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Sandboxer vs Cerebrium

Cerebrium deploys your code as containerised serverless apps that scale with demand and are billed per second, with GPUs from T4 to B200. Sandboxer provides persistent interactive VMs, not request-driven functions, and has no GPUs, so it isn't the pick for GPU work. Pick Cerebrium for hosting AI endpoints; pick Sandboxer for agent sandboxes.

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

At a glance

Sandboxer and Cerebrium compared
CapabilitySandboxerCerebrium
IsolationmicroVM
Cloud Hypervisor, its own kernel
Container image per app instance
Apps are packaged into container images; isolation technology not described.
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
Fork a sandbox
Copy-on-write disk copy that boots fresh
HTTPS URL per port
Private with a token, or public
partial
Each function is exposed at an HTTPS endpoint, with support for custom ASGI web servers; arbitrary ports are not documented.
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 of compute: $0.00000655 per vCPU-second, $0.00000222 per GB-second, GPUs priced per second
Hobby plan free plus compute; Standard $100 a month plus compute.
GPUs
T4, L4, A100, H100, B200 and more.
Self-host or open source
RegionsUS East (Virginia) and EU Central (Finland)Multi-region deployment supported; regions not listed on the overview

= not documented publicly.

Price for one 4 vCPU, 8 GB machine

Sandboxer
$0.036/hour
Flat per-second rate for the default size
Cerebrium
$0.16/hour
4 vCPU × $0.00000655/s × 3600 + 8 GB × $0.00000222/s × 3600 = $0.0943 + $0.0639

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

Where Cerebrium is strong

  • Per-second billing, from $0.000164 per second for a T4.
  • Low cold starts and burst scaling for real-time AI workloads.
  • Multi-region deployment of one app.
  • Free Hobby tier and a Standard plan at $100 plus compute.

Where Sandboxer differs

  • Cerebrium runs request-driven serverless apps; Sandboxer runs persistent interactive VMs.
  • Cerebrium has GPUs; Sandboxer has none.
  • Sandboxer gives root, systemd, Docker and SSH in an interactive VM; Cerebrium's docs describe deploying container images as request-serving apps.
  • Cerebrium plans start at $100 a month for unlimited apps; Sandboxer plans start at $20.

Pick Cerebrium if

  • You want to host an inference endpoint that scales to zero with GPUs.
  • You want usage-based per-second pricing for inference compute.
  • You need multi-region deployment of a model API.

Pick Sandboxer if

  • You need a CPU sandbox with Docker, nested KVM and systemd that stops and resumes with running processes intact, and you do not need GPUs.
  • You want coding agents (Claude Code, Codex and others) preinstalled and driven through a prompt API with streamed events.
  • You want per-second billing with stopped sandboxes costing nothing and a flat $20 to $2000 monthly plan whose dollars return as machine time.

Sources

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

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