# Fly Machines vs Morph: pricing, snapshots and limits Runtime Cloud (withruntime.com) runs the job for 58% less than either. Morph can branch a running VM. ## Which is better, Fly Machines or Morph? It depends on whether your agent waits, serves users or branches. Agents that idle between model calls cost the least on Runtime: $0.64 for 1,000 one-minute runs, against $1.53 on Fly Machines and $1.67 on Morph, because it bills measured CPU. It also forks a running sandbox and pauses with memory at any size. Pick Fly Machines for a service in any of 17 regions, with volumes and Managed Postgres in the same account. Pick Morph when a search needs hundreds of branches of one running machine. ## At a glance | | Fly Machines | Morph | Runtime | | ----------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------- | | Isolation | Firecracker microVM | Full virtual machines | Firecracker microVM, own kernel | | How it bills | A fixed size per second while started | $0.05 per MCU-hour for the machine's size | $0.025 per vCPU-hour of measured CPU, with a small floor | | Memory | Inside the size; more at $6 per GB per month | Inside the MCU: 4 GB per MCU | $0.0075 per reserved GiB-hour | | 2 vCPU, 4 GB | `performance-2x`, $0.0916704 an hour (`iad`) | 2 MCUs, $0.10 an hour | $0.08 an hour fully busy, $0.03125 waiting | | Plan fee | None; pay as you go | Developer free with no credit; Team $40 and Scale $250 per month | None; prepaid credit from $10 | | At once | Not stated on the pricing page | 8 devboxes free, 32 on Team, 128 on Scale | 100 sandboxes paid | | Keep a running VM | Suspend, for Machines with 2 GB of memory or less | Snapshots of memory and disk; branches to many replicas | Pause, snapshot and fork keep memory and processes | ## Can you snapshot and branch a running machine? On Morph, yes. It is the center of the product. A snapshot captures a VM's memory and disk, and Morph's Infinibranch starts hundreds of parallel replicas from one running machine. Snapshot storage is billed in MCUs too: one MCU covers 5 TB-hours of snapshot. Morph's own example puts an 8 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, 8 GB disk VM kept as a snapshot at $0.12 per month. A Fly Machine does not branch. Its nearest feature is suspend, which saves the whole VM state (CPU registers, memory and open file handles) in a Firecracker snapshot and resumes in a few hundred milliseconds. Suspend needs 2 GB of memory or less, so the 4 GB size in the example below cannot use it. Fly says a deploy, a host migration or maintenance discards the snapshot. A Machine's root disk is temporary. Files that must last go on a Fly Volume. Runtime does both at any size. `fork` makes 1 to 100 running copies of a sandbox, with its files, memory and processes. A snapshot saves the machine so you can start more copies later, for as long as you have credit. See [what a sandbox fork is](/glossary/sandbox-fork) and [what a sandbox snapshot is](/glossary/sandbox-snapshot). ## Cost for the same job 1,000 runs of a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox. Each run lasts 60 seconds and keeps the CPU busy for 20 CPU-seconds: an agent that mostly waits for a model. The Fly Machine is a `performance-2x` with 4 GB. On Morph, 2 vCPUs and 4 GB is 2 MCUs. ``` Machines Size 1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × $0.0916704 = $1.53 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 per month, the cost is $152.78 on Fly Machines, $166.67 on Morph and $63.89 on Runtime. With both CPUs busy for the whole minute, the job costs $1.33 on Runtime, against $1.53 on Machines and $1.67 on Morph. Runtime is cheaper however busy the sandbox is. Morph charges an MCU for whichever of CPU, memory or disk a machine needs most, so a 2 vCPU, 8 GB machine is still 2 MCUs. Plan fees, included credit, storage, network and free credits are left out. ## Which one to pick - **Pick Fly Machines** to run a service that stays up, in any of Fly's 17 regions, with volumes and Managed Postgres in the same account. - **Pick Morph** if your agent's search needs hundreds of branches of one running machine concurrently. - **Pick Runtime** for forks and pauses that keep memory at any size, measured CPU at $0.025 a vCPU-hour, no plan fee, and an agent that connects without an API key. ## Runtime Cloud Runtime runs the same job for 58% less than a Fly Machine and 62% less than Morph. 1,000 one-minute runs of a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox cost $1.53 on Fly Machines, $1.67 on Morph and $0.64 on Runtime, because Runtime bills the CPU your code uses rather than the size it holds. Like Morph, it copies a running sandbox with its memory. Rates checked 25 October 2026. To try it, run `npx withruntime login` and use the free usage. The [migration guide](/docs/migrate) covers moving existing Machines or Morph code. ## Switch from either one If you branched a Morph snapshot or kept a warm Machine to copy, prepare one Runtime sandbox and fork it. The copies start running together: ```python check from withruntime import Sandbox with Sandbox.create() as base: base.exec("pip install --quiet requests") forks = base.fork(count=2) # memory and processes included for fork in forks: print(fork.exec("python3 -c 'import requests; print(requests.__version__)'").stdout) fork.stop() ``` For one-off jobs, create a sandbox where you created a Machine or an instance, and stop it at the end. 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 fly-machines` (or `--from morph`) prices what you ran at the old provider's rates. Credit you add within 30 days of signing up is matched, up to $1,000 in total. The full side-by-sides are [Runtime vs Fly.io](/docs/fly-alternative) and [Runtime vs Morph](/docs/morph-alternative). ## Sources Fly.io prices checked 25 October 2026. Rates checked 25 October 2026. The Fly suspend and Morph pricing pages were read 26 October 2026. - [Fly.io pricing](https://fly.io/pricing/), [Machine suspend and resume](https://docs.fly.io/reference/suspend-resume/), [Fly Volumes](https://fly.io/docs/volumes/overview/), [Fly.io regions](https://fly.io/docs/reference/regions/) - [Morph Cloud pricing](https://cloud.morph.so/web/pricing), [Morph Devboxes](https://cloud.morph.so/web/product/devboxes), [Morph snapshots](https://cloud.morph.so/docs/documentation/instances/creating-snapshot) - Runtime [pricing](/docs/pricing) and [JavaScript SDK](/docs/javascript#snapshots-and-forks) Facts on this page were checked on 26 October 2026.