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You pay for compute while a sandbox runs and for the storage it holds. Plans add a monthly fee, included usage and higher limits. Prices are in US dollars.

Compute

Compute costs $0.00875 per vCPU-hour, billed per second while a sandbox is running. Each vCPU comes with 2 GB of RAM at no extra charge. A stopped sandbox costs nothing for compute. zode new without --size, the API and SDK without vcpus, and the MCP sandbox_create tool without size all make a small sandbox. The size named default (4 vCPU) is not the default; you only get it by asking for it.

Storage

Storage is free for the first 48 hours of every sandbox, forks included. After that it costs $0.10 per GB-month of the sandbox’s disk size, running or stopped, until you delete it. A GB is 10⁹ bytes and a month is 730 hours; storage is prorated per second. A sandbox you delete within 48 hours of creating it pays no storage at all.
Stopping a sandbox ends its compute charge, not its storage charge. Once a sandbox is 48 hours old, it pays for storage until you delete it. Delete sandboxes you no longer need.

AI usage

AI calls from a sandbox go out on your own provider keys. They are not on your invoice, and Zode adds no markup. Usage reports have a column for AI spend by repository, branch and pull request, but it reads $0 for now: the hosts do not record AI calls yet.

Plans

  • Included usage covers compute and storage. On Pro, the $20 resets each month; unused usage does not carry over. Usage past it is billed at the rates above.
  • Free credit: $10, once. Your Personal workspace has it from sign-up, with no card. A team workspace starts with $0 and gets its $10 when its first card is saved.
  • Running at once counts sandboxes that are creating, running or starting. Over the limit, a create, fork or start fails: “Your free plan runs at most 2 sandboxes at once. Stop one first.”
  • Desktop on Free fails with plan_required (402): “the free plan does not include the desktop; upgrade in Billing”.
A workspace on Free can start a 7-day Pro trial in Billing once. During the trial the workspace gets Pro’s limits: 15 sandboxes running at once, 20 custom images kept and 2 building at once, and the desktop. Pro’s fee and included usage do not apply, and nothing is charged when it ends. The trial needs no card; its sandboxes run on the workspace’s credit (see below).

When credit runs out

To run sandboxes, a workspace needs a payment method on file or credit left. A workspace with no card whose remaining credit is $0 or less:
  • cannot create, fork or start sandboxes. Those calls fail with HTTP 402 credit_exhausted: add a card or buy credit in Billing.
  • has its running sandboxes stopped within about 15 minutes. They are hibernated like any stop, never deleted, and a balance.low event lists them.
Saving a card or buying credit lifts the block at once. Stopped sandboxes stay stopped until you start them. Your Personal workspace starts with $10, so your first sandboxes need no card. Add one in Billing before the credit runs out to keep sandboxes running. Workspaces with a card keep running when credit runs out, and usage past the included amount is invoiced monthly. Enterprise workspaces are billed by contract and are never stopped for credit.

What is billed per second

Creating, stopping, starting, forking and snapshotting have no fee of their own. A fork is a running sandbox and bills compute like any other.

Caps

You can bound spend before it happens:
  • Per sandbox: max_cost_micros on create or fork (maxCostMicros in the SDK), in micro-dollars, where $1 is 1,000,000. It counts only the sandbox’s AI calls through Zode, not its compute or storage. The host keeps the running total in memory, so a host restart starts it again from zero. A workspace can set a default for new sandboxes.
  • Per workspace per day: a daily cap in Billing. Once today’s spend reaches it, creates, forks and starts fail with daily_cap_reached until 00:00 UTC or until you raise it.
See Spend and caps for what happens when a cap is reached.

Check your spend

The console’s Usage page and GET /v1/usage show the same numbers. See zode cost.