Caged vs Smol Machines

Caged costs $0.06 per vCPU-hour and Smol Machines costs $0.05 per vCPU-hour. Caged runs Firecracker microVMs and limits a session to 4 hours. Smol Machines runs microVMs.

Updated Oct 15, 2026

Caged

Isolated microVM sandboxes that record every agent action.

Isolation: Firecracker microVM
Free tier: Free plan, 5 sandboxes a day
Max session: 4 hours

Visit site Caged profile

Smol Machines

Hosted Linux microVMs with their own kernel, for agents and untrusted code.

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

Visit site Smol Machines profile

What is different

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

Field

Caged

Smol Machines

vCPU, per hour: Caged: $0.06; Smol Machines: $0.05
RAM, per GiB-hour: Caged: Included; Smol Machines: $0.0162
Storage: Caged: Free; Smol Machines: $0.0001 per GiB-hour
Free tier: Caged: Free plan, 5 sandboxes a day; Smol Machines: $100 credit, one time
Paid plan from: Caged: $29 / month; Smol Machines: Pay as you go
Billing: Caged: Bundled machine time; Smol Machines: Active CPU time only
Largest sandbox: Caged: 8 vCPU · 8 GiB; Smol Machines: 32 vCPU · 32 GiB
Concurrent sandboxes: Caged: Up to 5; Smol Machines: Up to 1,000
Isolation: Caged: Firecracker microVM; Smol Machines: MicroVM

Full comparison

18 fields, at each provider's list price

Cagedcaged.dev/#pricing

Smol Machinessmolmachines.com/pricingsmolmachines.com

Pricing

vCPU, per hour: Caged: $0.06; Smol Machines: $0.05
RAM, per GiB-hour: Caged: Included; Smol Machines: $0.0162
Storage: Caged: Free; Smol Machines: $0.0001 per GiB-hour
Free tier: Caged: Free plan, 5 sandboxes a day; Smol Machines: $100 credit, one time
Paid plan from: Caged: $29 / month; Smol Machines: Pay as you go
Billing: Caged: Bundled machine time; Smol Machines: Active CPU time only

Limits

Max session: Caged: 4 hours; Smol Machines: Not listed
Idle stop: Caged: Not listed; Smol Machines: Not listed
Largest sandbox: Caged: 8 vCPU · 8 GiB; Smol Machines: 32 vCPU · 32 GiB
Concurrent sandboxes: Caged: Up to 5; Smol Machines: Up to 1,000

Platform

Isolation: Caged: Firecracker microVM; Smol Machines: MicroVM
GPU: Caged: Not listed; Smol Machines: No
Snapshots: Caged: Not listed; Smol Machines: No
Pause and resume: Caged: Not listed; Smol Machines:

Developer

SDKs: Caged: Not listed; Smol Machines: TypeScript, Python, Rust
Integrations: Caged: MCP, Claude Code; Smol Machines: Not listed

Trust

License: Caged: Not listed; Smol Machines: Apache-2.0
BYOC: Caged: Not listed; Smol Machines: Not listed

Hourly cost

One sandbox running for one hour

Size

Caged

Smol Machines

1 vCPU · 2 GiB: Caged: $0.060; Smol Machines: $0.082
2 vCPU · 4 GiB: Caged: $0.120; Smol Machines: $0.165
4 vCPU · 8 GiB: Caged: $0.240; Smol Machines: $0.330

Compute only, at list rates.

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Which one fits

Based on the fields above

Caged fits when

You use MCP or Claude Code.
You want the lower list price: $0.120 against $0.165 an hour for 2 vCPU and 4 GiB.

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 need pause and resume.
Your code waits a lot: CPU is billed only while it is in use.

More comparisons

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Caged

Smol Machines

What is different

Full comparison

Pricing

Limits

Platform

Developer

Trust

Hourly cost

Which one fits

Caged fits when

Smol Machines fits when

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