AWS Lambda MicroVMs
AWS Lambda MicroVMs is a Lambda primitive that runs each user's code inside its own Firecracker microVM with VM-level isolation. Developers package their application with a Dockerfile, upload to S3, and AWS builds a snapshot that can be launched, suspended, resumed, or terminated on demand. It is designed for multi-tenant workloads — AI agents, code playgrounds, and secure code execution products — that need a dedicated isolated environment per end user or session, with state preserved for up to 8 hours.
| Pricing model | Per-second compute (baseline + peak) plus snapshot operations and storage |
|---|---|
| Pricing The headline compute price as the provider states it. Sorting ranks prices stated per vCPU over time, converted to hourly. Other pricing models sort after, unranked. | $0.0000276944 per vCPU-second + $0.0000036667 per GB-second (ARM/Graviton, US East); snapshot read $0.00155/GB, write $0.0038/GB, storage $0.08/GB-month |
| Free while idle Whether a stopped, paused, or sleeping sandbox costs nothing. | ✓ |
| Elastic Resources flex with what the sandbox actually uses, and the bill follows: yes when the provider bills on active or observed use, no when capacity is reserved or allocated and billed while it runs. | – |
| Memory snapshots Whether RAM state survives a pause and resume, not just disk. | ✓ |
| Wake on request Whether a stopped sandbox wakes automatically on inbound traffic. | ✓ |
| Start / resume Typical time from create or resume to running. Sorting ranks stated times, converted to seconds; claims with no figure sort after, unranked. | near-instant |
| Max runtime The longest a sandbox may run. | 8 h (28,800 s state-retention window) |
| Isolation The isolation technology between sandboxes. | Firecracker microVM |
| GPUs Whether GPU instances are available for sandboxes. | ✕ |
| Docker Whether Docker containers can run inside the sandbox. | ✓ |
| SDKs | Python, Node.js |
✓ yes · ✕ no · – no cited public fact.
No free tier applies to Lambda MicroVMs (the standard Lambda free tier does not cover this product), and suspended MicroVMs continue to incur snapshot storage charges while compute charges are paused.
Sources
- https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/lambda-microvms-guide.html
- https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/microvms-launching.html
- https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/lambda-microvms/
- https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/run-isolated-sandboxes-with-full-lifecycle-control-aws-lambda-introduces-microvms/
- https://builder.aws.com/content/3FqF0Cc1MTZjXuYiZMGAHNBpkvt/lambda-microvms-are-kind-of-insane-tiny-virtual-machines-that-boot-in-milliseconds-and-sleep-when-you-are-not-looking
- https://awsteele.com/blog/2026/06/23/some-notes-on-lambda-microvms.html
- https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/announcing-lambda-microvms-serverless-compute-environments-with-vm-level-isolation-and-near-instant-startup/
- https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/pricing/
- https://northflank.com/blog/aws-lambda-microvms-vs-northflank-pricing
Last verified 2026-08-12. Corrections land through the update log.