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Sandboxer vs Collimate

Collimate is a live-fork sandbox cloud aimed at RL post-training that also gives coding agents isolated shells. Its fork keeps process memory, unlike Sandboxer's disk-snapshot fork. Pick Collimate for mass parallel rollouts; pick Sandboxer for a full long-lived VM with Docker and nested KVM.

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

At a glance

Sandboxer and Collimate compared
CapabilitySandboxerCollimate
IsolationmicroVM
Cloud Hypervisor, its own kernel
hardware-isolated microVM
Full Linux with root
Ubuntu 24.04, sudo, systemd
not stated on the official pages read
Docker inside
Preinstalled
not stated on the official pages read
Nested virtualization (/dev/kvm)
not stated on the official pages read
Pause and resume with memory
Running processes come back
A sandbox can be suspended to snapshot storage and resumed.
Fork a sandbox
Copy-on-write disk copy that boots fresh
Live fork of a running microVM including process memory, in single-digit milliseconds; children are independent microVMs.
HTTPS URL per port
Private with a token, or public
not stated on the official pages read
Longest sessionNo limit on paid plans
Auto-stop is up to 30 days or off
1 h Demo, 24 h Pro, unlimited Enterprise
BillingPer second, flat rate per size
Stopped sandboxes are free
per second, vCPU + RAM + suspended storage
$0.040/vCPU-hr, $0.012/GB-hr RAM, $0.10/GB-mo suspended storage; spawning and forking free.
GPUs
not stated on the official pages read
Self-host or open sourcepartial
Enterprise mentions BYOC and dedicated nodes; no self-host details.
RegionsUS East (Virginia) and EU Central (Finland)
not stated on the official pages read

= not documented publicly.

Price for one 4 vCPU, 8 GB machine

Sandboxer
$0.036/hour
Flat per-second rate for the default size
Collimate
$0.26/hour
4 vCPU × $0.040/h + 8 GB × $0.012/h

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

Where Collimate is strong

  • Live fork that carries process memory, so installed state is inherited by every child.
  • Spawning and forking are free.
  • Replay and an RL SDK (collimate-rl) are documented.
  • Free Demo tier with no card.

Where Sandboxer differs

  • Collimate's fork copies running memory; Sandboxer's fork boots fresh from a disk snapshot and processes do not carry over.
  • Collimate targets RL rollouts; Sandboxer targets long-lived full VMs with coding agents installed.
  • Collimate's Pro sessions are capped at 24 hours; Sandboxer paid plans can run with no time limit.
  • Root, Docker, port URLs and regions are not stated on the pages read.

Pick Collimate if

  • You run many parallel rollouts and need to fork running processes from one warm VM.
  • You want free spawn and fork with usage-only billing and no platform fee.

Pick Sandboxer if

  • You want a full Ubuntu 24.04 VM with root, systemd, Docker and nested KVM, with Claude Code, Codex and other coding agents preinstalled.
  • You want stop to save memory and disk so that resume brings running processes back, with stopped sandboxes costing nothing.
  • You want one flat monthly plan whose dollars come back as machine time, with sandboxes that can run with no time limit on a paid plan.

Sources

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

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