS, GCP, or Azure account
Smol Machines: Not listed

Hourly cost

One sandbox running for one hour

Beam Sandboxes
Smol Machines
1 vCPU · 2 GiB
Beam Sandboxes: $0.114
Smol Machines: $0.082
2 vCPU · 4 GiB
Beam Sandboxes: $0.227
Smol Machines: $0.165
4 vCPU · 8 GiB
Beam Sandboxes: $0.454
Smol Machines: $0.330

Compute only, at list rates.

Open the calculator

Which one fits

Based on the fields above

Beam Sandboxes fits when

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

Smol Machines fits when

  • You want each sandbox in its own microVM.
  • You want an open-source platform (Apache-2.0) that you can self-host.
  • You want the lower list price: $0.165 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

Related