Containarium Cloud vs Shellbox

Shellbox costs $0.01 per vCPU-hour. Containarium Cloud runs containers. Shellbox runs Firecracker microVMs and has no session limit.

Updated

Containarium Cloud

Isolation
Container
Free tier
Not listed
Max session
Not listed

Shellbox

Isolation
Firecracker microVM
Free tier
Not listed
Max session
No limit

What is different

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

Containarium Cloud
Shellbox
Storage
Containarium Cloud: Free
Shellbox: A stopped box costs $0.50 per x1 slot per month
Paid plan from
Containarium Cloud: $20 / month
Shellbox: Pay as you go
Largest sandbox
Containarium Cloud: 2 vCPU · 4 GiB
Shellbox: 16 vCPU · 32 GiB
Isolation
Containarium Cloud: Container
Shellbox: Firecracker microVM
Integrations
Containarium Cloud: MCP, Claude Code
Shellbox: Claude Code

Full comparison

18 fields, at each provider's list price

Pricing

vCPU, per hour
Containarium Cloud: Not listed
Shellbox: $0.01
RAM, per GiB-hour
Containarium Cloud: Included
Shellbox: Included
Storage
Containarium Cloud: Free
Shellbox: A stopped box costs $0.50 per x1 slot per month
Free tier
Containarium Cloud: Not listed
Shellbox: Not listed
Paid plan from
Containarium Cloud: $20 / month
Shellbox: Pay as you go
Billing
Containarium Cloud: Bundled machine time
Shellbox: Bundled machine time

Limits

Max session
Containarium Cloud: Not listed
Shellbox: No limit
Idle stop
Containarium Cloud: Not listed
Shellbox: After 2 minutes
Largest sandbox
Containarium Cloud: 2 vCPU · 4 GiB
Shellbox: 16 vCPU · 32 GiB
Concurrent sandboxes
Containarium Cloud: Not listed
Shellbox: Up to 16

Platform

Isolation
Containarium Cloud: Container
Shellbox: Firecracker microVM
GPU
Containarium Cloud: Not listed
Shellbox: Not listed
Snapshots
Containarium Cloud: Not listed
Shellbox:
Pause and resume
Containarium Cloud: Not listed
Shellbox:

Developer

SDKs
Containarium Cloud: Not listed
Shellbox: Not listed
Integrations
Containarium Cloud: MCP, Claude Code
Shellbox: Claude Code

Trust

License
Containarium Cloud: Apache-2.0
Shellbox: Not listed
BYOC
Containarium Cloud: Sales-led, on GCP or AWS
Shellbox: Not listed

Hourly cost

One sandbox running for one hour

Containarium Cloud
Shellbox
1 vCPU · 2 GiB
Containarium Cloud: Not listed
Shellbox: $0.010
2 vCPU · 4 GiB
Containarium Cloud: Not listed
Shellbox: $0.020
4 vCPU · 8 GiB
Containarium Cloud: Not listed
Shellbox: $0.040

Compute only, at list rates.

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Which one fits

Based on the fields above

Containarium Cloud fits when

  • You want an open-source platform (Apache-2.0) that you can self-host.
  • You use MCP.
  • You need the sandboxes in your own cloud account.
  • You need ISO 27001.

Shellbox fits when

  • You want to pay only for usage, with no plan fee.
  • You want each sandbox in its own microVM.
  • You need snapshots.
  • You need pause and resume.

More comparisons

See all comparisons

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