Daytona vs Modal Sandboxes
Answer in brief
Choose Daytona for long-lived, stateful agent workspaces that need many SDK languages, GPUs, or Windows and macOS sandboxes; choose Modal Sandboxes for high-concurrency and GPU-backed sandboxes — RL rollouts, evals and coding agents at scale. Daytona uses Containers or VMs isolation; Modal Sandboxes uses gVisor or VM isolation.
Daytona vs Modal Sandboxes at a glance
| Attribute | Daytona | Modal Sandboxes |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Stateful sandboxes for AI-generated code — Linux containers, Linux and Windows VMs, macOS and GPU sandboxes — with snapshots, volumes and preview URLs. | Sandboxes on Modal’s serverless compute platform for running untrusted code at very high scale, with GPUs, snapshots and tunnels. |
| Isolation | Isolated Linux containers (dedicated namespaces, resource limits) by default; VM sandboxes (Linux, Windows) run a full VM with their own kernel; GPU sandboxes are containers with exclusive GPU allocation | gVisor by default, or VMs with their own Linux kernel; GPU sandboxes use gVisor |
| Open source | No (Former public repo archived (AGPL-3.0)) | No (Client SDK Apache-2.0) |
| Self-host / BYOC | Not documented / Yes | No / Not documented |
| SDKs | Python, TypeScript, Ruby, Go, Java | Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Go |
| Cold start (vendor claim) | Sub-90 ms sandbox creation (vendor claim) | Sub-second, including for large custom images (vendor claim) |
| Max session | No hard maximum: auto-stop after 15 min idle by default (can be disabled), auto-archive after 7 days stopped, optional wall-clock TTL | 5 minutes default, configurable up to 24 hours; snapshots carry state beyond that |
| Persistence | Stateful sandboxes, snapshots, shared volumes, archive/recover and stop/start with state. Pause/resume, fork and hot snapshots on VM sandboxes | Filesystem snapshots, directory snapshots, memory snapshots (alpha) and Modal Volumes |
| GPU | Yes — up to 8 GPUs per sandbox (e.g. H100 from $2.27/hour, B200 $3.59/hour, preemptible list rates) | Yes — Modal’s full GPU range (T4 to B300) at standard per-second rates, e.g. H100 $0.001097/s |
| Networking | Tiered egress: per-sandbox CIDR and domain allowlists or block-all, changeable at runtime; preview URLs for any port with token or signed URLs; SSH, VNC and web terminal | Outbound open by default; block all, CIDR allowlists or domain allowlists (beta), updatable at runtime; encrypted tunnels with public URLs and connect tokens |
| Pricing | Per second: $0.0504 per vCPU-hour + $0.0162 per GiB-hour; storage $0.000108/GiB-hour after 5 GiB free; Windows $0.0858/vCPU-hour | Per second at sandbox (non-preemptible) rates: $0.00003942 per physical core-second (1 core = 2 vCPU) + $0.00000667 per GiB-second; GPUs at standard rates. Team plan $250/month |
| Compliance | States HIPAA, SOC 2 and GDPR compliance (Trust Center) | SOC 2 on all plans; HIPAA on Enterprise |
| Best for | Long-lived, stateful agent workspaces that need many SDK languages, GPUs, or Windows and macOS sandboxes | High-concurrency and GPU-backed sandboxes — RL rollouts, evals and coding agents at scale |
Verified November 8, 2026 from each provider’s documentation. Cold-start figures are vendor claims, not our measurements.
Which should you choose?
Choose Daytona if…
- You need long-lived, stateful workspaces that survive between sessions
- You want SDKs beyond Python and TypeScript (Ruby, Go, Java)
- You need GPUs, Windows or macOS sandboxes from the same provider
- You want BYOC on your own compute
Choose Modal Sandboxes if…
- You need very high concurrency (RL, evals, batch agents)
- You need GPUs inside the sandbox
- You already use Modal for inference or training
- You want Go as well as Python and TypeScript SDKs
Both are worth piloting with your own image and region. See the full Daytona profile and Modal Sandboxes profile, or the complete comparison.
Frequently asked questions
Is Daytona or Modal Sandboxes better for AI agents?
Neither is better for every workload. Daytona is best for long-lived, stateful agent workspaces that need many SDK languages, GPUs, or Windows and macOS sandboxes. Modal Sandboxes is best for high-concurrency and GPU-backed sandboxes — RL rollouts, evals and coding agents at scale.
Which is open source, Daytona or Modal Sandboxes?
Neither is open source.
How do Daytona and Modal Sandboxes isolate code?
Daytona: Isolated Linux containers (dedicated namespaces, resource limits) by default; VM sandboxes (Linux, Windows) run a full VM with their own kernel; GPU sandboxes are containers with exclusive GPU allocation. Modal Sandboxes: gVisor by default, or VMs with their own Linux kernel; GPU sandboxes use gVisor.
Sources
Cite this page
Agent Sandboxes. (2026). Daytona vs Modal Sandboxes. agentsandboxes.org. Last reviewed November 8, 2026. https://agentsandboxes.org/compare/daytona-vs-modal/
Found an error or a missing sandbox? Submit a correction — every entry links to the sources it relies on.