Cua Fleets vs Smol Machines

Smol Machines costs $0.05 per vCPU-hour. Cua Fleets runs gVisor. Smol Machines runs microVMs.

Updated

Cua Fleets

Isolation
gVisor
Free tier
Not listed
Max session
Not listed

Smol Machines

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

What is different

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

Cua Fleets
Smol Machines
Billing
Cua Fleets: Per second
Smol Machines: Active CPU time only
Isolation
Cua Fleets: gVisor
Smol Machines: MicroVM
Pause and resume
Cua Fleets: No
Smol Machines:
SDKs
Cua Fleets: Python, TypeScript, Rust
Smol Machines: TypeScript, Python, Rust

Full comparison

18 fields, at each provider's list price

Pricing

vCPU, per hour
Cua Fleets: Not listed
Smol Machines: $0.05
RAM, per GiB-hour
Cua Fleets: Not listed
Smol Machines: $0.0162
Storage
Cua Fleets: Not listed
Smol Machines: $0.0001 per GiB-hour
Free tier
Cua Fleets: Not listed
Smol Machines: $100 credit, one time
Paid plan from
Cua Fleets: Not listed
Smol Machines: Pay as you go
Billing
Cua Fleets: Per second
Smol Machines: Active CPU time only

Limits

Max session
Cua Fleets: Not listed
Smol Machines: Not listed
Idle stop
Cua Fleets: Not listed
Smol Machines: Not listed
Largest sandbox
Cua Fleets: Not listed
Smol Machines: 32 vCPU · 32 GiB
Concurrent sandboxes
Cua Fleets: Not listed
Smol Machines: Up to 1,000

Platform

Isolation
Cua Fleets: gVisor
Smol Machines: MicroVM
GPU
Cua Fleets: Not listed
Smol Machines: No
Snapshots
Cua Fleets: Not listed
Smol Machines: No
Pause and resume
Cua Fleets: No
Smol Machines:

Developer

SDKs
Cua Fleets: Python, TypeScript, Rust
Smol Machines: TypeScript, Python, Rust
Integrations
Cua Fleets: OpenAI Agents SDK, MCP, Claude Code
Smol Machines: Not listed

Trust

License
Cua Fleets: Not listed
Smol Machines: Apache-2.0
BYOC
Cua Fleets: Your AWS, Google Cloud, or Modal account
Smol Machines: Not listed

Hourly cost

One sandbox running for one hour

Cua Fleets
Smol Machines
1 vCPU · 2 GiB
Cua Fleets: Not listed
Smol Machines: $0.082
2 vCPU · 4 GiB
Cua Fleets: Not listed
Smol Machines: $0.165
4 vCPU · 8 GiB
Cua Fleets: Not listed
Smol Machines: $0.330

Compute only, at list rates.

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Which one fits

Based on the fields above

Cua Fleets fits when

  • You use the OpenAI Agents SDK, MCP or Claude Code.
  • You need a desktop in the sandbox.
  • You need the sandboxes in your own cloud account.
  • You need SOC 2.

Smol Machines fits when

  • You want each sandbox in its own microVM.
  • 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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