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ProvidersChecked 2026-10-29

Tensorlake

Firecracker microVMs that keep their memory across a pause, sold as prepaid credits or a $250 Pro plan.

Short answer: One always-on personal agent (2 vCPU / 4 GiB / 20 GiB) costs about $250.00 a month here, the 11th cheapest of the 11 providers that run it as described. The AI model adds about $14.70 a month on top (GLM 5.3, 30 requests a day at 40k tokens each, median zero-retention price; from $6.84 at the cheapest host). Fits well: An agent that must pause mid-task: suspend and memory snapshots both keep the process tree, and resume takes about a second.

www.tensorlake.ai16 providersSources linked

Tensorlake sells isolated Linux microVMs for agents, one per task or one per session, that boot in a few hundred milliseconds and can be frozen with their memory, processes and files intact and resumed later under the same name.

Each machine is a Firecracker microVM with its own kernel and a root disk you size from 10 to 100 GB. You drive it from a Python or TypeScript SDK, a tl CLI, plain HTTP, SSH or a WebSocket terminal, and you can mount a durable versioned volume or a Tensorlake-hosted Git repository into it.

The same company also sells durable workflow orchestration, a versioned filesystem, hosted Git and GitHub Actions runners, so a team can put an agent's code, its working files and its long-running jobs in one place. The sandbox is the part this page compares.

At a glance

Who it is forEngineering teams running agents that must survive a pause — long coding sessions, evaluation sweeps, RL rollouts — who are comfortable installing a CLI or SDK and want a real VM rather than a container.
IsolationFirecracker microVM with its own kernel, root and /dev/kvm, so nested QEMU/KVM virtual machines run inside. Docker needs the tensorlake/ubuntu-systemd image plus an install step. GPU sandboxes are gVisor instead of a VM.
SizesPer-sandbox ceilings by plan: Free 1 vCPU / 1 GB / 10 GB; Usage Credits 4 vCPU / 16 GB / 100 GB; Pro 16 vCPU / 64 GB / 100 GB; Enterprise custom. RAM must be 1–8 GB per vCPU. Disk is 10–100 GB, growth-only.
A personal agent hereAbout $250.00 a month for one always-on 2 vCPU / 4 GiB machine (2 vCPU / 4 GiB / 20 GiB), before the AI model. Change the numbers
Recommended inNot one of the picks in any use-case guide.

Fits well, fits badly

Our reading of the sourced material on this page, not a provider claim.

Fits well

  • An agent that must pause mid-task: suspend and memory snapshots both keep the process tree, and resume takes about a second.
  • Evaluation sweeps and RL rollouts: pre-warmed pools, non-blocking creates and copy-by-N fan one warmed sandbox out to a fleet.
  • A coding agent that needs a real machine: /dev/kvm, Docker on the systemd image, SSH with port forwarding and VS Code Remote-SSH.
  • Work that must outlive the sandbox: versioned volumes mounted as ordinary directories, or a Tensorlake-hosted Git repository.

Fits badly

  • Someone who will not use a terminal: there is no documented console button for a first sandbox, and every guide starts with a CLI install.
  • Keeping credentials away from the agent: keys arrive as environment variables the agent's own processes can read.
  • An always-on personal assistant on a small budget: Pro is $250 a month, and cheaper plans end a session after 24 hours.
  • A custom hostname on the hosted product: only a self-hosted BYOC ingress lets you own the domain.

How it bills

ModelPrepaid Usage Credits in $5, $10 or $20 packs (1 CU = $0.01), or Pro at $250 a billing cycle including 25,000 CU.
MeterPer second: $0.07 per active CPU core-hour, $0.015 per GB-hour of RAM, $0.0002 per GB-hour of root disk on credits; $0.042, $0.009 and $0.0001 on Pro. Egress is free.
While stoppedA suspended sandbox bills no CPU, RAM or disk; its preserved state bills as snapshot storage at $0.07 per GB-month.
Plan fee$250 a billing cycle on Pro, which includes 25,000 CU ($250 of usage). Usage Credits have no fee: you buy packs and spend them down.
MinimumNothing on Free, which needs no card. Usage Credits start at a $5 pack; Pro is $250 a month.

How Tensorlake lets you try before paying is on Trials and free tiers.

Where it stands out

  • Active-CPU metering: an agent that waits bills RAM and disk, not cores.
  • Suspend and memory snapshots keep the process tree, so a long task resumes mid-line rather than restarting.
  • A real VM: /dev/kvm, Docker, systemd, SSH with port forwarding and a standard ~/.ssh/config entry.
  • Egress is free, which matters for agents that fetch a lot.
  • Versioned volumes and hosted Git give an agent's output somewhere to live after the sandbox is gone.

Using it without writing code

DashboardA cloud console at cloud.tensorlake.ai: projects, API keys, a usage tab with cost tiles and vCPU-hours, invoices and credit packs, and a Sandboxes list with a per-sandbox Logs tab you can filter and search.
Without codeNo. The first step is pip install tensorlake, npm i @tensorlakeai/tensorlake or the curl | sh CLI installer, then a create call. The console covers keys, spend and logs, not making a machine.
SignupEmail or a social login at cloud.tensorlake.ai; the free tier needs no card. API keys are per project, start with tl_apiKey_, and carry project-member permissions only.
Docs and support108 pages in the llms.txt index, each available as Markdown plus an llms-full.txt bundle, and unusually deep on edge cases: pending reasons, resize generations, mount fail-closed rules, PTY frame bytes. Support is Slack and email, with a founder replying on smaller plans.

Capability checklist

Every capability the guide checks, with the catch where Tensorlake's version falls short. Compare all providers

Isolation

Sizes and regions

Lifecycle

Snapshots and forks

Storage

Idle and waking

Reaching it

Custom domains

Outbound network

Keys and secrets

Ways to drive it

Built-in agents

Teams and accounts

  • Team workspace Yes
  • Roles and permissions With a catch Every plan gets two fixed roles, admin and member, at organization and project level; fuller role-based access is listed under the Enterprise plan.
  • Single sign-on With a catch SSO is listed on the Enterprise plan, and the docs say access must be enabled for your organisation.
  • Hard spending cap With a catch Prepaid credit packs cannot be overspent, but the Pro plan bills overage beyond its included usage.
  • Usage alerts Not published
  • Audit log With a catch Audit logs are not self-serve: you ask support for them.

Billing models

Trials and free tiers

The company

The company

From the profile's company section: the legal entity, who funds it, and what a buyer can check before signing.

Legal entity

Tensorlake, Inc. (written TensorLake in the Terms). Governed by California law, with exclusive venue in San Francisco.

“The Agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of California, excluding its conflicts of law rules, and the parties consent to exclusive jurisdiction and venue in the state and federal courts located in San Francisco, California.” tensorlake.ai docs-confirmed

History and base

Founded 2023, headquartered in San Francisco, California. Third-party records disagree on the year (one says 2022).

“Tensorlake is a sandbox-native cloud infrastructure platform for building and running AI agents, founded in 2023 and headquartered in San Francisco, California.” indexed.vc third-party

Funding

$8M seed, investors Artisanal Ventures, Plug and Play and Hawk Hill Ventures. Third-party records date the round 2024 or 2025; Tensorlake publishes no announcement.

“It has raised $8.0M in total across 1 round, most recently a $8.0M Seed round in 2024 (est.). Investors include Artisanal Ventures, Plug and Play and Hawk Hill Ventures.” indexed.vc third-party

Headcount

Small: one third-party record gives a band of 11–50 employees; Tensorlake publishes no team page that would confirm a number.

“It lists 11–50 employees.” indexed.vc third-party

Certification

SOC 2 Type 2 on every tier, report gated behind the Trust Center. HIPAA is claimed with a BAA from Pro up, but the Trust Center shows only a SOC 2 badge.

“Tensorlake is SOC 2 Type 2 certified.” docs.tensorlake.ai docs-confirmed

Data residency

EU data residency and zero data retention are claimed; there is no region selector in the sandbox API, and BYOC defaults to us-east-1.

“Tensorlake is HIPAA and SOC 2 Type II compliant, supports EU data residency, and offers zero data retention.” docs.tensorlake.ai docs-confirmed

SLA

99.9% monthly availability for the control plane, with service credits capped at 50% of the month's fees and no cash refund. Paid plans only.

“TensorLake will use commercially reasonable efforts to make the Control Plane available 99.9% of the time in each calendar month” tensorlake.ai docs-confirmed

Support

Slack community and email on every tier, 24×7 Slack and email on Pro with a 24-hour P1, and a 1-hour P1 plus a resident SA on Enterprise.

“24×7 Slack + email” tensorlake.ai pricing-page

Status page

A public Datadog status page covers Applications and Sandboxes; sandboxes showed 99.89% uptime over the 90 days to 29 October 2026.

“99.89% uptime” status.tensorlake.ai docs-confirmed

Subprocessors

Google Cloud and AWS for infrastructure, Cloudflare and Datadog for monitoring, listed in the Trust Center as Annex III of the DPA.

“Google Cloud • Cloud Infrastructure” trust.tensorlake.ai docs-confirmed

Caveats and contradictions

Shown as the research found them. A contradiction means the provider's own pages disagree; an open question means the answer is not published.

  1. 01

    Whether Pro's $250 includes $250 of usage Contradiction

    The pricing page says the fee includes 25,000 CU worth $250. The billing docs and the pricing FAQ both describe Pro as '$250 / month + usage' and say Pro deducts usage, with no allowance mentioned.

    “Includes 25,000 CU ($250 of usage) per billing cycle.”
    Tensorlakepricing-page
    “Pro | \$250 / month + usage | 1,000 | 16 vCPU, 64 GB RAM, 100 GB root disk | Unlimited |”
    Tensorlakedocs-confirmed
  2. 02

    Resources are called fixed at create on one page and resizable on another Contradiction

    The lifecycle page says CPU, memory and disk are fixed when the sandbox is created and cannot be changed afterwards. The live-resize page documents changing all three on a running sandbox, and the SDK update call does it.

    “These are fixed when the sandbox is created and cannot be changed afterwards.”
    Tensorlakedocs-confirmed
    “A sandbox can change its CPU, memory, and root disk allocation while it runs.”
    Tensorlakedocs-confirmed
  3. 03

    The prepaid tier has two names Open question

    The docs and dashboard call it Usage Credits; the Terms call the same plan On-Demand. Nothing says whether they are the same product.

  4. 04

    Free credits are promised in one place and absent in another Open question

    The Harbor guide says new accounts include free credits. The pricing page describes a $0 free tier with no card and prepaid packs starting at $5, with no signup credit mentioned.

  5. 05

    EU data residency without a region selector Open question

    The introduction claims EU data residency, but no sandbox API parameter, console control or region list is published, and the BYOC example defaults to us-east-1. Which plan gets EU placement is unclear.

  6. 06

    Snapshot storage is billed per GB-month of 'unique bytes' Open question

    Rates say $0.07 per GB-month; the snapshot page says users are billed only for unique bytes, so the stored size of a suspended sandbox is not simply its disk size. The calculator models it as the disk size and will overstate.

  7. 07

    A malicious npm release shipped in October 2026 Open question

    The Trust Center records a malicious [email protected] published to npm on 8 October 2026 with a GitHub advisory. Pin a version and check the advisory before installing the JavaScript SDK.

  8. 08

    HIPAA is claimed but not badged Open question

    Pricing says HIPAA with a BAA on Pro and above, and the docs call the platform HIPAA compliant; the Trust Center lists a SOC 2 badge and no HIPAA badge, and the Terms forbid storing protected health information without a written agreement.

Sources

The three shared workloads

List-price illustrations from the calculator, not quotes. Prices checked 29 October 2026.

A · 1,000 short tasks

$22.00

2 vCPU / 4 GiB / 10 GiB (plan: Usage Credits)

  • CPU, while working166.67 h × 1 vCPU busy × $0.07$11.67
  • Memory166.67 h × 4 GiB × $0.015$10.00
  • Disk while running166.67 h × 10 GiB × $0.0002$0.33
  • Prepaid packs of $5, $10 or $20 (500–2,000 CU; 1 CU = $0.01). At a zero balance Tensorlake stops running sandboxes rather than billing an overage.
  • Rates are the Usage Credits rates. Pro's rates are lower — $0.042 per active core-hour, $0.009 per GB-hour of RAM (both 40% less) and $0.0001 per GB-hour of disk (50% less) — and its $250 fee includes 25,000 CU. The calculator prices every plan at the higher Usage Credits rates, so a Pro bill above $250 of monthly usage is overstated.
  • Tensorlake's own pages word Pro differently: the pricing page says the fee includes 25,000 CU ($250 of usage); the billing docs and FAQ say "$250 per month plus metered usage". This guide reads them together as $250 that includes $250 of usage, with usage beyond it billed. Get it in writing before relying on it.
  • CPU bills only while it executes, so the engine applies the workload's busy share. When Tensorlake cannot sample active CPU it falls back to allocated vCPU time, which costs more.
  • Snapshot storage is $0.07 per GB-month while a sandbox is suspended, modelled here as a per-GB-hour stopped rate (0.07 ÷ 730) on the sandbox's disk size. Tensorlake says only unique bytes are billed, so the real figure can be lower.
  • Billing is by the second in whole compute units, pooled per organization. Egress is free.
  • Memory must be 1–8 GB per vCPU, so a 1 vCPU sandbox cannot exceed 8 GB of RAM.

B · One always-on box

$250.00

4 vCPU / 8 GiB / 50 GiB (plan: Pro)

  • CPU, while working730 h × 0.4 vCPU busy × $0.07$20.44
  • Memory730 h × 8 GiB × $0.015$87.60
  • Disk while running730 h × 50 GiB × $0.0002$7.30
  • Pro: $250.00 plan, $250.00 of usage included.
  • Unlimited session duration and 1,000 concurrent sandboxes.
  • Rates are the Usage Credits rates. Pro's rates are lower — $0.042 per active core-hour, $0.009 per GB-hour of RAM (both 40% less) and $0.0001 per GB-hour of disk (50% less) — and its $250 fee includes 25,000 CU. The calculator prices every plan at the higher Usage Credits rates, so a Pro bill above $250 of monthly usage is overstated.
  • Tensorlake's own pages word Pro differently: the pricing page says the fee includes 25,000 CU ($250 of usage); the billing docs and FAQ say "$250 per month plus metered usage". This guide reads them together as $250 that includes $250 of usage, with usage beyond it billed. Get it in writing before relying on it.
  • CPU bills only while it executes, so the engine applies the workload's busy share. When Tensorlake cannot sample active CPU it falls back to allocated vCPU time, which costs more.
  • Snapshot storage is $0.07 per GB-month while a sandbox is suspended, modelled here as a per-GB-hour stopped rate (0.07 ÷ 730) on the sandbox's disk size. Tensorlake says only unique bytes are billed, so the real figure can be lower.
  • Billing is by the second in whole compute units, pooled per organization. Egress is free.
  • Memory must be 1–8 GB per vCPU, so a 1 vCPU sandbox cannot exceed 8 GB of RAM.

C · Three hours a day

$8.25

2 vCPU / 4 GiB / 20 GiB (plan: Usage Credits)

  • CPU, while working90 h × 0.2 vCPU busy × $0.07$1.26
  • Memory90 h × 4 GiB × $0.015$5.40
  • Disk while running90 h × 20 GiB × $0.0002$0.36
  • Disk while stopped640 h × 20 GiB × $0.00009589$1.23
  • Prepaid packs of $5, $10 or $20 (500–2,000 CU; 1 CU = $0.01). At a zero balance Tensorlake stops running sandboxes rather than billing an overage.
  • Rates are the Usage Credits rates. Pro's rates are lower — $0.042 per active core-hour, $0.009 per GB-hour of RAM (both 40% less) and $0.0001 per GB-hour of disk (50% less) — and its $250 fee includes 25,000 CU. The calculator prices every plan at the higher Usage Credits rates, so a Pro bill above $250 of monthly usage is overstated.
  • Tensorlake's own pages word Pro differently: the pricing page says the fee includes 25,000 CU ($250 of usage); the billing docs and FAQ say "$250 per month plus metered usage". This guide reads them together as $250 that includes $250 of usage, with usage beyond it billed. Get it in writing before relying on it.
  • CPU bills only while it executes, so the engine applies the workload's busy share. When Tensorlake cannot sample active CPU it falls back to allocated vCPU time, which costs more.
  • Snapshot storage is $0.07 per GB-month while a sandbox is suspended, modelled here as a per-GB-hour stopped rate (0.07 ÷ 730) on the sandbox's disk size. Tensorlake says only unique bytes are billed, so the real figure can be lower.
  • Billing is by the second in whole compute units, pooled per organization. Egress is free.
  • Memory must be 1–8 GB per vCPU, so a 1 vCPU sandbox cannot exceed 8 GB of RAM.