Freestyle vs Daytona
Answer in brief
Choose Freestyle for long-running coding agents that need full VMs — Docker, nested virtualization — with fork and hibernate; choose Daytona for long-lived, stateful agent workspaces that need many SDK languages, GPUs, or Windows and macOS sandboxes. Freestyle uses VM isolation; Daytona uses Containers or VMs isolation.
Freestyle vs Daytona at a glance
| Attribute | Freestyle | Daytona |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Full Linux VMs for AI agents with live forking of running VMs, memory-preserving hibernation, VPCs and nested virtualization. | Stateful sandboxes for AI-generated code — Linux containers, Linux and Windows VMs, macOS and GPU sandboxes — with snapshots, volumes and preview URLs. |
| Isolation | Full Linux VMs with hardware virtualization on Freestyle’s own bare metal; supports nested virtualization, FUSE and eBPF | 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 |
| Open source | No | No (Former public repo archived (AGPL-3.0)) |
| Self-host / BYOC | No / Not documented | Not documented / Yes |
| SDKs | TypeScript | Python, TypeScript, Ruby, Go, Java |
| Cold start (vendor claim) | Ready in 65 ms from API request; p99 under 400 ms; resume under 100 ms (vendor claims) | Sub-90 ms sandbox creation (vendor claim) |
| Max session | Can run indefinitely with idle timeout disabled (paid plans) | No hard maximum: auto-stop after 15 min idle by default (can be disabled), auto-archive after 7 days stopped, optional wall-clock TTL |
| Persistence | Live forking of running VMs including memory; hibernate with memory preserved; snapshots | Stateful sandboxes, snapshots, shared volumes, archive/recover and stop/start with state. Pause/resume, fork and hot snapshots on VM sandboxes |
| GPU | Not documented | Yes — up to 8 GPUs per sandbox (e.g. H100 from $2.27/hour, B200 $3.59/hour, preemptible list rates) |
| Networking | Default-deny network access with per-VM rules; VPCs, firewall, WireGuard/Tailscale tunnels; custom-domain previews with HTTPS | 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 |
| Pricing | $0.04032 per vCPU-hour + $0.0129 per GiB-hour; Hobby $50/month and Pro $500/month credited against usage | 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 |
| Compliance | Not documented | States HIPAA, SOC 2 and GDPR compliance (Trust Center) |
| Best for | Long-running coding agents that need full VMs — Docker, nested virtualization — with fork and hibernate | Long-lived, stateful agent workspaces that need many SDK languages, GPUs, or Windows and macOS sandboxes |
Verified November 8, 2026 from each provider’s documentation. Cold-start figures are vendor claims, not our measurements.
Which should you choose?
Choose Freestyle if…
- Your agent needs Docker, nested virtualization or kernel features
- You want to fork a running VM including memory
- You want default-deny networking and VPCs
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
Both are worth piloting with your own image and region. See the full Freestyle profile and Daytona profile, or the complete comparison.
Frequently asked questions
Is Freestyle or Daytona better for AI agents?
Neither is better for every workload. Freestyle is best for long-running coding agents that need full VMs — Docker, nested virtualization — with fork and hibernate. Daytona is best for long-lived, stateful agent workspaces that need many SDK languages, GPUs, or Windows and macOS sandboxes.
Which is open source, Freestyle or Daytona?
Neither is open source.
How do Freestyle and Daytona isolate code?
Freestyle: Full Linux VMs with hardware virtualization on Freestyle’s own bare metal; supports nested virtualization, FUSE and eBPF. 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.
Sources
Cite this page
Agent Sandboxes. (2026). Freestyle vs Daytona. agentsandboxes.org. Last reviewed November 8, 2026. https://agentsandboxes.org/compare/freestyle-vs-daytona/
Found an error or a missing sandbox? Submit a correction — every entry links to the sources it relies on.