Sandboxer vs Replicate

Replicate runs AI models behind a cloud API, billing per hardware second or per output, and lets you deploy custom models. It is a model API rather than an interactive machine, and Sandboxer has no GPUs, so it isn't the pick for running models on GPUs. Pick Replicate to call or host models; pick Sandboxer for agent sandboxes.

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

At a glance

Sandboxer and Replicate compared
Capability	Sandboxer	Replicate
Isolation	microVM Cloud Hypervisor, its own kernel
Full Linux with root	Ubuntu 24.04, sudo, systemd	Models are invoked via API, not an interactive machine.
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	Access is through the Replicate API.
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 second of hardware ($0.000025/s cpu-small to $0.0014/s A100) or per output; private models bill while online
GPUs		T4, L40S, A100, H100 and multi-GPU.
Self-host or open source		Hosted API.
Regions	US East (Virginia) and EU Central (Finland)

= not documented publicly.

Where Replicate is strong

Hardware billed per second, from $0.000025 per second for CPU.
Large public model catalogue behind one API.
Client libraries for Node.js and Python, an HTTP API, webhooks and an MCP server.
Per-output pricing for popular image, text and video models.

Where Sandboxer differs

Replicate exposes models by API; Sandboxer gives full root VMs.
Replicate has GPUs; Sandboxer has none.
Private deployments bill for idle time while online; Sandboxer stopped sandboxes cost nothing.
Replicate is built for running models, not for general Linux workloads or hosting arbitrary services.

Pick Replicate if

You want to call a hosted image, video or LLM model with no infrastructure.
You want to deploy a custom model as an API with GPUs.
You want per-output pricing for public models.

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. Replicate is a trademark of its owner. Sandboxer is an independent product and is not affiliated with Replicate.

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