Buddy Sandboxes vs Smol Machines
Buddy Sandboxes costs $0.0144 per vCPU-hour and Smol Machines costs $0.05 per vCPU-hour. Buddy Sandboxes runs full VMs and has no session limit. Smol Machines runs microVMs.
Updated
Buddy Sandboxes
- Isolation
- Full VM
- Free tier
- $1 of usage credit every month
- Max session
- No limit
Smol Machines
- Isolation
- MicroVM
- Free tier
- $100 credit, one time
- Max session
- Not listed
What is different
10 fields differ. The rest are the same or not listed.
Buddy Sandboxes
Smol Machines
- vCPU, per hour
- Buddy Sandboxes: $0.0144
- Smol Machines: $0.05
- RAM, per GiB-hour
- Buddy Sandboxes: $0.0144
- Smol Machines: $0.0162
- Storage
- Buddy Sandboxes: $0.00011 per GiB-hour
- Smol Machines: $0.0001 per GiB-hour
- Free tier
- Buddy Sandboxes: $1 of usage credit every month
- Smol Machines: $100 credit, one time
- Paid plan from
- Buddy Sandboxes: $29 / month
- Smol Machines: Pay as you go
- Billing
- Buddy Sandboxes: Per second
- Smol Machines: Active CPU time only
- Largest sandbox
- Buddy Sandboxes: 12 vCPU · 24 GiB
- Smol Machines: 32 vCPU · 32 GiB
- Isolation
- Buddy Sandboxes: Full VM
- Smol Machines: MicroVM
- SDKs
- Buddy Sandboxes: TypeScript
- Smol Machines: TypeScript, Python, Rust, Go
- Integrations
- Buddy Sandboxes: MCP, Claude Code
- Smol Machines: MCP
Full comparison
18 fields, at each provider's list price
Buddy Sandboxesbuddy
Smol Machinessmolmachines
Pricing
- vCPU, per hour
- Buddy Sandboxes: $0.0144
- Smol Machines: $0.05
- RAM, per GiB-hour
- Buddy Sandboxes: $0.0144
- Smol Machines: $0.0162
- Storage
- Buddy Sandboxes: $0.00011 per GiB-hour
- Smol Machines: $0.0001 per GiB-hour
- Free tier
- Buddy Sandboxes: $1 of usage credit every month
- Smol Machines: $100 credit, one time
- Paid plan from
- Buddy Sandboxes: $29 / month
- Smol Machines: Pay as you go
- Billing
- Buddy Sandboxes: Per second
- Smol Machines: Active CPU time only
Limits
- Max session
- Buddy Sandboxes: No limit
- Smol Machines: Not listed
- Idle stop
- Buddy Sandboxes: Not listed
- Smol Machines: Not listed
- Largest sandbox
- Buddy Sandboxes: 12 vCPU · 24 GiB
- Smol Machines: 32 vCPU · 32 GiB
- Concurrent sandboxes
- Buddy Sandboxes: Not listed
- Smol Machines: Up to 1,000
Platform
- Isolation
- Buddy Sandboxes: Full VM
- Smol Machines: MicroVM
- GPU
- Buddy Sandboxes: Not listed
- Smol Machines: No
- Snapshots
- Buddy Sandboxes:
- Smol Machines:
- Pause and resume
- Buddy Sandboxes:
- Smol Machines:
Developer
- SDKs
- Buddy Sandboxes: TypeScript
- Smol Machines: TypeScript, Python, Rust, Go
- Integrations
- Buddy Sandboxes: MCP, Claude Code
- Smol Machines: MCP
Trust
- License
- Buddy Sandboxes: Not listed
- Smol Machines: Apache-2.0
- BYOC
- Buddy Sandboxes: Not listed
- Smol Machines: Not listed
Hourly cost
One sandbox running for one hour
Buddy Sandboxes
Smol Machines
- 1 vCPU · 2 GiB
- Buddy Sandboxes: $0.043
- Smol Machines: $0.082
- 2 vCPU · 4 GiB
- Buddy Sandboxes: $0.086
- Smol Machines: $0.165
- 4 vCPU · 8 GiB
- Buddy Sandboxes: $0.173
- Smol Machines: $0.330
Compute only, at list rates.
Open the calculatorWhich one fits
Based on the fields above
Buddy Sandboxes fits when
- You want each sandbox to be a full VM.
- You use Claude Code.
- You want the lower list price: $0.086 against $0.165 an hour for 2 vCPU and 4 GiB.
- You need SOC 2 Type II and GDPR.
Smol Machines fits when
- You want to pay only for usage, with no plan fee.
- 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 larger free credit: $100 against $1.
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