AWS Lambda MicroVMs pricing vs Northflank: which is cheaper for AI sandboxes?

AWS Lambda MicroVMs and Northflank sandboxes offer contrasting serverless compute solutions, with significant differences in pricing, features, and deployment flexibility. Lambda MicroVMs, launched by AWS in 2026, employ Firecracker-backed isolated environments, ideal for executing untrusted or AI-generated code and feature a suspend/resume capability that saves costs during idle periods by halting compute charges. In contrast, Northflank sandboxes are significantly cheaper, approximately 6x less expensive per vCPU and 1.6x less per GB than Lambda MicroVMs, and offer seamless integration with multiple cloud providers like AWS, GCP, Azure, and more, alongside GPU support and a holistic deployment lifecycle. Despite the higher compute rates of Lambda MicroVMs, their deep integration within the AWS ecosystem and unique suspend feature provide distinct advantages for AWS-native teams, whereas Northflank's cost-effectiveness and multi-cloud flexibility make it more suitable for high-volume or continuous workloads.