Northflank review

Northflank ranks fifth and has the lowest published compute rate here. Its sandbox page describes microVMs on Cloud Hypervisor with a dedicated guest kernel per sandbox, and gVisor for GPU workloads. Sandboxes can be ephemeral, created per request and deleted on return, or long-running with state on volumes and S3. Use cases on the page include coding agents, code interpreters and browser agents that each get headless Chrome over a private network, with egress allowed by domain and secrets injected at the egress layer. Because Northflank is a full deployment platform, sandboxes sit beside services, jobs and databases, and the same setup can run in your own AWS, Google Cloud or Azure account. Pay as you go starts at $0.01667 per vCPU hour and $0.00833 per GB hour, billed by the second with no seat fees, and the free Sandbox tier covers up to $20 of resources a month. The trade-off is a steeper learning curve than sandbox-only tools.

Who it is for

Platform teams that want low per-vCPU rates, long-running sandboxes and the option to run them in their own VPC.

Price

Free Sandbox tier with up to $20 a month of resources; pay as you go from $0.01667 per vCPU hour plus $0.00833 per GB hour.

From $0.01667 per vCPU hour
Quoted from the vendor pricing page on November 9, 2026.

Key features

• MicroVMs on Cloud Hypervisor with a dedicated guest kernel
• gVisor isolation for GPU sandboxes
• Ephemeral or long-running sandboxes with volumes and S3 state
• Egress control by FQDN and secrets injected at egress
• Run in AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, Oracle, CoreWeave or Nebius

Strengths and weaknesses

• Strength: Lowest published vCPU rate on this list
• Strength: Free tier is always on with no sleeping
• Strength: Headless Chrome per session for browser agents on a private network
• Weakness: Broader platform means more concepts to learn than a sandbox-only API
• Weakness: Free tier is limited to 2 services, 2 jobs and 1 database
• Weakness: SAML, SCIM and audit logging need Enterprise

Key facts

• Free tier: 2 services, 2 jobs, 1 database, up to $20 a month of resources
• CPU: $0.01667 per vCPU hour
• Memory: $0.00833 per GB hour
• Egress: $0.06 per GB
• GPU: From $0.80 per hour (NVIDIA L4)

Where it ranks

Northflank is No. 5 in our Best AI Agent Sandboxes verdict.