State and storage
Providers use seven words for four behaviours. The only question that matters is what is still running when the machine comes back.
Every provider offers a way to make a machine cheaper while you are not using it. They fall into four behaviours. Disk only: the machine is destroyed and its disk is kept, so files survive and processes do not. Disk and memory: RAM is saved, so the agent's process tree can resume mid-task. Warm memory: the machine is frozen in the host's RAM, which resumes fastest and usually keeps billing for memory. Delete: the disk goes too.
The vocabulary is not standardised. InstaBox calls a memory-preserving freeze “pause” and a power-off “stop”. Agent 37 has both, as sleep and stop. boxd has three parked states plus destroy. Lizard's stop deletes the disk. Boat's API calls a stopped sandbox archived, and its homepage still says “pause billing” even though the docs state there is no pause.
Memory-preserving resume is usually best-effort. Sandboxer restores memory only if a matching machine is free within two minutes; InstaBox reports processesPreserved false when it cold-boots instead; Agent 37 says memory usually survives a wake but not always. Anything that must outlive a pause belongs in a file.
The claim on the left, the provider's own words on the right
boxd keeps the machine's memory in the host's RAM and resumes it in under a millisecond. Nothing is written to disk, which is why it can come back instantly, and why the memory keeps billing while the machine sits paused.
“They freeze the VMM process and keep memory, running processes, and open sockets intact.”
Sandboxer writes memory and device state to disk when a sandbox stops, then reads it back on resume. The read-back depends on a host of the same CPU type being free within two minutes; if none is, the sandbox boots cold with its files intact.
“Memory is restored on a machine with the same CPU type as the one the sandbox stopped on.”
Lizard's ordinary pause keeps the whole disk, the memory and the running processes. Its fast pause is the files-only variant: it keeps only the files and boots fresh when you resume. Both are called pause, and the difference is whether a half-finished task survives.
“keeps only the files: the whole disk and /workspace. It takes about a second at any memory size … resume() boots the sandbox fresh with its files, like a restart”
Boat has no paused state. A stop removes the virtual machine and keeps a copy of the disk; every resume is a new machine with that disk. The disk itself is kept for fourteen days, after which a resume fails and the work is gone.
“There is no pause. A stop removes the virtual machine and keeps a copy of the disk.”
The details that decide the answer in practice
Whether the provider's “pause” keeps RAM, keeps only files, or destroys the machine.
Whether a memory restore is guaranteed or a fallback that silently cold-boots.
What resets: IP address, open sockets, cron timers, systemd units, Docker containers.
Whether stopping a paused machine is allowed; at InstaBox it is an error.
Whether the disk survives a stop at all; at Lizard and Morph, stop deletes it.
Docs read 28 October 2026
| Provider | Does it? | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| Agent 37 | Partly | Sleep keeps memory and processes as a checkpoint and bills disk only; stop keeps the disk and loses memory. A wake that has to rebuild boots fresh, and stopping a sleeper discards its checkpoint. |
“Sleep and stop both release CPU and memory and bill disk alone. A sleeping instance keeps its memory and wakes on the next request; a stopped one loses its memory and stays down until start.” | ||
| Blaxel | Yes | Standby preserves process and filesystem state and stops memory charges, but external network connections do not survive. Archive exports filesystem changes only and restarts processes with new IDs. |
“The snapshot preserves process and filesystem state, but not external network connections” | ||
| Boat | No | There is no pause. Stop saves the disk, removes the machine and loses memory and hand-started processes; resume boots a new machine from the disk with a new IP. |
“There is no pause. A stop removes the virtual machine and keeps a copy of the disk.” | ||
| boxd | Yes | Four distinct states: standby keeps RAM frozen and bills it, hibernate writes memory to disk with an ~85 ms wake, stop keeps the disk only, destroy removes everything. |
“They freeze the VMM process and keep memory, running processes, and open sockets intact.” | ||
| E2B | Partly | Pause saves the filesystem and RAM, so processes resume; a filesystem-only pause is opt-in. Kill is terminal, and the default timeout kills the sandbox after five minutes. |
“When you pause a sandbox, both the sandbox's filesystem and memory state will be saved.” | ||
| InstaBox | Partly | Pause keeps memory and running programs and resumes in about a second; stop loses them, and a paused machine cannot be stopped at all. A resume can cold-boot and report processesPreserved false. |
“Pauses a running machine, keeping its memory and running programs.” | ||
| Lizard | Partly | Pause keeps the whole disk, memory and processes; a fast pause keeps files only and resumes like a restart; stop or expiry deletes the sandbox disk, leaving only /workspace and snapshots. |
“A stop (kill or expiration) deletes the sandbox's disk: only files on an attached Persistent Volume at /workspace and the snapshots you took remain.” | ||
| Morph | Partly | Pause snapshots memory and disk and suspends the VM; stop releases the instance and deletes it. Booting a snapshot is a cold boot, while starting one restores memory. |
“Use when you need to preserve the running state of applications, the memory contents, and all processes.” | ||
| Runtime | Yes | Pause freezes the VM with memory and programs intact; stop keeps files and drops memory. Both keep billing storage, and only delete ends the charge. |
“wake: it carries on where it was” | ||
| Sandboxer | Partly | A stop writes memory and device state to disk, so a resume can restore running processes — but only on a machine of the same CPU type within two minutes, otherwise it cold-boots. |
“Memory is restored on a machine with the same CPU type as the one the sandbox stopped on.” | ||
| Sprites | Yes | A warm pause freezes memory and processes and resumes in 100–500 ms; a longer idle period stops the VM, drops memory and starts processes fresh. Open TCP connections do not survive either. |
“The VM is suspended with everything in memory frozen in place. Compute billing stops. The next request resumes it in 100–500ms” | ||
| Vercel Sandbox | Partly | Stopping ends the session. Persistent sandboxes save their filesystem and restore it into a new session, not RAM; restart background services with the onResume hook. |
“Persistent sandboxes automatically save their filesystem state when stopped and restore it when resumed.” | ||
Part of State and storage. Next: put two or three providers side by side.