Pay for capacity, not for access
AIec is open source and free to self-host. Cloud is a paid, managed service: you pay for the infrastructure and the people who operate it.
AIec OSS
$0 in software cost, forever.
You run it on your own hardware. Bring your own compute, PostgreSQL, object storage, networking, domains and TLS.
- Full platform, no feature gates
- Native Firecracker and Docker runtimes
- Same API, same SDKs, same docs
- No Cloudflare, Neon or AIec account required
AIec Cloud
Usage-based. Billed for the sandboxes you run.
We operate the Firecracker capacity, the database, object storage, TLS, backups, monitoring and upgrades.
- Public workloads run on Firecracker
- Invite-only during alpha, with limited capacity
- Per-tenant quotas and a global spend ceiling
- Hard spend safeguards: we never silently overage
How Cloud usage is measured
You are charged for the sandboxes you actually run, for the time they run. Storage for snapshots and artifacts is tracked separately and is cheap.
| Resource | Unit | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Sandbox compute | vCPU-second | Charged from creation until destroy |
| Sandbox memory | GiB-second | Allocated size, not peak |
| Workspace storage | GB-day | Only while the sandbox exists |
| Snapshots and artifacts | GB-month | Retained until you delete them |
| Requests | included | Rate limited, not billed |
Public alpha prices are not yet final. Invited users are quoted a fixed allowance rather than a per-second rate, and the exact figure is confirmed before your account is enabled.
Spend safeguards
Hard quotas
Per-tenant limits on active sandboxes, vCPU, memory and disk, enforced at placement time rather than billed after the fact.
Global budget
Cloud runs against a global execution budget. When it is reached, new sandbox creation stops cleanly instead of turning into a charge.
No surprise overage
When capacity is exhausted you get
TEMPORARY_CAPACITY_UNAVAILABLE. We do not enable automatic
overages and we do not upgrade a plan behind your back.
What is not charged
- Creating and destroying a sandbox that never ran code.
- Requests to the API.
- Anything at all, if you self-host.
Alpha pricing is provisional. We do not have a published rate card yet, and prices can change while we learn what a sandbox actually costs to run. Invited accounts are told their allowance and price before they are switched on, and nothing bills without your approval.