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MIOSA vs Beam
Beam and MIOSA both run code in serverless sandboxes. This page compares them on the independent ComputeSDK benchmark and on the capabilities MIOSA documents.
MIOSA 
Beam What Beam is
Beam (“On-Demand AI Compute”) provides serverless sandboxes for running code and models, described in its public documentation at (beam.cloud, as of October 2026).
Measured performance
The independent ComputeSDK benchmark runs the same workload against every provider. That is the only apples-to-apples number here.
| Metric | MIOSA | Beam | As of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Burst startup, median time-to-interactive | 57.09 ms (#1 of 32) | 707.07 ms (#11) | 2026-10-23 |
| DAX full build, 2026-08-28 | 39.3 s (#1 of 19) | no result | 2026-08-28 |
| DAX full build, 2026-10-23 | 38.8 s (#3 of 22) | 91.4 s (#19) | 2026-10-23 |
Source: ComputeSDK, via our benchmark page. Burst startup is the time from a create request to the first successful command inside a fresh sandbox, under 100 concurrent creates. Where a run is not listed, the provider did not appear in that run.
Capabilities side by side
Each Beam answer comes from Beam’s own documentation or pricing page, linked in the last column, fetched on 2026-10-23. Each MIOSA answer links the page that documents it. “Not documented” means the vendor’s docs do not say, not that the feature is missing.
| Capability | MIOSA | Beam | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Firecracker microVM by default | Containers for sandboxes; microVMs for VMs | Beam docs |
| Sandbox lifetime | Idle timeout, 1 hour by default and up to 24 hours, extendable; computers persist | 10 minutes by default, extendable; VMs run until stopped | Beam docs |
| Pause, snapshots, forks | Yes: pause and resume, snapshots, restore and fork | Yes: filesystem and memory snapshots; VM pause and fork | Beam docs |
| Full Linux desktop and computer use | Yes, Computers | Yes, on VMs | Beam docs |
| Public preview URL for a port | Yes | Yes | Beam docs |
| Deploy to a production URL | Yes, Services and Docker Host, with releases and rollback | Yes for endpoints and services; not for a sandbox | Beam docs |
| Managed databases | Postgres, MySQL, Redis, MongoDB, Qdrant | Postgres, Redis, MySQL, MongoDB | Beam docs |
| SDKs | TypeScript, Python, Go, Elixir, Java, Rust | Python, TypeScript | Beam docs |
| CLI | Yes | Yes | Beam docs |
| MCP server | Yes, hosted | Yes | Beam docs |
| Bring your own cloud | Yes, AWS and Google Cloud | Yes: open-source self-hosting and BYOC on AWS, GCP, Azure | Beam docs |
| Billing | Per second while running, one price per size | Per millisecond for sandboxes, per core and GiB | Beam docs |
| Regions | us-east, us-west, us-mia | United States by default | Beam docs |
Where MIOSA differs
These capabilities are documented for MIOSA on this site:
- Persistent computers with a full Linux desktop, not only headless sandboxes. See Computers.
- Deployments and Docker Host, so a machine becomes a versioned URL or a containerized app. See Deployments.
- White-label platform, so your customers see your brand and domains. See White-label setup.
- One interface for everyone: MCP, a CLI, and six SDKs. See MCP, CLI, SDKs.
- Managed data with connection injection: Postgres, MySQL, Redis, MongoDB, Qdrant. See Data.
- Regions and OpenComputers for machines you own. See Regions and OpenComputers.
When to choose each
- Choose Beam if you want serverless sandboxes for code and models and a GPU-adjacent compute platform.
- Choose MIOSA if you want sandboxes, full computers, agent runs, deployments, and managed data in one platform, with the measured startup figures above.
Sources
- Beam public documentation: https://beam.cloud (as of October 2026).
- ComputeSDK benchmark results, via our Benchmark page (2026-10-23).
- MIOSA capabilities, as documented on this site.