Lifespan & permanence

Sandboxes are disposable by default — they expire and clean themselves up. When you need one to stick around, you can extend its lifespan or make it permanent.

Default lifespans

Choose a lifespan when creating

In the create form, open Advanced settings and set Site lifespan to 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, or Permanent. See Create a sandbox.

Make a sandbox permanent

A permanent sandbox never expires. You can flip an existing sandbox to permanent two ways:

• From the dashboard: on the sandbox row, click the lock icon (it shows an open padlock for temporary sandboxes). Click it to make the sandbox permanent.
• From the detail page: open Site settings and click Make permanent in the header (or the Make permanent link in the Expires row).

A permanent sandbox shows a Permanent badge and its expiry reads Never. You can only toggle permanence while a sandbox is creating or ready.

Make a sandbox temporary again

Click the (now closed) lock icon again, or Make temporary on the detail page. The sandbox goes back to a normal expiry and will clean itself up like any other.

What happens when a sandbox expires

When a sandbox passes its lifespan it becomes expired and moves to the Expired tab in your dashboard. It is kept for a 7-day grace period and then permanently deleted — container, database, files, and route all go away, so there's nothing left to manage or pay for.

During the grace period the sandbox is no longer running, so you can't open wp-admin or use its tools. If you want to keep working in it, recreate it (or save a template beforehand so you can spin up a copy).

Find sandboxes by lifecycle

The dashboard tabs filter by lifecycle state:

• Active — running sandboxes (creating, ready, failed).
• Expired — expired sandboxes still in their grace period.
• All — everything.

Next steps

• Plans & limits — unlock permanent sandboxes.
• Templates — preserve a sandbox's content before it expires.