# PaperPod

Official pricing: https://www.paperpod.dev/  
Category: agent-sandbox · Isolation: container

## Pricing regimes (raw)

- **Native product meter; not a general-purpose 4-vCPU/8-GiB VM** (sizes):  [alt, beta]

## Features

Yes: idle auto-stop, ≥24 h sessions, browser, code interpreter, HTTPS preview URLs, open internet, Python, Node.js, wake on request

No: snapshots, memory snapshots, fork/clone, pause/resume, persistent disk, volumes, start from your own snapshot, your own Docker/OCI image, full VM (own kernel), Docker inside, nested virtualization, desktop GUI, computer-use API, browser + desktop control, anti-bot stealth, CAPTCHA solving, residential IPs, preinstalled agents, SSH, public IPv4, egress allowlist, static egress IP, self-hosting, BYOC, open source, SOC 2, HIPAA, SSO, GPU, Windows, macOS, HTTP method/path egress rules, live resize, live fork (no pause), memory fork, EU data residency, MCP server, automatic snapshots, snapshots on demand, agent harness API, hosted agent API (their own agent), gVisor or VM (no shared kernel), inbound access rules, firewall inside (nftables), secret proxy, secret proxy for any API, extra volumes, shared volumes

Unknown: everything else. Evidence (source + quote) per feature: https://battleships.dev/data/providers/paperpod.json → feature_evidence

## Caveats

- vCPU/RAM, concurrency and session ceilings not published; execution-hour cost is not a 4/8 VM quote.
- Compute, process, and browser operations have separate meters; WebSocket usage is billed per operation, not per connection. Exact rounding of overlapping operations remains unpublished.
- Sandbox filesystem is ephemeral; Agent Memory is persistent but only 10 MB, not 50 GiB snapshots.
- Prepaid 20/100 dollar packs include 10%/20% bonuses; these are credit offers, not permanent unit-rate cuts.
- Browser/session lifecycle overhead, billing minimum and exact paused-retention terms not established.
- Native billing cannot be reduced to a 4-vCPU/8-GiB price. No matching engine sizes, by design.
- Background processes started via the HTTP API auto-terminate after 15 min (use the 'ppod start' CLI for longer).

## How this provider charges


As of 2026-09-28. Public API self-description is the complete public product/endpoint guide at root. Show HN 2026-02-09 item 46950654. USD list meters; top-up bonuses are conditional prepaid offers.

## Regimes

| Regime | When it applies | How billed / numbers | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compute seconds | Native product usage | $0.0001/s = $0.36/execution-hour; code execution and processes. | [Primary pricing](https://www.paperpod.dev/) |
| Browser seconds | Native product usage | $0.0001/s = $0.36/browser-operation-hour; screenshots, PDF, scraping. | [Primary pricing](https://www.paperpod.dev/) |
| AI neurons | Native product usage | $0.02/1,000 neurons; separate model-usage unit. | [Primary pricing](https://www.paperpod.dev/) |
| Prepaid top-up tiers | Native product usage | $1 micro; $5 starter; $20 Pro +10% bonus; $100 Scale +20% bonus. No expiry verified. | [Primary pricing](https://www.paperpod.dev/) |
| Included | Native product usage | Agent Memory 10 MB, preview URLs, file IO included. | [Primary pricing](https://www.paperpod.dev/) |
| Pay per request | Account plan | $0/month; Prepaid via MPP / Tempo / Stripe; no public subscription fee. | [Primary pricing](https://www.paperpod.dev/) |

## Gotchas

- vCPU/RAM, concurrency and session ceilings not published; execution-hour cost is not a 4/8 VM quote.
- Compute processes and browser operations have separate seconds meters; unclear if simultaneous operations share or multiply billed seconds.
- Sandbox filesystem is ephemeral; Agent Memory is persistent but only 10 MB, not 50 GiB snapshots.
- Prepaid 20/100 dollar packs include 10%/20% bonuses; these are credit offers, not permanent unit-rate cuts.
- Browser/session lifecycle overhead, billing minimum and exact paused-retention terms not established.

## Required worked example

4 vCPU / 8 GiB, 50 concurrent × 8 h/day × 22 days = **8,800 instance-hours**, 30% CPU, 50 GiB retained snapshots and 100 GiB egress.

**4/8 workload cannot be quoted.** If 8,800 billable execution-hours were actually consumed at the undiscounted native rate, compute alone would be `$3,168`; this does not establish hardware capacity,50-way concurrency,50 GiB storage or 100 GiB egress. Browser operations and AI neurons can add separate usage.

## Feature evidence

- https://paperpod.dev/