Beam
6.5/10Beam is a serverless cloud for AI teams and coding agents, offering sandboxes, persistent VMs, serverless GPU endpoints, task queues and on-demand GPU machines with per-second billing.
Data last updated November 2026 · Our methodology
Overview
Beam is a compute platform from Beam Cloud, a New York company in Y Combinator's Winter 2022 batch. It runs workloads on bare-metal servers and offers them as several products. Sandboxes isolate untrusted or agent-generated code and can be paused, snapshotted, forked and given a GPU. VMs resume with memory and running processes intact. Developers can also deploy serverless functions, autoscaling inference endpoints, task queues and cron jobs using Python decorators. On-demand GPU machines and multi-node InfiniBand clusters are available as well. A Python SDK, a TypeScript SDK and a CLI manage everything. The core runtime, Beta9, is open source under AGPL-3.0, so teams can self-host it or add their own hardware. Beam suits developers building AI agents, inference APIs and GPU batch jobs who want one place for both sandboxed and serverless compute. Pricing combines a plan fee with usage. Developer costs $20 a month and includes $20 of credit. Team costs $89 a month plus usage, with three seats included. Growth is priced by quote. At the time of research, serverless RTX 4090 GPUs cost $0.69 an hour and a whole H100 machine started at $1.83 an hour. Beam charged no egress fees, and storage was not yet billed. Bring-your-own-cloud is available for a management fee. Beam publishes a SOC 2 Type II badge. The main limitations are a narrower GPU catalogue than large GPU marketplaces, no published list of regions, and very little independent user review coverage for a team of about five people.
Our Rating
AI Software6.6/10
Hosting & Infrastructure6.4/10
Who Beam is best for
Best software for DevelopersGood fit
Everything runs from a Python or TypeScript SDK and a CLI, with decorators that turn functions into endpoints and task queues.
The $20 Developer plan includes matching credit, and scale-to-zero billing keeps costs low for small AI teams.
Autoscaling GPU endpoints and sandboxes for agent code let SaaS products ship AI features without running GPU servers.
Less suited
Beam offers SOC 2 Type II, a Growth tier, clusters and bring-your-own-cloud, but the vendor is very small and publishes few details on regions.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Billing is per second, or per millisecond for sandboxes, with no egress fees and no compute charge while VMs are stopped. Storage was not yet billed at the time of research.
- Beta9, the core runtime, is open source under AGPL-3.0, so teams can self-host it or add their own hardware using the same CLI across cloud, on-prem and hybrid setups.
- Agent-focused sandboxes start in about half a second and can be paused, snapshotted, forked and given a GPU. Paused VMs resume with RAM and processes intact.
- GetDeploying's comparison found Beam's H100, H200, B200, L40S, RTX PRO 6000 and A6000 machine prices cheaper than Runpod's.
- Beam publishes a SOC 2 Type II report, and GetDeploying lists GDPR coverage through a DPA and HIPAA availability on the enterprise tier.
Cons
- Beam lists 10 GPU models, compared with 34 on Runpod in GetDeploying's comparison, and Runpod is cheaper on A100 and RTX 4090.
- In GetDeploying's comparison, a medium always-on VM (4 vCPU, 8 GB) cost about $289 a month on Beam versus about $86 on Runpod.
- Beam does not publish a list of data center regions, so buyers with residency needs must ask sales.
- The entry Developer plan is capped at 1 seat and 5 concurrent GPUs, and live chat support starts only on the $89 Team plan.
- Independent user reviews are scarce, and the vendor is very small (YC lists a team of 5), which may concern buyers who need long-term support guarantees.
Key Features
Beam Pricing
Developer
- 1 seat
- 5 concurrent GPUs
- Community support
- 30 concurrent vCPUs
- 30-day log retention
- $20 of usage credit each month
- Unlimited apps, volumes, custom images and API requests
Team
- 3 seats included
- Live chat support
- 50 concurrent GPUs
- 30-day log retention
- 1,000 concurrent vCPUs
- Usage billed on top of the plan fee
Growth
- Unlimited seats
- 1-year log retention
- Private Slack channel support
- Custom vCPU and GPU concurrency
- Volume discounts above $10K a month
Frequently Asked Questions
The Developer plan is $20 a month and includes $20 of usage credit each month. Team is $89 a month plus usage, and Growth is priced by quote. Purchased credits do not expire.
Billing is per second for VMs and serverless workloads, and per millisecond for sandboxes. GPU machines are billed per hour. Stopped VMs incur no compute charge, egress and bandwidth are free, and storage was not yet billed at the time of research.
Serverless GPUs include the RTX 4090 and RTX 5090. On-demand machines range from the RTX 4090 to the A6000, L40S, RTX PRO 6000, A100 80GB, H100, H200 and B200. Multi-node H100, H200, B200 and B300 clusters with InfiniBand are quoted by sales.
Yes. Bring Your Own Cloud charges a management fee per vCPU-hour and per GB-hour, and your cloud provider bills the compute. The open-source Beta9 runtime can also be self-hosted.
Beam shows a SOC 2 Type II badge, and GetDeploying lists a Type II report sourced from Beam's docs. GetDeploying also says HIPAA is available on the enterprise tier and GDPR is covered through a data processing addendum.
Beam provides a CLI installed with a single curl command, a Python SDK with decorators for functions, endpoints and task queues, and a TypeScript SDK for VMs and sandboxes. The dashboard can deploy repositories, and third-party coverage mentions deployment through GitHub Actions.
Developer gets community support, Team gets live chat, and Growth gets a private Slack channel.
Similar Tools
See all alternatives
DigitalOcean is a developer-focused cloud platform offering Droplet VMs, managed Kubernetes, databases, object storage, App Platform and GPU compute for startups and small businesses.
Runpod is a GPU cloud for AI teams, offering per-second GPU pods, autoscaling serverless inference endpoints, and multi-node instant clusters.
Amazon's public cloud platform, with over 200 pay-as-you-go services for compute, storage, databases, networking and AI, used by startups through large enterprises and governments.
Ranked near Beam in AI Software
See Beam in the listBeam is #144 in AI Software by our score.
