Bring your own cloud, including the cheap ones.
Beam is a fast serverless runtime with its own cloud, and it can manage AWS or GCP accounts too. Surfra is built for bring-your-own-cloud from the start, across GPU marketplaces like Salad, RunPod, and Vast.ai, plus your own hardware.
How they differ.
| Beam | Surfra | |
|---|---|---|
| Where workloads run | Beam's cloud, or your AWS, GCP, or Azure account | Your accounts on Salad, RunPod, Vast.ai, DigitalOcean, Yotta, 13 beta clouds including AWS, and your own machines |
| Bring-your-own-cloud fee | Published as $0.019 per vCPU-hour and $0.009 per GB of RAM per hour | No usage fee on connected clouds. Your own machines are $2 a month each after 3 free months |
| Cold starts | Advertises sub-second starts with memory snapshots | Depends on the cloud and your image. We do not publish a number |
| Sandboxes for agents | Yes | No |
| Long-running jobs | Task queues and pods | Surfra Jobs: one command, once, with live logs and deadlines |
| Self-hosting | Open-source runtime, Beta9 | Hosted control plane |
Checked against each provider's public pages on October 16, 2026. Prices and features change, so confirm on their site. Sources: beam.cloud/pricing, Beam docs.
When to pick which.
Pick Beam if
You want agent sandboxes and snapshots, the fastest cold starts you can get, or you are committed to AWS or GCP credits. You might also want to self-host the runtime.
Pick Surfra if
Your GPU bill is the problem and you want the low-cost marketplaces. You want several of them in one failover list, with your own workstation in the same pool, and no per-vCPU fee on top of the cloud's price.
Looking at other options?
Common questions
Does Surfra charge a per-vCPU fee for bring your own cloud?
No. Orchestration on connected clouds is free on every plan. Surfra charges for your own registered machines after 3 months and for team features.
Can Surfra run on Salad or Vast.ai?
Yes. Salad, RunPod, Vast.ai, DigitalOcean, and Yotta are live today, with more in beta.
Bring every cloud, not just two.
Surfra is invite only while we test it. Tell us what you want to run and we will send an invite.
Request access