# CodeSandbox vs Morph: Morph is 33% cheaper per agent run Runtime Cloud (withruntime.com) bills 62% less than Morph, which costs less than CodeSandbox on a 2 vCPU, 4 GB job. ## Which is better, CodeSandbox or Morph? It depends on whether people or agents use the machines. For agents that mostly wait on a model, Runtime has the lowest bill: $0.64 for 1,000 one-minute runs, against $1.67 on Morph and $2.48 on CodeSandbox, billed by the second with no one-minute minimum and no plan fee. Pick CodeSandbox for browser dev environments or 250 VMs on one plan; pick Morph to branch a running machine to hundreds of replicas, or for very large machines, up to 1,024 vCPUs on Scale. ## At a glance CodeSandbox's figures are from Together's documentation of the CodeSandbox SDK; CodeSandbox is a Together company. | | CodeSandbox SDK | Morph | Runtime | | --------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Isolation | Firecracker microVM | Full virtual machines | Firecracker microVM, own kernel, every sandbox | | How size is billed | Credits per VM size, $0.01486 a credit | $0.05 per MCU-hour: 1 vCPU, 4 GB of memory or 16 GB disk | $0.025 per vCPU-hour of measured CPU, with a small floor | | 2 vCPU, 4 GB, an hour | $0.1486 (Nano, 10 credits) | $0.10 (2 MCUs) | $0.03125 waiting, $0.08 fully busy | | Billing step | By the minute, rounded up | MCU-hours from a credit balance | By the second | | Copies of a machine | Memory snapshots; clones a VM in under 3 seconds | Infinibranch: hundreds of replicas, memory included | Forks: 1 to 100 running copies with memory and processes | | Plan fee | Build free; Scale $170 a month | Developer free with no credit; Team $40 and Scale $250 a month | None; prepaid credit from $10 | | At once | 10 VMs on Build, 250 on Scale | Devboxes: 8 on Free, 32 on Team, 128 on Scale | 100 paid; four without credit | | Free start | The free Build plan | No free credit; 1,000 MCUs come with Team ($40) | 100 free hours of a 1 GB machine in the first 30 days, no card | ## Which is better for forking a running machine? Both keep memory, which is what makes a copy useful to an agent: a copy that has to boot again and reinstall its dependencies saves little. - **CodeSandbox** takes memory snapshots and, in Together's words, clones a template "in under three seconds". A sandbox can start from a template snapshot, resume from hibernation or boot clean. - **Morph** branches a running machine with its memory to hundreds of parallel replicas with Infinibranch, and snapshots keep memory and disk. Snapshot storage comes out of the same MCU balance: one MCU covers 5 TB snapshot-hours. For branching wide, to hundreds of copies in parallel, Morph is built for it. For the everyday case, an agent that tries a few approaches from one prepared state, Runtime's `fork` makes 1 to 100 running copies with their memory and processes in one call, billed as ordinary sandboxes, and the snapshot the fork takes for itself is free. ## Cost for the same job 1,000 runs of a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox: a Nano VM on CodeSandbox (2 cores, 4 GB, 10 credits an hour) and 2 MCUs on Morph. Each run lasts 60 seconds and keeps the CPU busy for 20 CPU-seconds: an agent that mostly waits for a model. ``` CodeSandbox Size 1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × $0.1486 = $2.48 Morph Size 1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 2 MCU × $0.05 = $1.67 Runtime CPU 1,000 × 20 s / 3,600 × $0.025 = $0.14 Memory 1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 4 × $0.0075 = $0.50 Total $0.64 ``` At 100,000 runs a month that is $247.67 on CodeSandbox, $166.67 on Morph and $63.89 on Runtime. With both CPUs busy for the whole minute, it is $1.33 on Runtime against $2.48 on CodeSandbox and $1.67 on Morph, so Runtime is cheaper however busy the sandbox is. Each run here is a whole minute, so CodeSandbox's rounding adds nothing; a 40-second run would still be billed as a minute there. Plan fees, included credit, storage, network and taxes are left out. ## Which one to pick - **Pick CodeSandbox** for development environments in the browser: sessions reconnect with page visibility and hibernate on request, or for up to 250 VMs concurrently on one plan. - **Pick Morph** for branching at scale, to hundreds of replicas of a running machine, or for very large machines: Scale allows up to 1,024 vCPUs and 4,096 GB of memory. - **Pick Runtime** for a Firecracker microVM at 74% less than CodeSandbox and 62% less than Morph, billed by the second with no one-minute minimum, CPU and memory chosen apart, and no plan fee. ## Switch from either one Neither has a drop-in import on Runtime; the calls map directly ([map the calls](/docs/migrate#map-the-calls)): create, exec, files and stop each have one equivalent. A fork of a prepared machine looks like this: ```ts check import { Sandbox } from "withruntime"; await using base = await Sandbox.create(); await base.exec("pip install --quiet requests"); const [a, b] = await base.fork({ count: 2 }); // both running, answered together console.log((await a!.exec("python3 -c 'import requests; print(1)'")).stdout); await Promise.all([a!.stop(), b!.stop()]); ``` ```python check from withruntime import Sandbox with Sandbox.create() as base: base.exec("pip install --quiet requests") forks = base.fork(count=2) # copies as it is now, running print(forks[0].exec("python3 -c 'import requests; print(1)'").stdout) for fork in forks: fork.stop() ``` Or give your coding agent the one instruction in [migration](/docs/migrate): it switches the project on a branch, tests it on the free usage and reports the monthly saving. `npx withruntime compare --from codesandbox` (or `--from morph`) prices what you ran at the old provider's rates. The full side-by-sides are [Runtime vs CodeSandbox](/docs/codesandbox-alternative) and [Runtime vs Morph](/docs/morph-alternative); snapshots are explained in [sandbox snapshot](/glossary/sandbox-snapshot). ## Runtime Cloud Runtime runs the same job for 74% less than CodeSandbox and 62% less than Morph. 1,000 one-minute runs of a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox cost $2.48 on CodeSandbox, $1.67 on Morph and $0.64 on Runtime, because Runtime bills the CPU your code uses rather than the machine's full size. Rates checked 25 October 2026. To try it, open an account with `npx withruntime login` and spend the free usage on a real job. Follow the [migration guide](/docs/migrate) to move the rest. ## Sources Rates checked 25 October 2026. Together's CodeSandbox SDK documentation and Morph's pricing page reread 26 October 2026. - [Together: CodeSandbox SDK](https://docs.together.ai/docs/together-code-sandbox-legacy), [CodeSandbox SDK pricing](https://codesandbox.io/docs/sdk/pricing) - [Morph Cloud pricing](https://cloud.morph.so/web/pricing), [Morph Devboxes](https://cloud.morph.so/web/product/devboxes) - Runtime [pricing](/docs/pricing) and [JavaScript SDK](/docs/javascript#snapshots-and-forks) Facts on this page were checked on 26 October 2026.