Beam vs UpstashSandbox Benchmark Comparison

Beam
Faster in 1 of 2
vs
Upstash
Faster in 1 of 2

Beam and Upstash were each faster in 1 of 2 shared sandbox benchmarks.

Shared benchmarks
2
Last run
October 30, 2026
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Scorecard

Median of each benchmark's primary metric; lower is better. Medians within 5% count as roughly even, and a benchmark gets no speed verdict when either provider completed fewer than 50% of runs.

BenchmarkBeamUpstashResultRatio
Burst TTI
Time to interactive · Run October 30, 2026
548ms
100% success
1.93s
100% success
Beam faster
3.52x
DAX
Total workload time · Run October 30, 2026
96.13s
100% success
57.26s
100% success
Upstash faster
1.68x

Burst TTI

Run October 30, 2026

Time from sandbox creation to the first successful command, with 100 sandboxes launched at the same time.

Time to interactive

Beam

100% success
Median
548ms
P95
732ms
P99
739ms
Beam Burst TTI results →

Upstash

100% success
Median
1.93s
P95
3.80s
P99
3.97s
Upstash Burst TTI results →

Beam had a 3.52x lower median time to interactive (548ms vs 1.93s for Upstash).

Median time to interactive over time

30 runs from July 3, 2026 to October 30, 2026.

BeamUpstash
View the full Burst TTI leaderboard →

DAX

Run October 30, 2026

A real developer workload: install system packages, download Bun, clone the opencode repo, then run bun install and bun typecheck.

Total workload time

Beam

100% success
Median
96.13s
P95
96.13s
P99
96.13s
Beam DAX results →

Upstash

100% success
Median
57.26s
P95
57.26s
P99
57.26s
Upstash DAX results →

Upstash had a 1.68x lower median total workload time (57.26s vs 96.13s for Beam).

Median total workload time over time

9 runs from September 16, 2026 to October 30, 2026.

BeamUpstash
View the full DAX leaderboard →

Cost per DAX run

Each provider's DAX median total workload time (run October 30, 2026) multiplied by its published rate at the 8 vCPU / 16 GiB benchmark spec. Workload time excludes sandbox create and destroy, and subscription floors and included credits are not modeled.

Beam

Per-second wall clock
$0.024per run
96.13s median at $0.9086/hr

$0.0000375/core-s (1 core = 2 vCPU, so 4 cores) + $0.0000064/GiB-s.

Source pricing page

Upstash

Active CPU
$0.0064per run
57.26s median at $0.4000/hr

Large box (8 vCPU / 16 GB): $0.40/active-CPU-hour — assumes 100% CPU utilization for the whole build.

Source pricing page
Compare sandbox costs across all providers →

Methodology

  • One workload, every provider. The same script, payload, and model hit every provider, addressed the way its own API expects. Nobody gets a tuned or special path.
  • Repeated on a schedule. Every suite runs many iterations per provider, automated on a recurring schedule, so results reflect steady state rather than one lucky request.
  • Raw results published. Every run is committed as JSON to the public benchmarks repo, next to the code that produced it. Nothing is cherry-picked or held back.
  • How this comparison is built. Each benchmark compares the two providers' medians; results within 5% count as roughly even. A comparison is published only when both providers completed at least 50% of runs in 2 or more shared benchmarks run in the last 30 days.

Frequently asked questions

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Beam and Upstash were each faster in 1 of 2 shared sandbox benchmarks. In Burst TTI (October 30, 2026), Beam had a median time to interactive of 548ms versus 1.93s for Upstash, 3.52x faster. In DAX (October 30, 2026), Upstash had a median total workload time of 57.26s versus 96.13s for Beam, 1.68x faster.

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