Collimate vs Zipbox

Collimate costs $0.04 per vCPU-hour and Zipbox costs $0.00685 per vCPU-hour. Collimate runs Firecracker microVMs and limits a session to 24 hours. Zipbox runs Firecracker microVMs and has no session limit.

Updated

Collimate

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

Zipbox

Isolation
Firecracker microVM
Free tier
$25 credit after a one-time $5 top-up
Max session
No limit

What is different

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

Collimate
Zipbox
vCPU, per hour
Collimate: $0.04
Zipbox: $0.00685
RAM, per GiB-hour
Collimate: $0.012
Zipbox: Included
Storage
Collimate: $0.10 per GB-month while a sandbox is suspended
Zipbox: Free
Free tier
Collimate: Demo key, free with no card
Zipbox: $25 credit after a one-time $5 top-up
Billing
Collimate: Per second
Zipbox: Bundled machine time
Max session
Collimate: 24 hours
Zipbox: No limit
Snapshots
Collimate:
Zipbox: No
Pause and resume
Collimate:
Zipbox: No
SDKs
Collimate: Python
Zipbox: TypeScript, Python, Go, Rust
Integrations
Collimate: MCP, Claude Code
Zipbox: MCP, Claude Code, Claude Agent SDK, OpenAI Agents SDK, Vercel AI SDK, LangChain

Full comparison

18 fields, at each provider's list price

Pricing

vCPU, per hour
Collimate: $0.04
Zipbox: $0.00685
RAM, per GiB-hour
Collimate: $0.012
Zipbox: Included
Storage
Collimate: $0.10 per GB-month while a sandbox is suspended
Zipbox: Free
Free tier
Collimate: Demo key, free with no card
Zipbox: $25 credit after a one-time $5 top-up
Paid plan from
Collimate: Pay as you go
Zipbox: Pay as you go
Billing
Collimate: Per second
Zipbox: Bundled machine time

Limits

Max session
Collimate: 24 hours
Zipbox: No limit
Idle stop
Collimate: Not listed
Zipbox: Not listed
Largest sandbox
Collimate: Not listed
Zipbox: 6 vCPU · 16 GiB
Concurrent sandboxes
Collimate: Up to 100
Zipbox: Not listed

Platform

Isolation
Collimate: Firecracker microVM
Zipbox: Firecracker microVM
GPU
Collimate: Not listed
Zipbox: Not listed
Snapshots
Collimate:
Zipbox: No
Pause and resume
Collimate:
Zipbox: No

Developer

SDKs
Collimate: Python
Zipbox: TypeScript, Python, Go, Rust
Integrations
Collimate: MCP, Claude Code
Zipbox: MCP, Claude Code, Claude Agent SDK, OpenAI Agents SDK, Vercel AI SDK, LangChain

Trust

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

Hourly cost

One sandbox running for one hour

Collimate
Zipbox
1 vCPU · 2 GiB
Collimate: $0.064
Zipbox: $0.007
2 vCPU · 4 GiB
Collimate: $0.128
Zipbox: $0.014
4 vCPU · 8 GiB
Collimate: $0.256
Zipbox: $0.027

Compute only, at list rates.

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Which one fits

Based on the fields above

Collimate fits when

  • You need snapshots.
  • You need pause and resume.
  • You need the sandboxes in your own cloud account.

Zipbox fits when

  • A session must run longer than 24 hours.
  • You use the Claude Agent SDK, the OpenAI Agents SDK, the Vercel AI SDK or LangChain.
  • You want the lower list price: $0.014 against $0.128 an hour for 2 vCPU and 4 GiB.
  • You need a desktop in the sandbox.

More comparisons

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