Snapshots let you capture a Sandbox filesystem as an immutable artifact, then restore it into new Sandboxes or turn it into a reusable base image. Use snapshots when you want to:
  • Fork Sandboxes to test different variations of code
  • Initialize Sandboxes with existing state for faster cold starts
  • Save a reproducible environment you can return to later
Snapshots capture filesystem state only, so running processes and environment variables are not preserved. Memory snapshots will be released in early September 2025.

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Creating a Snapshot

from beam import Image, Sandbox

# Create a sandbox and make some changes to the filesystem
sandbox = Sandbox(cpu=1).create()
p = sandbox.process.exec("sh", "-c", "mkdir -p /something && touch /something/file.txt")

# Read the logs
p.wait()
print(p.logs.read())

# Generate a filesystem snapshot and terminate the sandbox
snapshot_id = sandbox.snapshot()
sandbox.terminate()

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Restoring a Snapshot

from beam import Image, Sandbox

# Create a new sandbox and restore the snapshot
sandbox = Sandbox().create_from_snapshot(snapshot_id)

# This sandbox uses the filesystem state from the snapshot created above
p = sandbox.process.exec("ls", "-l", "/something")

p.wait()
print(p.logs.read())

sandbox.terminate()

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Creating Base Images from Snapshots

You can use Snapshots as a base image for any other abstraction or Sandbox on Beam, using Image.from_snapshot: 
from beam import Image, Sandbox

# Creates an image from a snapshot
image = Image().from_snapshot(snapshot_id)

sandbox = Sandbox(image=image).create()
p = sandbox.process.exec("ls", "-l", "/something")

p.wait()
print(p.logs.read())

sandbox.terminate()