Hugging Face Sandboxes vs Smol Machines

Hugging Face Sandboxes costs $0.005 per vCPU-hour and Smol Machines costs $0.05 per vCPU-hour. Hugging Face Sandboxes runs full VMs, offers GPUs and limits a session to 24 hours. Smol Machines runs microVMs.

Updated

Hugging Face Sandboxes

Isolation
Full VM
Free tier
Not listed
Max session
24 hours

Smol Machines

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

What is different

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

Hugging Face Sandboxes
Smol Machines
vCPU, per hour
Hugging Face Sandboxes: $0.005
Smol Machines: $0.05
RAM, per GiB-hour
Hugging Face Sandboxes: Included
Smol Machines: $0.0162
Billing
Hugging Face Sandboxes: Bundled machine time
Smol Machines: Active CPU time only
Isolation
Hugging Face Sandboxes: Full VM
Smol Machines: MicroVM
GPU
Hugging Face Sandboxes:
Smol Machines: No
SDKs
Hugging Face Sandboxes: Python
Smol Machines: TypeScript, Python, Rust

Full comparison

18 fields, at each provider's list price

Pricing

vCPU, per hour
Hugging Face Sandboxes: $0.005
Smol Machines: $0.05
RAM, per GiB-hour
Hugging Face Sandboxes: Included
Smol Machines: $0.0162
Storage
Hugging Face Sandboxes: Not listed
Smol Machines: $0.0001 per GiB-hour
Free tier
Hugging Face Sandboxes: Not listed
Smol Machines: $100 credit, one time
Paid plan from
Hugging Face Sandboxes: Not listed
Smol Machines: Pay as you go
Billing
Hugging Face Sandboxes: Bundled machine time
Smol Machines: Active CPU time only

Limits

Max session
Hugging Face Sandboxes: 24 hours
Smol Machines: Not listed
Idle stop
Hugging Face Sandboxes: After 10 minutes
Smol Machines: Not listed
Largest sandbox
Hugging Face Sandboxes: Not listed
Smol Machines: 32 vCPU · 32 GiB
Concurrent sandboxes
Hugging Face Sandboxes: Not listed
Smol Machines: Up to 1,000

Platform

Isolation
Hugging Face Sandboxes: Full VM
Smol Machines: MicroVM
GPU
Hugging Face Sandboxes:
Smol Machines: No
Snapshots
Hugging Face Sandboxes: Not listed
Smol Machines: No
Pause and resume
Hugging Face Sandboxes: Not listed
Smol Machines:

Developer

SDKs
Hugging Face Sandboxes: Python
Smol Machines: TypeScript, Python, Rust
Integrations
Hugging Face Sandboxes: Not listed
Smol Machines: Not listed

Trust

License
Hugging Face Sandboxes: Not listed
Smol Machines: Apache-2.0
BYOC
Hugging Face Sandboxes: Not listed
Smol Machines: Not listed

Hourly cost

One sandbox running for one hour

Hugging Face Sandboxes
Smol Machines
1 vCPU · 2 GiB
Hugging Face Sandboxes: $0.005
Smol Machines: $0.082
2 vCPU · 4 GiB
Hugging Face Sandboxes: $0.010
Smol Machines: $0.165
4 vCPU · 8 GiB
Hugging Face Sandboxes: $0.020
Smol Machines: $0.330

Compute only, at list rates.

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Which one fits

Based on the fields above

Hugging Face Sandboxes fits when

  • You need GPUs.
  • You want each sandbox to be a full VM.
  • You want the lower list price: $0.010 against $0.165 an hour for 2 vCPU and 4 GiB.

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

See all comparisons

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