Caged vs Shellbox
Caged costs $0.06 per vCPU-hour and Shellbox costs $0.01 per vCPU-hour. Caged runs Firecracker microVMs and limits a session to 4 hours. Shellbox runs Firecracker microVMs and has no session limit.
Updated
Caged
- Isolation
- Firecracker microVM
- Free tier
- Free plan, 5 sandboxes a day
- Max session
- 4 hours
Shellbox
- Isolation
- Firecracker microVM
- Free tier
- Not listed
- Max session
- No limit
What is different
7 fields differ. The rest are the same or not listed.
Caged
Shellbox
- vCPU, per hour
- Caged: $0.06
- Shellbox: $0.01
- Storage
- Caged: Free
- Shellbox: A stopped box costs $0.50 per x1 slot per month
- Paid plan from
- Caged: $29 / month
- Shellbox: Pay as you go
- Max session
- Caged: 4 hours
- Shellbox: No limit
- Largest sandbox
- Caged: 8 vCPU · 8 GiB
- Shellbox: 16 vCPU · 32 GiB
- Concurrent sandboxes
- Caged: Up to 5
- Shellbox: Up to 16
- Integrations
- Caged: MCP, Claude Code
- Shellbox: Claude Code
Full comparison
18 fields, at each provider's list price
Cagedcaged
Shellboxshellbox
Pricing
- vCPU, per hour
- Caged: $0.06
- Shellbox: $0.01
- RAM, per GiB-hour
- Caged: Included
- Shellbox: Included
- Storage
- Caged: Free
- Shellbox: A stopped box costs $0.50 per x1 slot per month
- Free tier
- Caged: Free plan, 5 sandboxes a day
- Shellbox: Not listed
- Paid plan from
- Caged: $29 / month
- Shellbox: Pay as you go
- Billing
- Caged: Bundled machine time
- Shellbox: Bundled machine time
Limits
- Max session
- Caged: 4 hours
- Shellbox: No limit
- Idle stop
- Caged: Not listed
- Shellbox: After 2 minutes
- Largest sandbox
- Caged: 8 vCPU · 8 GiB
- Shellbox: 16 vCPU · 32 GiB
- Concurrent sandboxes
- Caged: Up to 5
- Shellbox: Up to 16
Platform
- Isolation
- Caged: Firecracker microVM
- Shellbox: Firecracker microVM
- GPU
- Caged: Not listed
- Shellbox: Not listed
- Snapshots
- Caged: Not listed
- Shellbox:
- Pause and resume
- Caged: Not listed
- Shellbox:
Developer
- SDKs
- Caged: Python, TypeScript
- Shellbox: Not listed
- Integrations
- Caged: MCP, Claude Code
- Shellbox: Claude Code
Trust
- License
- Caged: Not listed
- Shellbox: Not listed
- BYOC
- Caged: Not listed
- Shellbox: Not listed
Hourly cost
One sandbox running for one hour
Caged
Shellbox
- 1 vCPU · 2 GiB
- Caged: $0.060
- Shellbox: $0.010
- 2 vCPU · 4 GiB
- Caged: $0.120
- Shellbox: $0.020
- 4 vCPU · 8 GiB
- Caged: $0.240
- Shellbox: $0.040
Compute only, at list rates.
Open the calculatorWhich one fits
Based on the fields above
Caged fits when
- You use MCP.
Shellbox fits when
- A session must run longer than 4 hours.
- You want to pay only for usage, with no plan fee.
- You want the lower list price: $0.020 against $0.120 an hour for 2 vCPU and 4 GiB.
- You need snapshots.
More comparisons
Agent Sandbox vs Caged- Agent Sandbox vs Shellbox
Agent37 Cloud vs Caged- Agent37 Cloud vs Shellbox
AgentBay vs Caged- AgentBay vs Shellbox
- Alibaba Cloud Agent Sandbox vs Caged
- Alibaba Cloud Agent Sandbox vs Shellbox