Control Plane Sandboxes
Persistent, suspendable development sandboxes for coding agents inside a Control Plane "virtual cloud", with a browser IDE, SSH/VS Code/Cursor access and identity-based access to private services. A persistent dev-environment style sandbox for enterprises standardised on Control Plane, not a general-purpose SDK sandbox.
Overview
Control Plane is a multi-cloud "virtual cloud" platform that orchestrates hardened Kubernetes clusters across AWS, GCP, Azure, OCI and customer hardware. Its Sandboxes feature (a documented product with its own docs section and a cpln sandbox connect CLI command added in CLI v3.12.0, July 2026) gives AI coding agents "an isolated environment with persistent storage" inside your virtual cloud. You create one from the console by picking an image (templates, composed toolboxes or your own OCI image), a size and an app port; it is ready in roughly 60-90 seconds and exposes a browser IDE (code-server), a browser terminal (ttyd with tmux) and a public URL, or you connect from VS Code, Cursor or SSH.
The home directory lives on a persistent volumeset, so suspending a sandbox scales it to zero and bills only storage while keeping repos and credentials; resuming picks up where it left off. Private databases and APIs are reached through Control Plane's identity system rather than keys in the agent's context. Isolation is the platform's container isolation (cgroups, namespaces, seccomp-style syscall and capability restrictions); the docs do not name a microVM runtime. There is no sandbox SDK — control is via console and CLI — and no sandbox-specific pricing beyond the platform's per-millicore and per-megabyte rates. Control Plane reports SOC 2 Type II, PCI DSS Level 1, HIPAA and GDPR compliance.
Notable
cpln sandbox connectshipped in CLI v3.12.0 (3 July 2026); v3.13.0 switched SSH to adevuseraccount for de-rooted images.- Docs quote readiness in "~60–90 seconds" and suspend billing as "Storage only".
- Platform compliance: SOC 2 Type II, PCI DSS Level 1, HIPAA, GDPR.
Control Plane Sandboxes specifications
| Attribute | Details |
|---|---|
| Isolation | Container on Control Plane-managed Kubernetes (platform security docs: cgroups, namespaces, restricted syscalls and capabilities); the sandbox docs do not name a hypervisor or microVM runtime, although Control Plane blog posts refer to microVMs |
| Deployment | Hosted platform · BYOC available · Self-hostable |
| Open source | No |
| SDKs and interfaces | CLI |
| Cold start (vendor claim) | Docs: a new sandbox "becomes ready in ~60–90 seconds" |
| Max session length | Not documented |
| Persistence | /root is mounted from a persistent volumeset, so repos, credentials, IDE settings and uncommitted changes survive suspend/resume and restarts; suspend scales the workload to zero (storage billed only); delete removes the volumeset |
| GPU | Not documented for sandboxes; the platform sells GPU compute (T4 $0.35/hour to B200 $7.93/hour) for workloads |
| Networking | Each sandbox has a password-protected browser IDE (/_ide/), browser terminal (/_term/) and a shareable public app URL (default port 8080); reaches private services via Universal Cloud Identity and Cloud Wormhole so "the agent never handles a key" |
| Pricing | No sandbox-specific rates; platform usage pricing is $0.06205654 per millicore-month vCPU, $0.00706330 per MB-month memory, General Purpose SSD $0.21224989 per GB-month, egress $0.12/GB; suspended sandboxes bill storage only |
| Free tier | Not documented |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type II, PCI DSS Level 1, HIPAA and GDPR compliant (per docs) |
| Regions | Any location a GVC (Global Virtual Cloud) spans: AWS, GCP, Azure, OCI regions, other clouds, or your own Kubernetes clusters (BYOK) |
Facts from Control Plane Sandboxes’s public documentation, verified November 9, 2026. Performance numbers are vendor claims.
Strengths and trade-offs
Strengths
- You already run on Control Plane and want agent workspaces with identity-based access to private services
- You need persistent, suspendable environments with IDE, terminal and SSH access
- You want the sandbox to run in your own clouds or Kubernetes clusters under one control plane
Trade-offs
- No programmatic sandbox SDK (console and CLI only); creation is a console workflow in the docs
- Isolation runtime beneath the container layer is not documented
- Startup of 60-90 seconds is far slower than microVM sandboxes
- No dedicated pricing, limits or idle-timeout documentation
Good fit for: Enterprises on Control Plane that want long-lived agent dev environments with identity-based access to their private infrastructure.
How Control Plane Sandboxes compares
| Sandbox | Isolation | Open source | Self-host / BYOC | Cold start (vendor) | Max session | Snapshots / pause | GPU | SDKs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Control Plane Sandboxes | Container (runtime not named) | No | Yes / Yes | 60-90 s | Not documented | Not documented / Yes | Not documented | CLI |
| Northflank Sandboxes | Cloud Hypervisor microVM | No | No / Yes | <1 s | Unlimited | Not documented / Yes | Yes | JavaScript/TypeScript, Python |
| Koyeb Sandboxes | MicroVM | No | No / Not documented | Not documented | Up to 24 h | Not documented / Not documented | Yes | Python, JavaScript/TypeScript |
| Railway Sandboxes | Linux VM | No | No / No | Not documented | No cap (idle 30 min default) | Yes / No | Not documented | JavaScript/TypeScript, CLI, GraphQL API |
| Coder | Template-defined (VM/pod/container) | Yes | Yes / No | Not documented | Not documented | Not documented / Yes | Not documented | CLI, REST API, MCP server |
| Ona (formerly Gitpod) | Dedicated cloud VM | No | No / Yes | Not documented | Not documented | Not documented / Yes | Yes | Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Go, CLI, REST API |
| GitHub Codespaces | Dedicated VM per codespace | No | No / No | Not documented | 12 h, 30 min idle | No / Yes | No | CLI, REST API |
Frequently asked questions
What is Control Plane Sandboxes?
How does Control Plane Sandboxes isolate code?
Is Control Plane Sandboxes open source?
How much does Control Plane Sandboxes cost?
What are the alternatives to Control Plane Sandboxes?
Sources
Cite this page
Agent Sandboxes. (2026). Control Plane Sandboxes. agentsandboxes.org. Last reviewed November 9, 2026. https://agentsandboxes.org/sandboxes/control-plane-sandboxes/
Found an error or a missing sandbox? Submit a correction — every entry links to the sources it relies on.