High-Performance SSD Volume
Learn when to use a High-Performance SSD volume vs. standard storage for your Agent's Drive.
When you create an Agent, you can choose between two storage types for its Drive:
- Standard Volume (default) — S3-backed object storage. Suitable for most use cases.
- High-Performance SSD — EBS-backed block storage. Optimized for workloads with many small files and frequent random I/O.
Which should I choose?
Use High-Performance SSD when:
- Your Agent runs development environments — installing packages with
pnpm install,npm install,pip install, etc. - Your Agent works with many small files — source code repositories, node_modules, Python virtualenvs.
- You need fast file system operations — compiling code, running tests, building Docker images.
- Your Agent uses Git heavily — frequent commits, checkouts, and diffs.
Use Standard Volume when:
- Your Agent handles documents, PDFs, images, or data files — large files with sequential reads.
- Your Agent does web research, writing, or analysis — not file-system intensive.
- You want to minimize cost — standard volumes are included in all plans.
- You're unsure — standard is a safe default for most agents.
Performance comparison
| Scenario | Standard (S3) | High-Perf SSD (EBS) |
|---|---|---|
pnpm install (1000+ files) | Slow | Fast |
| Reading a 100 MB PDF | Fast | Fast |
| Git clone + build | Slow | Fast |
| Uploading a video file | Fast | Fast |
| Running a Node.js server | Moderate | Fast |
Plan requirements
High-Performance SSD is available on the Pro plan and above.
| Plan | Standard Volume | High-Performance SSD |
|---|---|---|
| Free | ✓ | ✗ |
| Plus | ✓ | ✗ |
| Pro | ✓ | ✓ |
| Enterprise | ✓ | ✓ |
If you're on Free or Plus, the High-Performance SSD option will show an UPGRADE badge in the Create Agent dialog. Click it to view Pro plan pricing.
How to enable it
- Click New Agent in the sidebar.
- In the Create Agent dialog, find the High-Performance SSD option.
- Check the box to enable it.
- Click Create.
The storage type is set at creation time and cannot be changed after the Agent is created.