Skip to main content
Box bills machine time by the second, only while a box is running.
  • $1 buys 100,000 seconds of machine time, about 27 hours. That is $0.036 per hour, or about $26 for a box running 24/7 for a month.
  • Stopped boxes are free. Stopping snapshots the filesystem and pauses billing until you resume.
  • One machine size: 4 shared vCPUs, 8 GB RAM. See Machine Capabilities.

​
Included with every box

  • A dedicated IPv4 address
  • Snapshots (the latest snapshot per box is kept, up to 50 GB)
  • Egress, up to 2 TB per box per month
  • Desktop streaming and hosted HTTPS ports

​
Plans

Every plan converts its price into machine time at the same rate, and sets your concurrency and creation limits:
PlanIncluded timeActive boxesCreations per minute
$20/mo2,000,000 s (~555 h)10010
$100/mo10,000,000 s (~2,777 h)20020
$500/mo50,000,000 s (~13,888 h)80035
$2000/mo200,000,000 s (~55,555 h)120060
Upgrade any time from Dashboard > Billing. Need more than the largest plan? Contact us, higher limits are agreed case by case. Every plan starts with a free 7-day trial. Trial accounts are limited to 4 active boxes, 5 creations per minute, and 20 creations per day until the first payment.

​
Plan time vs credit packs

  • Plan time resets every month and does not roll over.
  • Credit packs ($20 buys 2,000,000 seconds) never expire and carry over month to month. Plan time is consumed first.
Check your balance any time: 
box limits

curl -sS "$BOX_API_BASE/limits" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $BOX_API_KEY"

const limits = await box.limits();
console.log(limits.canStart, limits.creditBalanceSeconds);

limits = box.limits()
print(limits.can_start, limits.credit_balance_seconds)
See Get Box limits for every field.

​
Running out

When your balance reaches zero, running boxes are stopped with a snapshot. Nothing is lost; resume them after topping up. To never hit that stop, enable auto-pay in the billing dashboard. It charges your saved card in small automatic increments when you run out. If a charge fails, boxes keep running for a 24 hour grace period and you are alerted by email. If a monthly renewal payment fails while you still have credits, your boxes stay up until the credits run out.