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Sandboxer vs AWS Fargate

AWS Fargate runs container tasks on Amazon ECS without you managing servers. Each task is isolated from others, but it is a container: privileged mode, devices and Docker-in-container are not available. Sandboxer gives you a full VM per sandbox with root, systemd, Docker and nested KVM. Pick Fargate for scalable containerized services inside AWS; pick Sandboxer for interactive agent sandboxes that need a whole machine.

Checked against AWS Fargate's public docs on October 24, 2026. Sources are linked in the table and listed below.

At a glance

Sandboxer and AWS Fargate compared
CapabilitySandboxerAWS Fargate
IsolationmicroVM
Cloud Hypervisor, its own kernel
container task with its own isolation boundary
Each task does not share the kernel, CPU, memory or network interface with another task.
Full Linux with root
Ubuntu 24.04, sudo, systemd
partial
ECS Exec runs commands as root inside the container, but privileged mode is unsupported and the only addable Linux capability is CAP_SYS_PTRACE.
Docker inside
Preinstalled
Privileged, devices and dockerSecurityOptions are not valid on Fargate, so a Docker daemon cannot run inside the task.
Nested virtualization (/dev/kvm)
The linuxParameters devices parameter is not supported on Fargate, so no /dev/kvm can be mapped.
Pause and resume with memory
Running processes come back
Fork a sandbox
Copy-on-write disk copy that boots fresh
HTTPS URL per port
Private with a token, or public
partial
Services can sit behind Application, Network or Gateway Load Balancers; there is no automatic URL per port.
Longest sessionNo limit on paid plans
Auto-stop is up to 30 days or off
BillingPer second, flat rate per size
Stopped sandboxes are free
per second (1-minute minimum), vCPU + memory
Charged while tasks run.
GPUs
The gpu task-definition parameter is not valid on Fargate.
Self-host or open source
RegionsUS East (Virginia) and EU Central (Finland)Linux containers in dozens of AWS regions incl. GovCloud and China
See the regions table.

= not documented publicly.

Price for one 4 vCPU, 8 GB machine

Sandboxer
$0.036/hour
Flat per-second rate for the default size
AWS Fargate
$0.20/hour
Fargate Linux/x86, US East (N. Virginia): 4 vCPU × $0.000011244/s × 3600 + 8 GB × $0.000001235/s × 3600 = $0.1619 + $0.0356 = about $0.1975/h (4 vCPU / 8 GB is a valid task size). Storage beyond the included ephemeral amount extra.

List prices from each provider's pricing page, before free credits, plans and storage. This compares price only.

Where AWS Fargate is strong

  • Serverless operation: no servers or clusters to manage, with per-task isolation.
  • Task sizes up to 32 vCPU and 244 GB, with per-second billing.
  • Integrates with ALB/NLB, IAM, EBS and EFS volumes, and ECS Exec for shell access.

Where Sandboxer differs

  • Fargate runs containers from an image; Sandboxer runs a full VM with its own kernel, systemd and Docker preinstalled.
  • Fargate does not allow privileged mode or device access, so Docker daemons and /dev/kvm are not available; Sandboxer sandboxes have both.
  • Fargate tasks are defined and rolled out through ECS task definitions and services; Sandboxer sandboxes are interactive VMs whose stop/resume keeps memory and processes.

Pick AWS Fargate if

  • You run containerized services or batch jobs inside AWS and want AWS-native scaling, IAM and load balancing.
  • You need large task sizes or many regions.
  • You want no VM-level management for stateless workloads.

Pick Sandboxer if

  • You want a sandbox that stops with memory and disk saved and resumes with processes running, with stopped sandboxes costing nothing.
  • You want Docker, systemd, nested KVM, SSH and coding agents (Claude Code, Codex and others) already installed, with HTTPS URLs for any port, without assembling it yourself.
  • You want a per-second-billed Ubuntu 24.04 VM driven by a REST API, CLI, MCP server or TypeScript/Python SDK.

Sources

Products change. If something here is out of date, email hello@sandboxer.com and we'll fix it. AWS Fargate is a trademark of its owner. Sandboxer is an independent product and is not affiliated with AWS Fargate.

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