Tool profile
Daytona: cost, fit and limits
Daytona is a cloud infrastructure service that provides secure, elastic sandboxes for running AI-generated code, controlled through SDKs and billed by vCPU, memory, storage and GPU time, aimed at developers who build agents and AI products.
What to know first
Daytona is sandbox infrastructure for running AI-generated code, not an editor. Pricing is pay as you scale: $0.0504 per vCPU hour, $0.0162 per GiB of memory per hour and $0.000108 per GiB of storage per hour, with the first 5 GiB of storage free. GPU rates are listed, for example $3.95 an hour for an H100. SDKs are shown for Python, TypeScript, Ruby, Go and Java.
Daytona at a glance
| Maker | Daytona (legal entity not captured), Not stated on the vendor pages |
|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes |
| Entry price | vCPU at $0.0504 per hour, pay as you scale |
| API access | Yes |
| Category | Best AI Cloud IDE Software in 2026, rank 12 of 12 |
| Website | daytona.io |
Who Daytona is best for
Teams building AI agents
Agents that write code need somewhere safe to run it, and Daytona sells sandboxes for exactly that, controlled from code through an SDK.
Developers who want usage-based billing
Rates are printed per vCPU, GiB and hour, so cost follows the resources used rather than a seat count. A small sandbox that runs briefly costs little.
Projects needing GPU or Windows sandboxes
The pricing page lists on-demand and preemptible GPUs and Windows sandboxes at $0.0858 per vCPU hour. That suits agents needing a Windows desktop or a model run.
Daytona plans and pricing
| Plan | Price | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| Pay as you scale | vCPU $0.0504 per hour; memory $0.0162 per GiB-hour; storage $0.000108 per GiB-hour | Start for free; the first 5 GiB of storage is free, and Windows sandboxes cost $0.0858 per vCPU hour. |
| GPU on-demand | For example H100 $3.95 per hour; H200 $4.54 per hour | On-demand GPU rates from the pricing table; preemptible GPU rates are lower but can be interrupted. |
| Enterprise | Contact sales | Sales-led plan; no figure is published on the pages opened, so terms are negotiated. Terms such as volume discounts are not published. |
Checked November 2026.
What Daytona does
- Sandboxes for generated code
- The homepage describes secure, elastic infrastructure for running AI-generated code. A program, not a person typing in an editor, is the usual operator. The pages describe it as infrastructure for builders, not for end users.
- Per-unit billing
- Compute, memory and storage are billed per hour with printed rates. Storage is billed per GiB-hour, which keeps small sandboxes cheap. Windows sandboxes are priced per vCPU hour at a higher rate.
- Multiple SDKs
- The homepage install tabs show SDKs for Python, TypeScript, Ruby, Go and Java, so sandboxes can be created and controlled from the application's own language.
- GPU choices
- The pricing table lists on-demand GPUs such as the Nvidia H100 and H200, and preemptible options at lower rates that can be interrupted. The choice trades price against the risk of interruption.
How Daytona handles your data
Daytona's privacy policy says personal information is kept as long as necessary for the purpose it was collected, with no fixed period, and that the website is hosted in the United States. Whether customer code, prompts or sandbox contents train any model was not stated on the pages opened. A trust site at trust.daytona.io exists but its contents were not opened, so certifications are unverified here. Because the product runs customer-generated code, the buyer should ask for written terms on data isolation, retention of sandbox contents and logging before running sensitive workloads, and should not assume answers from these pages.
Where Daytona falls short in practice
- . Daytona offers no editor or coding assistant of its own on the pages opened. Developers who want to sit in an IDE need one of the other tools in this category.
- . Preemptible GPU rates are lower than on-demand but can be interrupted. A long training or agent task needs a retry plan if it uses them.
- . Only the pay-as-you-scale rates are published. Enterprise pricing and any committed-use discounts require a conversation with the vendor. Expect to negotiate rather than read a price list.
Works with
Alternatives to Daytona
Daytona: common questions
What is Daytona used for?
Daytona provides sandboxes where AI-generated code can run safely, controlled through SDKs for Python, TypeScript, Ruby, Go and Java. It is infrastructure for builders of agents and AI products, not a browser editor for a person to type code in.
How much does Daytona cost?
Pay-as-you-scale rates are $0.0504 per vCPU hour, $0.0162 per GiB of memory per hour and $0.000108 per GiB of storage per hour, with the first 5 GiB of storage free. GPUs, such as an H100 at $3.95 an hour, are priced separately.
Does Daytona offer GPUs?
Yes. The pricing table lists on-demand GPUs, for example the Nvidia H100 at $3.95 an hour and the H200 at $4.54, plus preemptible GPUs at lower rates. Preemptible machines can be interrupted, so they suit work that can restart. Pick based on interruption tolerance.
Is Daytona a cloud IDE?
Not in the usual sense. The homepage describes infrastructure for running AI-generated code, and the pages opened name no editor or assistant of its own. Developers who want an editor in the browser should look at Codespaces, Coder or Replit instead.
Where does Daytona host data?
The privacy policy states that the Daytona website is hosted in the United States. It does not give a region for customer sandboxes in the pages opened. A trust site exists but was not opened, so ask the vendor before running regulated workloads.