Daytona vs Vercel Sandbox
Answer in brief
Choose Daytona for long-lived, stateful agent workspaces that need many SDK languages, GPUs, or Windows and macOS sandboxes; choose Vercel Sandbox for teams on Vercel and agent builders who want microVM isolation, active-CPU billing and credential brokering. Daytona uses Containers or VMs isolation; Vercel Sandbox uses Firecracker microVM isolation.
Daytona vs Vercel Sandbox at a glance
| Attribute | Daytona | Vercel Sandbox |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | Firecracker microVM sandboxes on Vercel’s infrastructure, persistent by default and billed on active CPU, with fine-grained egress control. |
| 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 | Firecracker microVM with a dedicated kernel per sandbox |
| Open source | No (Former public repo archived (AGPL-3.0)) | No (SDK and CLI Apache-2.0) |
| Self-host / BYOC | Not documented / Yes | No / No |
| SDKs | Python, TypeScript, Ruby, Go, Java | JavaScript/TypeScript, Python |
| Cold start (vendor claim) | Sub-90 ms sandbox creation (vendor claim) | “Start in milliseconds” (vendor claim, no figure); snapshot resume faster than fresh start |
| 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 min default; up to 45 min per session on Hobby and 24 hours on Pro/Enterprise; persistent sandboxes can be resumed indefinitely |
| Persistence | Stateful sandboxes, snapshots, shared volumes, archive/recover and stop/start with state. Pause/resume, fork and hot snapshots on VM sandboxes | Persistent by default — filesystem auto-snapshotted on stop and restored on resume; manual snapshots; Drives (beta) and S3 mounts |
| GPU | Yes — up to 8 GPUs per sandbox (e.g. H100 from $2.27/hour, B200 $3.59/hour, preemptible list rates) | Not documented |
| 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 | Firewall modes allow-all, deny-all or domain/CIDR rules, updatable at runtime; credential brokering injects headers so secrets never enter the sandbox; public URLs for up to 15 ports |
| 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 | Active CPU $0.128/hour (billed only while CPU is used) + provisioned memory $0.0212/GB-hour + $0.60 per million creations, plus storage and transfer (iad1 rates) |
| Compliance | States HIPAA, SOC 2 and GDPR compliance (Trust Center) | Runs on Vercel infrastructure with SOC 2 Type II (company-wide) |
| Best for | Long-lived, stateful agent workspaces that need many SDK languages, GPUs, or Windows and macOS sandboxes | Teams on Vercel and agent builders who want microVM isolation, active-CPU billing and credential brokering |
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 Vercel Sandbox if…
- You deploy on Vercel or use the AI SDK
- You want secrets brokered outside the sandbox
- Your agents idle while waiting on models and you want active-CPU billing
- You want persistent-by-default microVMs
Both are worth piloting with your own image and region. See the full Daytona profile and Vercel Sandbox profile, or the complete comparison.
Frequently asked questions
Is Daytona or Vercel Sandbox 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. Vercel Sandbox is best for teams on Vercel and agent builders who want microVM isolation, active-CPU billing and credential brokering.
Which is open source, Daytona or Vercel Sandbox?
Neither is open source.
How do Daytona and Vercel Sandbox 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. Vercel Sandbox: Firecracker microVM with a dedicated kernel per sandbox.
Sources
Cite this page
Agent Sandboxes. (2026). Daytona vs Vercel Sandbox. agentsandboxes.org. Last reviewed November 8, 2026. https://agentsandboxes.org/compare/daytona-vs-vercel-sandbox/
Found an error or a missing sandbox? Submit a correction — every entry links to the sources it relies on.