Sandboxer vs AWS Lambda MicroVMs

AWS Lambda MicroVMs are Firecracker microVMs on Amazon Linux 2023, launched from a snapshot of an image you build from a Dockerfile, with suspend/resume that keeps memory and disk. Each has an authenticated HTTPS endpoint and an 8-hour maximum life. Pick Lambda MicroVMs for sandboxes inside your own AWS account; pick Sandboxer for a ready Ubuntu VM with agents and no image build.

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

At a glance

Sandboxer and AWS Lambda MicroVMs compared
Capability	Sandboxer	AWS Lambda MicroVMs
Isolation	microVM Cloud Hypervisor, its own kernel	Firecracker microVM Single tenant, session or job per MicroVM.
Full Linux with root	Ubuntu 24.04, sudo, systemd	Docs describe full operating system capabilities; standard Linux capabilities by default, all capabilities opt-in via additionalOsCapabilities. sudo not explicitly documented.
Docker inside	Preinstalled	Images are built from a Dockerfile and run as a container inside the MicroVM; Docker-in-MicroVM is not described.
Nested virtualization (/dev/kvm)		Not stated; MicroVMs run on Arm64 (Graviton).
Pause and resume with memory	Running processes come back	Suspend preserves memory and disk; no compute charge while suspended, snapshot storage charged; auto-resume on traffic.
Fork a sandbox	Copy-on-write disk copy that boots fresh	partial Many MicroVMs can launch from one image snapshot including running processes; forking a live MicroVM is not described.
HTTPS URL per port	Private with a token, or public	partial One HTTPS endpoint per MicroVM; target port chosen per request via a header; a JWE auth token is always required.
Longest session	No limit on paid plans Auto-stop is up to 30 days or off	8 hours per MicroVM, not adjustable
Billing	Per second, flat rate per size Stopped sandboxes are free	Per second, vCPU + memory, plus snapshot charges Baseline billed while running, scale up to 4x billed only when active; snapshot read/write/storage extra.
GPUs
Self-host or open source		Managed AWS service.
Regions	US East (Virginia) and EU Central (Finland)	Several AWS regions Docs name US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), US East (Ohio) and Asia Pacific (Tokyo) as regions with higher default quotas; the full region list was not checked.

= not documented publicly.

Price for one 4 vCPU, 8 GB machine

Sandboxer

$0.036/hour

Flat per-second rate for the default size

AWS Lambda MicroVMs

$0.50/hour

US East (N. Virginia), Arm/Graviton, 8 GB / 4 vCPU baseline: 4 vCPU x $0.0000276944/s + 8 GB x $0.0000036667/s = $0.00014 per second x 3,600 s; snapshot read/write/storage and peak scale-up excluded

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

Where AWS Lambda MicroVMs is strong

Firecracker microVM isolation with suspend/resume that keeps memory and disk, billed without compute while suspended.
Snapshot-based fast start from a pre-initialised image, with lifecycle hooks (/run, /suspend, /resume, /terminate).
Ingress with HTTP/2, WebSockets, gRPC and SSE, plus egress through your own VPC.
Runs inside your AWS account with IAM, VPC and PrivateLink integration.

Where Sandboxer differs

Lambda MicroVMs are built from a Dockerfile on top of Amazon Linux 2023 and run Arm64; Sandboxer sandboxes are ready Ubuntu 24.04 VMs.
A MicroVM lives at most 8 hours in total; Sandboxer paid plans can run with no time limit.
Access always needs a short-lived JWE token, so there is no public-URL mode; Sandboxer ports can be public or token-private.
Lambda MicroVMs do not document preinstalled coding agents, an MCP server, or nested KVM.

Pick AWS Lambda MicroVMs if

You already run on AWS and need sandboxes with IAM, VPC and PrivateLink integration.
You want per-tenant microVMs created from your own image with lifecycle hooks.
You want to run sandboxes in several AWS regions.

Pick Sandboxer if

You want a full Ubuntu 24.04 VM with root/sudo, systemd, Docker preinstalled and nested KVM, without building an image.
You want sandboxes that can run with no time limit on a paid plan.
You want coding agents installed in every sandbox, a prompt API with streamed events, and an MCP server.

Sources

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

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