Beam
Last verified 2026-08-09
Beam runs sandboxes and serverless GPU workloads through one SDK, billed per second with a $30/month free-credit allowance and no subscription floor. Its distinguishing feature in this category is affordable GPU inside the sandbox: an H100 is $1.74/hr, well below the roughly $3.95/hr common elsewhere. It can also run in your own cloud (BYOC) for a flat management fee.
Key specs
| Isolation | Container |
| Pricing model | Per-second usage (no subscription floor) |
| GPU | H100 $1.74/hr, A100 80GB $1.30/hr, RTX 4090 $0.42/hr |
| Session limit | Configurable |
| Persistence | Ephemeral sandboxes; volume storage |
| Languages | Python, any (container) |
| MCP support | n/a |
| Deployment | Managed cloud + BYOC (self-host) |
| Free tier | $30/mo free credits, no subscription floor |
| Sandbox (2 vCPU / 8 GiB) | $0.319/hr |
| H100 GPU | $1.74/hr |
| BYOC | $0.019/vCPU-hr fee |
Strengths
- GPU in the sandbox at low rates (H100 $1.74/hr)
- Per-second billing, no subscription floor
- $30/mo free credits
- Bring-your-own-cloud option
Trade-offs
- CPU-only rate is not the cheapest at steady high volume
- Container isolation is lighter than a microVM
Best for: Agents that need GPUs inside the sandbox, or spiky usage a subscription floor would penalize.
How Beam works
Beam runs sandboxes and serverless GPU workloads through a single SDK, billed by the second and only while your code runs. What separates it in this category is GPU inside the sandbox: the same API that runs CPU code can attach an H100, A100 or consumer cards, so accelerated inference sits next to the agent's code instead of on a separate service. There is no subscription floor, and $30 in monthly credits covers experimentation. Beam can also run in your own cloud account (BYOC), where you pay Beam a flat orchestration fee and the compute bill goes to your provider.
Pricing in practice & watch-outs
The headline is GPU value: an H100 is $1.74/hr, against roughly $3.95/hr on several managed sandboxes, and a 2 vCPU / 8 GiB sandbox is about $0.319/hr. For pure CPU work at steady, high volume a per-vCPU-priced competitor can come out cheaper, so Beam is strongest when you either need a GPU, have spiky usage that a subscription floor would tax, or want to self-host on cloud credits you already hold. Isolation is container-based, lighter than a microVM boundary, which is worth weighing for fully untrusted code.
Head-to-head
Alternatives to Beam
See the full Beam alternatives comparison →
Sources: Beam pricing ↗ · Beam ↗
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