Collimate vs ix

Collimate costs $0.04 per vCPU-hour and ix costs $0.0288 per vCPU-hour. Collimate runs Firecracker microVMs and limits a session to 24 hours. ix runs full VMs.

Updated

Collimate

Isolation
Firecracker microVM
Free tier
Demo key, free with no card
Max session
24 hours

ix

Isolation
Full VM
Free tier
Not listed
Max session
Not listed

What is different

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

Collimate
ix
vCPU, per hour
Collimate: $0.04
ix: $0.0288
RAM, per GiB-hour
Collimate: $0.012
ix: $0.0108
Storage
Collimate: $0.10 per GB-month while a sandbox is suspended
ix: $0.101 per GiB-month stored
Billing
Collimate: Per second
ix: Active CPU time only
Isolation
Collimate: Firecracker microVM
ix: Full VM
SDKs
Collimate: Python
ix: Python, TypeScript, Rust
Integrations
Collimate: MCP, Claude Code
ix: MCP

Full comparison

18 fields, at each provider's list price

Pricing

vCPU, per hour
Collimate: $0.04
ix: $0.0288
RAM, per GiB-hour
Collimate: $0.012
ix: $0.0108
Storage
Collimate: $0.10 per GB-month while a sandbox is suspended
ix: $0.101 per GiB-month stored
Free tier
Collimate: Demo key, free with no card
ix: Not listed
Paid plan from
Collimate: Pay as you go
ix: Pay as you go
Billing
Collimate: Per second
ix: Active CPU time only

Limits

Max session
Collimate: 24 hours
ix: Not listed
Idle stop
Collimate: Not listed
ix: Not listed
Largest sandbox
Collimate: Not listed
ix: 100 vCPU · 256 GiB
Concurrent sandboxes
Collimate: Up to 100
ix: Up to 100

Platform

Isolation
Collimate: Firecracker microVM
ix: Full VM
GPU
Collimate: Not listed
ix: Not listed
Snapshots
Collimate:
ix:
Pause and resume
Collimate:
ix: Not listed

Developer

SDKs
Collimate: Python
ix: Python, TypeScript, Rust
Integrations
Collimate: MCP, Claude Code
ix: MCP

Trust

License
Collimate: Not listed
ix: Not listed
BYOC
Collimate: Enterprise plan
ix: Not listed

Hourly cost

One sandbox running for one hour

Collimate
ix
1 vCPU · 2 GiB
Collimate: $0.064
ix: $0.050
2 vCPU · 4 GiB
Collimate: $0.128
ix: $0.101
4 vCPU · 8 GiB
Collimate: $0.256
ix: $0.202

Compute only, at list rates.

Open the calculator

Which one fits

Based on the fields above

Collimate fits when

  • You want each sandbox in its own microVM.
  • You use Claude Code.
  • You need pause and resume.
  • You need the sandboxes in your own cloud account.

ix fits when

  • You want each sandbox to be a full VM.
  • You want the lower list price: $0.101 against $0.128 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

Related