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Sandboxer vs boxes.dev

boxes.dev gives each coding agent a Linux devbox with its own filesystem, processes and ports, using your own Claude Code or Codex subscription. Plans are per-user hour bundles ($19 to $249) with $0.60 per extra hour, and idle boxes sleep for free. Pick boxes.dev for per-seat plans and Slack or Linear triggers; pick Sandboxer for plain per-machine pricing and a full VM API.

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

At a glance

Sandboxer and boxes.dev compared
CapabilitySandboxerboxes.dev
IsolationmicroVM
Cloud Hypervisor, its own kernel
separate cloud machine per agent
Hypervisor not named.
Full Linux with root
Ubuntu 24.04, sudo, systemd
Docker inside
Preinstalled
Nested virtualization (/dev/kvm)
Pause and resume with memory
Running processes come back
partial
Idle devboxes sleep automatically and sleeping boxes are free; template snapshots capture filesystem and memory. Whether a sleeping box keeps running processes is not stated.
Fork a sandbox
Copy-on-write disk copy that boots fresh
partial
New devboxes start from a Template snapshot; not called fork.
HTTPS URL per port
Private with a token, or public
Any devbox port can get a public preview URL.
Longest sessionNo limit on paid plans
Auto-stop is up to 30 days or off
Awake-devbox caps: 2 on Trial, 10 on Pro.
BillingPer second, flat rate per size
Stopped sandboxes are free
per second of awake time; plans $19/$99/$249 per user per month include hours, extra hours $0.60/h
Sleeping boxes are free.
GPUs
Self-host or open sourcepartial
Teams plans include BYO cloud / VPC.
RegionsUS East (Virginia) and EU Central (Finland)

= not documented publicly.

Price for one 4 vCPU, 8 GB machine

Sandboxer
$0.036/hour
Flat per-second rate for the default size
boxes.dev
$0.60/hour
Standard box is 4 vCPU / 8 GB; extra hours $0.60 per hour

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

Where boxes.dev is strong

  • Sleeping devboxes are free.
  • Template snapshots include memory.
  • Public preview URL for any port.
  • Works with your existing Claude Code or Codex plan.

Where Sandboxer differs

  • boxes.dev sells per-user monthly plans with bundled hours; Sandboxer plans set concurrency and every plan dollar comes back as machine time.
  • The boxes.dev home page gives no detail on root, Docker or nested KVM.
  • Sandboxer fork is a disk copy that boots fresh, boxes.dev templates include memory.

Pick boxes.dev if

  • You want per-seat plans with hour bundles for a team.
  • You want memory-inclusive templates to start agent boxes fast.
  • You need BYO cloud on a Teams plan.

Pick Sandboxer if

  • You need a full Ubuntu 24.04 VM with root, systemd, Docker and nested KVM, with agents like Claude Code and Codex preinstalled.
  • You want stop to save memory and disk and resume to bring processes back, with stopped sandboxes costing nothing.
  • You want a REST API, CLI, TypeScript and Python SDKs, and an MCP server on per-second billing.

Sources

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

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