Control Plane Sandboxes alternatives
The 6 alternatives below are grouped by kind of sandbox, and each says what it does differently from Control Plane Sandboxes. Start from whatever made you look: missing GPUs, session limits, self-hosting, pricing or isolation.
Why teams look beyond Control Plane Sandboxes
A persistent dev-environment style sandbox for enterprises standardised on Control Plane, not a general-purpose SDK sandbox.
- No programmatic sandbox SDK (console and CLI only); creation is a console workflow in the docs
- Isolation runtime beneath the container layer is not documented
- Startup of 60-90 seconds is far slower than microVM sandboxes
- No dedicated pricing, limits or idle-timeout documentation
Control Plane Sandboxes alternatives, by kind
Compute platforms with sandboxes
General serverless or app platforms that also offer sandboxes, often with GPUs.
Koyeb Sandboxes
Ephemeral microVM sandboxes on Koyeb’s serverless platform for AI-generated code, with CPU or GPU and scale-to-zero.
- MicroVM
- GPU
How it differs: Teams already on Koyeb or in the Mistral ecosystem that want GPU-capable ephemeral sandboxes. Promising GPU-capable microVMs, but still preview — evaluate as it matures within Mistral.
Northflank Sandboxes
Sandboxes on Northflank’s Kubernetes-based platform — microVMs for CPU work, gVisor for GPUs — on Northflank’s cloud or in your own cloud account.
- Cloud Hypervisor microVM
- BYOC
- GPU
- Pause/resume
How it differs: Teams that want sandboxes in their own cloud account (BYOC) alongside app hosting, databases and GPUs. Compelling for BYOC and all-in-one platform needs; review the October 2026 incident response before adopting.
Railway Sandboxes
On-demand Linux VMs inside a Railway environment with forks, checkpoints, Docker, private networking to your services and per-second billing; generally available since September 2026.
- Linux VM
- Snapshots
How it differs: Coding agents and test runs that need to reach your Railway databases and services over the private network. The natural sandbox for teams already deploying on Railway, strongest when agents need private-network access to existing services.
Cloud development environments
Cloud and in-browser development environments that coding agents increasingly run in.
Coder
Self-hosted cloud development environments defined in Terraform (VMs, Kubernetes pods or Docker containers) for developers and coding agents, with a control-plane-hosted agent loop so workspaces hold no model credentials.
- Template-defined (VM/pod/container)
- Open source
- Self-hostable
- Pause/resume
How it differs: Organisations that want to run coding agents in self-hosted workspaces on their own clusters and clouds with audit and governance. The leading open-source, self-hosted workspace platform for agents and developers, with isolation as strong as the Terraform templates you write.
GitHub Codespaces
GitHub's cloud development environments: a Dev Container running on a freshly built, dedicated VM per codespace, created from the web, `gh` CLI or REST API, billed per core-hour with a free monthly quota.
- Dedicated VM per codespace
- Pause/resume
How it differs: Developer-driven workspaces tied to GitHub repositories, where an agent assists a human inside a Dev Container. A solid VM-isolated workspace for humans and their assistants on GitHub, but its lifecycle and API are not designed for autonomous agent fleets.
Ona (formerly Gitpod)
Enterprise cloud development environments provisioned as isolated VMs (EC2 or Compute Engine) in your own VPC from a Dev Container config, with SDKs, a CLI and Codex-based background agents; hosted Ona Cloud was retired on 31 October 2026.
- Dedicated cloud VM
- BYOC
- GPU
- Pause/resume
How it differs: Enterprises that want VM-isolated, Dev Container-based environments for developers and background agents inside their own AWS or GCP VPC. A mature, VPC-native VM environment platform for enterprises, now enterprise-only and tied to OpenAI's Codex after the Ona Cloud shutdown.
Control Plane Sandboxes vs alternatives
| Sandbox | Isolation | Open source | Self-host / BYOC | Cold start (vendor) | Max session | Snapshots / pause | GPU | SDKs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Control Plane Sandboxes | Container (runtime not named) | No | Yes / Yes | 60-90 s | Not documented | Not documented / Yes | Not documented | CLI |
| Coder | Template-defined (VM/pod/container) | Yes | Yes / No | Not documented | Not documented | Not documented / Yes | Not documented | CLI, REST API, MCP server |
| GitHub Codespaces | Dedicated VM per codespace | No | No / No | Not documented | 12 h, 30 min idle | No / Yes | No | CLI, REST API |
| Koyeb Sandboxes | MicroVM | No | No / Not documented | Not documented | Up to 24 h | Not documented / Not documented | Yes | Python, JavaScript/TypeScript |
| Northflank Sandboxes | Cloud Hypervisor microVM | No | No / Yes | <1 s | Unlimited | Not documented / Yes | Yes | JavaScript/TypeScript, Python |
| Ona (formerly Gitpod) | Dedicated cloud VM | No | No / Yes | Not documented | Not documented | Not documented / Yes | Yes | Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Go, CLI, REST API |
| Railway Sandboxes | Linux VM | No | No / No | Not documented | No cap (idle 30 min default) | Yes / No | Not documented | JavaScript/TypeScript, CLI, GraphQL API |
Frequently asked questions
What are the main alternatives to Control Plane Sandboxes?
Is there an open-source alternative to Control Plane Sandboxes?
Cite this page
Agent Sandboxes. (2026). Control Plane Sandboxes alternatives. agentsandboxes.org. Last reviewed November 9, 2026. https://agentsandboxes.org/alternatives/control-plane-sandboxes/
Found an error or a missing sandbox? Submit a correction — every entry links to the sources it relies on.