Piston alternatives
The 5 alternatives below are grouped by kind of sandbox, and each says what it does differently from Piston. Start from whatever made you look: missing GPUs, session limits, self-hosting, pricing or isolation.
Why teams look beyond Piston
A solid self-hosted judge engine for stateless snippet execution; treat the public emkc.org API as unavailable for commercial agents.
- Hosted API is effectively closed to commercial and personal projects since February 2026
- Stateless: no files, packages or processes survive between requests
- Default limits are tight (3 s run, 1,024-character stdout) and the container must run with --privileged
- No official SDKs; the only interface is the HTTP API plus a WebSocket for interactive stdin
Piston alternatives, by kind
Code execution APIs
Submit code, get output: online judges, compiler APIs and Jupyter kernels as a service.
Codapi
Lightweight Apache-2.0 sandbox server (a 3 MB Go binary) that runs each snippet in a locked-down Docker container, built for interactive documentation, with a hosted cloud at $5/month and free self-hosting.
- Locked-down Docker container
- Open source
- Self-hostable
How it differs: Embedding runnable snippets in docs and courses, or a tiny self-hosted run-code endpoint with strict defaults. The simplest well-hardened run-code server to self-host; fine for doc snippets and stateless tool calls, not for agent workspaces.
glot.io
Open-source code playground whose runner, docker-run (MIT), executes every request in a fresh, single-use Docker container with network disabled; 44 languages on the hosted site.
- Single-use Docker container
- Open source
- Self-hostable
How it differs: A free playground and a minimal MIT runner for stateless, network-less snippet execution. Useful as a free playground or as a reference MIT container runner; not a supported API to build an agent product on.
JDoodle Compiler API
Credit-metered compile-and-run REST and WebSocket API from the JDoodle online IDE, covering 114 languages, frameworks and databases, with each run costing one credit and a free daily allowance.
- Fresh sandbox per run (unnamed)
How it differs: Low-volume, pay-per-run execution with an interactive stdin stream for teaching and demo products. A convenient credit-metered compiler API for demos and courses; limits and isolation are too thinly documented for untrusted agent workloads at scale.
Judge0
Open-source online code execution system (GPL-3.0) that runs each submission in an isolate sandbox, offered as Judge0 Cloud via RapidAPI or directly and as a self-hosted Docker Compose stack.
- isolate (namespaces/cgroups)
- Open source
- Self-hostable
How it differs: Batch "submit code, get stdout" judging in 60-90+ languages with per-submission CPU, wall-clock and memory limits. The reference open-source online judge: ideal for stateless, time-boxed code evaluation at scale, but not a workspace an agent can return to.
OneCompiler Code Execution API
Hosted run-code API behind the OneCompiler online IDE: one POST runs a multi-file program in 150+ languages and databases, billed per call or per credit with enterprise tiers that raise the runtime cap to 7-20 s.
- Not documented
How it differs: Cheap, high-volume stateless runs across 150+ languages and databases from a backend. A budget run-code endpoint with transparent pricing but an undocumented sandbox; suitable for simple stateless tool calls, not for workspaces.
Full profile →OneCompiler Code Execution API alternativesWebsite ↗
Piston vs alternatives
| Sandbox | Isolation | Open source | Self-host / BYOC | Cold start (vendor) | Max session | Snapshots / pause | GPU | SDKs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Piston | isolate in Docker | Yes | Yes / No | Not documented | 3 s run / 10 s compile | No / No | No | REST API |
| Codapi | Locked-down Docker container | Yes | Yes / No | 1-3 s per run (claim) | 5 s default | No / No | No | REST API, JavaScript/TypeScript |
| glot.io | Single-use Docker container | Yes | Yes / No | Not documented | Operator-set per run | No / No | No | REST API |
| JDoodle Compiler API | Fresh sandbox per run (unnamed) | No | No / No | Not documented | Not documented | No / No | No | REST API |
| Judge0 | isolate (namespaces/cgroups) | Yes | Yes / No | Not documented | 5 s wall (max 20 s) | No / No | No | REST API, Python, JavaScript/TypeScript |
| OneCompiler Code Execution API | Not documented | No | No / No | Not documented | 7-20 s (enterprise) | No / No | No | REST API |
Frequently asked questions
What are the main alternatives to Piston?
Cite this page
Agent Sandboxes. (2026). Piston alternatives. agentsandboxes.org. Last reviewed November 9, 2026. https://agentsandboxes.org/alternatives/piston/
Found an error or a missing sandbox? Submit a correction — every entry links to the sources it relies on.