boxes.dev vs Smol Machines

boxes.dev costs $0.1875 per vCPU-hour and Smol Machines costs $0.05 per vCPU-hour. Smol Machines runs microVMs.

Updated

boxes.dev

Isolation
Not listed
Free tier
Trial, $0, 20 hours of compute included
Max session
Not listed

Smol Machines

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

What is different

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

boxes.dev
Smol Machines
vCPU, per hour
boxes.dev: $0.1875
Smol Machines: $0.05
RAM, per GiB-hour
boxes.dev: Included
Smol Machines: $0.0162
Free tier
boxes.dev: Trial, $0, 20 hours of compute included
Smol Machines: $100 credit, one time
Paid plan from
boxes.dev: $19 / month
Smol Machines: Pay as you go
Billing
boxes.dev: Bundled machine time
Smol Machines: Active CPU time only
Largest sandbox
boxes.dev: 8 vCPU · 32 GiB
Smol Machines: 32 vCPU · 32 GiB
Concurrent sandboxes
boxes.dev: Up to 10
Smol Machines: Up to 1,000
Snapshots
boxes.dev:
Smol Machines: No

Full comparison

18 fields, at each provider's list price

Pricing

vCPU, per hour
boxes.dev: $0.1875
Smol Machines: $0.05
RAM, per GiB-hour
boxes.dev: Included
Smol Machines: $0.0162
Storage
boxes.dev: Not listed
Smol Machines: $0.0001 per GiB-hour
Free tier
boxes.dev: Trial, $0, 20 hours of compute included
Smol Machines: $100 credit, one time
Paid plan from
boxes.dev: $19 / month
Smol Machines: Pay as you go
Billing
boxes.dev: Bundled machine time
Smol Machines: Active CPU time only

Limits

Max session
boxes.dev: Not listed
Smol Machines: Not listed
Idle stop
boxes.dev: After 5 minutes
Smol Machines: Not listed
Largest sandbox
boxes.dev: 8 vCPU · 32 GiB
Smol Machines: 32 vCPU · 32 GiB
Concurrent sandboxes
boxes.dev: Up to 10
Smol Machines: Up to 1,000

Platform

Isolation
boxes.dev: Not listed
Smol Machines: MicroVM
GPU
boxes.dev: Not listed
Smol Machines: No
Snapshots
boxes.dev:
Smol Machines: No
Pause and resume
boxes.dev:
Smol Machines:

Developer

SDKs
boxes.dev: Not listed
Smol Machines: TypeScript, Python, Rust
Integrations
boxes.dev: Claude Code
Smol Machines: Not listed

Trust

License
boxes.dev: Not listed
Smol Machines: Apache-2.0
BYOC
boxes.dev: Teams plan
Smol Machines: Not listed

Hourly cost

One sandbox running for one hour

boxes.dev
Smol Machines
1 vCPU · 2 GiB
boxes.dev: $0.188
Smol Machines: $0.082
2 vCPU · 4 GiB
boxes.dev: $0.375
Smol Machines: $0.165
4 vCPU · 8 GiB
boxes.dev: $0.750
Smol Machines: $0.330

Compute only, at list rates.

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Which one fits

Based on the fields above

boxes.dev fits when

  • You use Claude Code.
  • You need snapshots.
  • You need the sandboxes in your own cloud account.

Smol Machines fits when

  • You want to pay only for usage, with no plan fee.
  • You want an open-source platform (Apache-2.0) that you can self-host.
  • You want the lower list price: $0.165 against $0.375 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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