Smol Machines vs Thunder Sandboxes
Smol Machines costs $0.05 per vCPU-hour and Thunder Sandboxes costs $0.051 per vCPU-hour. Smol Machines runs microVMs. Thunder Sandboxes runs Firecracker microVMs and offers GPUs.
Updated
Smol Machines
- Isolation
- MicroVM
- Free tier
- $100 credit, one time
- Max session
- Not listed
Thunder Sandboxes
- Isolation
- Firecracker microVM
- Free tier
- Not listed
- Max session
- Not listed
What is different
7 fields differ. The rest are the same or not listed.
Smol Machines
Thunder Sandboxes
- vCPU, per hour
- Smol Machines: $0.05
- Thunder Sandboxes: $0.051
- RAM, per GiB-hour
- Smol Machines: $0.0162
- Thunder Sandboxes: $0.016
- Storage
- Smol Machines: $0.0001 per GiB-hour
- Thunder Sandboxes: $0.00012 per GiB-hour
- Billing
- Smol Machines: Active CPU time only
- Thunder Sandboxes: Per second
- Isolation
- Smol Machines: MicroVM
- Thunder Sandboxes: Firecracker microVM
- GPU
- Smol Machines: No
- Thunder Sandboxes:
- SDKs
- Smol Machines: TypeScript, Python, Rust
- Thunder Sandboxes: Python
Full comparison
18 fields, at each provider's list price
Smol Machinessmolmachines
Thunder Sandboxesthundercompute
Pricing
- vCPU, per hour
- Smol Machines: $0.05
- Thunder Sandboxes: $0.051
- RAM, per GiB-hour
- Smol Machines: $0.0162
- Thunder Sandboxes: $0.016
- Storage
- Smol Machines: $0.0001 per GiB-hour
- Thunder Sandboxes: $0.00012 per GiB-hour
- Free tier
- Smol Machines: $100 credit, one time
- Thunder Sandboxes: Not listed
- Paid plan from
- Smol Machines: Pay as you go
- Thunder Sandboxes: Not listed
- Billing
- Smol Machines: Active CPU time only
- Thunder Sandboxes: Per second
Limits
- Max session
- Smol Machines: Not listed
- Thunder Sandboxes: Not listed
- Idle stop
- Smol Machines: Not listed
- Thunder Sandboxes: Not listed
- Largest sandbox
- Smol Machines: 32 vCPU · 32 GiB
- Thunder Sandboxes: Not listed
- Concurrent sandboxes
- Smol Machines: Up to 1,000
- Thunder Sandboxes: Not listed
Platform
- Isolation
- Smol Machines: MicroVM
- Thunder Sandboxes: Firecracker microVM
- GPU
- Smol Machines: No
- Thunder Sandboxes:
- Snapshots
- Smol Machines: No
- Thunder Sandboxes: Not listed
- Pause and resume
- Smol Machines:
- Thunder Sandboxes: Not listed
Developer
- SDKs
- Smol Machines: TypeScript, Python, Rust
- Thunder Sandboxes: Python
- Integrations
- Smol Machines: Not listed
- Thunder Sandboxes: MCP
Trust
- License
- Smol Machines: Apache-2.0
- Thunder Sandboxes: Not listed
- BYOC
- Smol Machines: Not listed
- Thunder Sandboxes: Not listed
Hourly cost
One sandbox running for one hour
Smol Machines
Thunder Sandboxes
- 1 vCPU · 2 GiB
- Smol Machines: $0.082
- Thunder Sandboxes: $0.083
- 2 vCPU · 4 GiB
- Smol Machines: $0.165
- Thunder Sandboxes: $0.166
- 4 vCPU · 8 GiB
- Smol Machines: $0.330
- Thunder Sandboxes: $0.332
Compute only, at list rates.
Open the calculatorWhich one fits
Based on the fields above
Smol Machines fits when
- You want an open-source platform (Apache-2.0) that you can self-host.
- You want the lower list price: $0.165 against $0.166 an hour for 2 vCPU and 4 GiB.
- You need pause and resume.
- Your code waits a lot: CPU is billed only while it is in use.
Thunder Sandboxes fits when
- You need GPUs.
- You use MCP.
More comparisons
Agent Sandbox vs Smol Machines- Agent Sandbox vs Thunder Sandboxes
Agent37 Cloud vs Smol Machines- Agent37 Cloud vs Thunder Sandboxes
AgentBay vs Smol Machines- AgentBay vs Thunder Sandboxes
- Alibaba Cloud Agent Sandbox vs Smol Machines
- Alibaba Cloud Agent Sandbox vs Thunder Sandboxes