Agent sandbox FAQ

There is no single best for every workload. E2B is the most widely adopted all-rounder, Daytona leads for stateful coding workspaces, and Modal leads for scale and GPUs. See best by use case.

An isolated, programmable environment — usually a microVM or gVisor container — where an AI agent can run code, install packages and use files without risking the host or other users. See What is an AI agent sandbox?

E2B (Apache-2.0, self-hostable), Kubernetes Agent Sandbox (Apache-2.0), Microsandbox (Apache-2.0) and Anthropic’s Sandbox Runtime (Apache-2.0). Several others open-source only their SDKs. See open-source sandboxes.

Modal, Daytona, Northflank, Beam and Koyeb offer GPUs in sandboxes; on Kubernetes, GKE Agent Sandbox supports GPUs with gVisor. E2B, Vercel Sandbox and Fly.io Sprites are CPU-only or do not document GPUs. See GPU sandboxes.

Generally yes for untrusted, multi-tenant code: a microVM gives each sandbox its own kernel behind hardware virtualization, while containers share the host kernel. gVisor is a strong middle ground. See microVMs vs gVisor vs containers.

Most bill per second for vCPU and memory — roughly $0.03–$0.15 per vCPU-hour at published rates — plus storage and sometimes a platform fee. Idle time usually dominates the bill. See pricing explained.

Yes. Runloop’s documentation says it is winding down, with transition support for existing customers ending November 13, 2026. Its migration guides point to Tensorlake, Modal and Freestyle. See Runloop alternatives.

21 active sandboxes with full profiles in the directory, each with sourced facts and a verification date, plus newer entrants listed as “also tracked”.

For hosted, multi-session coding agents, Daytona and E2B are the strongest all-round choices, with Vercel Sandbox, Fly.io Sprites and Freestyle close behind for persistent VMs. For local coding agents, Docker Sandboxes or Anthropic’s open-source sandbox runtime are good fits.

If you use OpenAI models, the built-in Code Interpreter tool needs no extra vendor. For model-agnostic apps, E2B’s Code Interpreter SDK is the most common choice; Azure and AWS offer managed equivalents inside their clouds.

Modal documents the largest tested concurrency. Providers with snapshot forking — Morph, E2B and Daytona VM sandboxes — make branching many rollouts from one state cheap. Large labs often self-host on Kubernetes with Agent Sandbox.

Daytona offers Windows VM sandboxes (and macOS) alongside Linux. Most other agent sandboxes are Linux-only.

No. E2B documents its sandboxes as CPU-only. For GPU sandboxes, look at Modal, Daytona, Northflank, Beam or Koyeb.

Daytona archived its public AGPL-3.0 repository in June 2026 and moved core development to a private codebase. The archived code remains available, but it is no longer actively developed in the open.

Kubernetes Agent Sandbox if you run Kubernetes; Microsandbox for single machines. E2B itself is also open source and self-hostable.

E2B (Enterprise BYOC), Daytona (BYOC runners) and Northflank (BYOC) can run sandboxes in your cloud account, and AWS Bedrock AgentCore is AWS-native. You can also self-host open-source options such as E2B or Kubernetes Agent Sandbox.

Run the agent inside a microVM (Docker Sandboxes or Microsandbox) or wrap it with an OS-level sandbox such as Anthropic’s open-source sandbox runtime, restricting writes to the project directory and network access to an allowlist.