Vercel Sandbox pricing and quotas

Vercel Sandbox usage is metered across several dimensions. This page explains how billing works for each plan, what quotas apply, and how to estimate costs.

Pricing

The Active CPU, Provisioned Memory, Sandbox Data Transfer, and Drive rates in this table apply to the default iad1 region. See Regional pricing for the rates in each region.

On each billing cycle, Hobby plans receive a monthly allotment of Sandbox usage at no cost. Pro and Enterprise plans are charged based on usage.

Once you exceed your included limit on Hobby, sandbox creation is paused until the next billing cycle. Pro and Enterprise usage is charged against your account.

Regional pricing

Sandboxes run in the region you choose when you create them. Rates for Active CPU, Provisioned Memory, Sandbox Data Transfer, Drive Storage, Drive Reads, and Drive Writes vary by region. Select a region to view its rates:

Cape Town, South Africa (cpt1) Cleveland, USA (cle1) Dublin, Ireland (dub1) Frankfurt, Germany (fra1) Hong Kong (hkg1) London, UK (lhr1) Montreal, Canada (yul1) Mumbai, India (bom1) Osaka, Japan (kix1) Paris, France (cdg1) Portland, USA (pdx1) San Francisco, USA (sfo1) São Paulo, Brazil (gru1) Seoul, South Korea (icn1) Singapore (sin1) Stockholm, Sweden (arn1) Sydney, Australia (syd1) Tokyo, Japan (hnd1) Washington D.C., USA (iad1)

Sandbox Creations and Snapshot Storage are billed at the same rate in all regions where Sandbox is available.

Billing information

Hobby

Sandbox is free for Hobby users within the usage quotas detailed above.

Vercel sends you notifications as you approach your usage quotas. You will not be charged for any additional usage. Once you exceed the quotas, sandbox creation is paused until 30 days have passed since you first used the feature.

To continue using Sandbox after exceeding your quotas, upgrade to Pro.

Pro

All Sandbox usage on Pro plans is charged against your $20/month credit. After the credit is exhausted, usage is billed at the rates shown above.

To control costs, configure Spend Management to receive alerts or pause projects when you reach a specified amount.

Enterprise

Enterprise plans have custom pricing and quotas. Contact sales to discuss your usage requirements.

Understanding the metrics

Vercel tracks Sandbox usage across eight metrics. Select a metric in the pricing table above to jump to its description.

Active CPU

The amount of time your code actively uses the CPU, measured in hours. Time spent waiting for I/O (such as network requests, database queries, or AI model calls) does not count toward Active CPU.

You can provision 1 or an even number of vCPUs between 2 and 32 depending on your plan. The default is 2 vCPUs.

Provisioned Memory

The memory allocated to your sandbox (in GB) multiplied by the time it runs (in hours). Each vCPU includes 2 GB of memory. Provisioned memory is billed in 1 minute minimum increments to account for sandbox lifecycle management.

Sandbox Creations

The number of times you call Sandbox.create(). Each creation counts as one, regardless of how long the sandbox runs.

Network

Data your sandbox sends to the internet, plus all traffic to and from exposed ports, is billable and measured in GB. Data your sandbox downloads from the internet, such as packages, Git repositories, artifacts, and datasets, is free.

Snapshot Storage

The storage used by snapshots, measured in GB per month. A snapshot is stored in the region of the sandbox it was created from.

Drive Storage

The data stored on your drives, measured in GB per month.

Drive Reads

The logical amount of data your sandbox reads from a mounted drive, measured in GB.

Drive Writes

The logical amount of data your sandbox writes to a mounted drive, measured in GB.

Example calculations

The following examples show estimated costs for common scenarios on Pro/Enterprise plans, using rates for the iad1 region.

These estimates assume 100% CPU utilization. Actual Active CPU costs are often lower because time spent waiting for I/O is not billed.

Sandbox creation costs are minimal at $0.60 per million creations ($0.0000006 per creation).

Quotas and limits

Resource limits

Each sandbox created with Sandbox SDK 3.0.0 or above is automatically provisioned 64 GB of ephemeral NVMe storage.

A sandbox can mount up to 4 drives per run.

Runtime limits

The default timeout is 5 minutes. You can configure this using the timeout option when creating a sandbox.

Concurrency quota

The number of concurrently running sandboxes is limited by plan.

API quotas

The rate at which you can allocate vCPUs to new sandboxes increases with sustained usage instead of being a fixed cap.

Snapshot expiration

Snapshots expire 30 days after their last use by default. You can configure the expiration time to control how long snapshots are retained.

Regions

Vercel Sandbox is available in 19 regions. The default region is iad1. Rates for Active CPU, Provisioned Memory, Sandbox Data Transfer, Drive Storage, Drive Reads, and Drive Writes vary by region.

Managing costs

To optimize your Sandbox costs:

• Set appropriate timeouts: Use the shortest timeout that works for your task
• Right-size resources: Start with fewer vCPUs and scale up only if needed
• Stop sandboxes promptly: Call sandbox.stop() when done rather than waiting for timeout
• Monitor usage: Check the Usage dashboard to track your sandbox consumption

For more details on sandbox lifecycle management, see Working with Sandbox.

Last updated September 10, 2026