BoxCompute vs Smol Machines
BoxCompute costs $0.10 per vCPU-hour and Smol Machines costs $0.05 per vCPU-hour. BoxCompute runs full VMs and has no session limit. Smol Machines runs microVMs.
Updated
BoxCompute
- Isolation
- Full VM
- Free tier
- $10 credit, one time, valid 14 days
- 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.
BoxCompute
Smol Machines
- vCPU, per hour
- BoxCompute: $0.10
- Smol Machines: $0.05
- RAM, per GiB-hour
- BoxCompute: Included
- Smol Machines: $0.0162
- Free tier
- BoxCompute: $10 credit, one time, valid 14 days
- Smol Machines: $100 credit, one time
- Billing
- BoxCompute: Bundled machine time
- Smol Machines: Active CPU time only
- Largest sandbox
- BoxCompute: 1.5 vCPU · 3 GiB
- Smol Machines: 32 vCPU · 32 GiB
- Isolation
- BoxCompute: Full VM
- Smol Machines: MicroVM
- SDKs
- BoxCompute: Python, TypeScript
- Smol Machines: TypeScript, Python, Rust
Full comparison
18 fields, at each provider's list price
BoxComputeboxcompute
Smol Machinessmolmachines
Pricing
- vCPU, per hour
- BoxCompute: $0.10
- Smol Machines: $0.05
- RAM, per GiB-hour
- BoxCompute: Included
- Smol Machines: $0.0162
- Storage
- BoxCompute: Not listed
- Smol Machines: $0.0001 per GiB-hour
- Free tier
- BoxCompute: $10 credit, one time, valid 14 days
- Smol Machines: $100 credit, one time
- Paid plan from
- BoxCompute: Not listed
- Smol Machines: Pay as you go
- Billing
- BoxCompute: Bundled machine time
- Smol Machines: Active CPU time only
Limits
- Max session
- BoxCompute: No limit
- Smol Machines: Not listed
- Idle stop
- BoxCompute: After 15 minutes
- Smol Machines: Not listed
- Largest sandbox
- BoxCompute: 1.5 vCPU · 3 GiB
- Smol Machines: 32 vCPU · 32 GiB
- Concurrent sandboxes
- BoxCompute: Not listed
- Smol Machines: Up to 1,000
Platform
- Isolation
- BoxCompute: Full VM
- Smol Machines: MicroVM
- GPU
- BoxCompute: Not listed
- Smol Machines: No
- Snapshots
- BoxCompute: Not listed
- Smol Machines: No
- Pause and resume
- BoxCompute:
- Smol Machines:
Developer
- SDKs
- BoxCompute: Python, TypeScript
- Smol Machines: TypeScript, Python, Rust
- Integrations
- BoxCompute: Claude Code
- Smol Machines: Not listed
Trust
- License
- BoxCompute: Not listed
- Smol Machines: Apache-2.0
- BYOC
- BoxCompute: Enterprise pilot on your hardware or cloud account
- Smol Machines: Not listed
Hourly cost
One sandbox running for one hour
BoxCompute
Smol Machines
- 1 vCPU · 2 GiB
- BoxCompute: $0.100
- Smol Machines: $0.082
- 2 vCPU · 4 GiB
- BoxCompute: $0.200
- Smol Machines: $0.165
- 4 vCPU · 8 GiB
- BoxCompute: $0.400
- Smol Machines: $0.330
Compute only, at list rates.
Open the calculatorWhich one fits
Based on the fields above
BoxCompute fits when
- You want each sandbox to be a full VM.
- You use Claude Code.
- You need a desktop in the sandbox.
- You need the sandboxes in your own cloud account.
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 $0.200 an hour for 2 vCPU and 4 GiB.
- You want the larger free credit: $100 against $10.
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