Azure Container Apps
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/container-apps
Azure Container Apps Sandboxes (public preview, announced June 2026) are isolated execution environments for running untrusted code such as AI-generated scripts. Each sandbox runs in a hardware-isolated microVM, supports standard OCI container images, and starts in sub-second time. They support suspend/resume with full memory and disk state preservation, and are designed for AI agent workloads, code interpreters, and ephemeral development environments.
| Pricing model | Per-second billing on active vCPU and memory (Consumption-plan style); no charge while suspended. |
|---|---|
| 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. | $0.000024/vCPU-second and $0.000003/GiB-second while active (~$0.0864/vCPU-hour, ~$0.0108/GiB-hour). |
| 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. | Sub-second |
| Max runtime The longest a sandbox may run. | No documented fixed limit; sandboxes auto-suspend after configurable idle timeout (1–60 min, default 5 min) and auto-delete after configurable days. |
| Isolation The isolation technology between sandboxes. | Hardware-isolated microVM |
| GPUs Whether GPU instances are available for sandboxes. | ✕ |
| Docker Whether Docker containers can run inside the sandbox. | – |
| SDKs | Python, CLI |
✓ yes · ✕ no · – no cited public fact.
Public preview as of June 2026; API, CLI, and SDK surfaces are subject to change before general availability.
Sources
- https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/appsonazureblog/whats-new-in-azure-container-apps-at-build26/4524184
- https://sandboxes.azure.com/
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/container-apps/sandboxes-overview
- https://github.com/Azure-Samples/azure-container-apps-sandboxes
- https://github.com/microsoft/azure-container-apps/blob/main/plugin/skills/aca-sandboxes/SKILL.md
- https://www.cloudandaisummit.com/content/sessiondetail/1271635
- https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/appsonazureblog/introducing-azure-container-apps-sandboxes-secure-infrastructure-for-agentic-wor/4524131
- https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/container-apps/
- https://modal.com/resources/best-gpu-enabled-sandboxes-ai-agents
- https://www.infoq.com/news/2026/06/untrusted-ai-agents-sandboxes/
Last verified 2026-08-06. Corrections land through the update log.