Sandboxer vs Google Agent Runtime (Vertex AI Agent Engine)

Agent Runtime, part of Google's Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, hosts and scales agent applications built with ADK, LangChain and other frameworks, and includes a code execution sandbox. It runs your agent code rather than giving you a full VM. Choose it if your agents live on Google Cloud; choose Sandboxer for full-machine sandboxes.

Checked against Google Agent Runtime (Vertex AI Agent Engine)'s public docs on October 27, 2026. Sources are linked in the table and listed below.

At a glance

Sandboxer and Google Agent Runtime (Vertex AI Agent Engine) compared
Capability	Sandboxer	Google Agent Runtime (Vertex AI Agent Engine)
Isolation	microVM Cloud Hypervisor, its own kernel	Managed isolated sandbox (technology not stated) Code execution runs in a 'secure, isolated, and managed sandbox'.
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 Sessions and Memory Bank keep conversation state and long-term facts, not process memory.
Fork a sandbox	Copy-on-write disk copy that boots fresh
HTTPS URL per port	Private with a token, or public
Longest session	No limit on paid plans Auto-stop is up to 30 days or off
Billing	Per second, flat rate per size Stopped sandboxes are free	per vCPU-hour and GiB-hour of use, rounded to the nearest second $0.085 per vCPU-hour and $0.009 per GiB-hour; first 50 vCPU-hours and 100 GiB-hours a month free; for Runtime, idle time waiting for the next prompt is not billed.
GPUs
Self-host or open source
Regions	US 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

Google Agent Runtime (Vertex AI Agent Engine)

$0.41/hour

4 vCPU × $0.085/vCPU-h + 8 GiB × $0.009/GiB-h = $0.34 + $0.072 = $0.412/h of active use, list price above the monthly free allowance.

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

Where Google Agent Runtime (Vertex AI Agent Engine) is strong

Built-in Sessions and Memory Bank for agent state.
Supports ADK, LangChain, LangGraph, AG2, LlamaIndex and A2A.
Enterprise controls: VPC Service Controls, CMEK and data residency.

Where Sandboxer differs

It hosts agent applications and a code execution sandbox rather than offering general-purpose machines.
State is conversation and memory data, not a paused process image.
Regions and sandbox limits were not listed on the pages reviewed.

Pick Google Agent Runtime (Vertex AI Agent Engine) if

Your agents are built on Google Cloud and need its identity, governance and compliance controls.
You want a managed runtime for agent code rather than machines.

Pick Sandboxer if

You want a full Ubuntu 24.04 VM with root, Docker and nested KVM that stops and resumes with running processes intact.
You want coding agents (Claude Code, Codex and others) preinstalled and driven through a prompt API, MCP, REST, CLI and SDKs.
You want per-second billing and stopped sandboxes that cost nothing.

Sources

Products change. If something here is out of date, email hello@sandboxer.com and we'll fix it. Google Agent Runtime (Vertex AI Agent Engine) is a trademark of its owner. Sandboxer is an independent product and is not affiliated with Google Agent Runtime (Vertex AI Agent Engine).

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