Agent sandbox comparisons

Sandbox providers side by side, and the isolation technologies under them, with dated prices and limits.

Alternatives

Blaxel alternatives: agent sandboxes ranked by costRuntime is the cheapest Blaxel alternative, 77% less per job, with CPU and memory priced on separate meters.
Claude code execution tool alternative: run Claude's code in your own sandboxAnthropic's code execution tool runs Claude's code in a 1-CPU, 5 GiB container with no internet; your own sandbox adds packages and network.
Cloudflare Sandbox alternatives: agent sandboxes ranked by costRuntime is the cheapest Cloudflare Sandbox alternative, 53% less per job, and runs from any backend without a Worker.
CodeSandbox SDK alternatives: agent sandboxes ranked by costRuntime is the cheapest CodeSandbox SDK alternative, 74% less per job, billed by the second with no plan for concurrency.
Daytona alternatives: agent sandboxes ranked by costRuntime is the cheapest Daytona alternative, 77% less per job, and every Runtime sandbox is a microVM rather than a container.
E2B alternatives: agent sandboxes ranked by costRuntime is the cheapest E2B alternative, 77% less for the same job; Northflank, Cloudflare, Fly Machines and Morph also cost less.
Fly.io alternatives for agent sandboxes: Sprites and Machines ranked by costRuntime is the cheapest Fly.io alternative for agent sandboxes: 81% less than Sprites and 55% less than Machines per job.
Modal Sandbox alternatives: agent sandboxes ranked by costRuntime is the cheapest Modal Sandbox alternative at 84% less, and it isolates with a microVM kernel instead of gVisor.
Morph Cloud alternatives: agent sandboxes ranked by costRuntime is the cheapest Morph Cloud alternative, 62% less per job, and still forks a running sandbox with its memory.
Northflank alternatives: agent sandboxes ranked by costRuntime is the cheapest Northflank alternative for agents that wait, 42% less per job, and a sandbox is one API call.
OpenAI Code Interpreter alternative: run code in your own sandboxOpenAI's Code Interpreter runs Python in a hosted container; your own sandbox runs any model's code in seven languages, on your terms.
Runloop alternatives: agent sandboxes ranked by costRuntime is the cheapest Runloop alternative, 88% less per job, and a paused sandbox keeps its memory and processes.
Vercel Sandbox alternatives: agent sandboxes ranked by costRuntime is the cheapest Vercel Sandbox alternative, 70% less per job, and it needs no Vercel team or project.

Provider against provider

Blaxel vs CodeSandbox: pricing, standby and limitsBlaxel bills memory per second of active time with CPU included; CodeSandbox bills fixed VM sizes by the minute.
Blaxel vs Morph: pricing, isolation and limitsBlaxel bills memory only while a sandbox is active; Morph bills a VM's size in MCUs.
Blaxel vs Northflank: pricing, isolation and limitsNorthflank bills allocated CPU and memory at low hourly rates; Blaxel bills memory only while active.
Blaxel vs Runloop: pricing, isolation and limitsBlaxel bills memory only while a sandbox is active; Runloop bills a devbox's CPU, memory and disk while it runs: $2.76 against $5.33.
Cloudflare Sandbox vs Blaxel: pricing, idle costs and limitsCloudflare bills active CPU plus provisioned memory; Blaxel bills memory only, with CPU included, and goes to standby within seconds.
Cloudflare Sandbox vs CodeSandbox SDK: pricing, isolation and limitsCloudflare bills active CPU in 10 ms steps; CodeSandbox bills a fixed VM size by the minute, rounded up, busy or not.
Cloudflare Sandbox vs Fly Machines: pricing, isolation and limitsCloudflare bills a sandbox's active CPU from a Worker; a Fly Machine bills its whole size while started, so busy work costs less on Fly.
Cloudflare Sandbox vs Fly Sprites: pricing, persistence and limitsBoth bill measured CPU at about $0.07 a CPU-hour; Sprites keep files when idle and bill memory in use, Cloudflare loses files on sleep.
Cloudflare Sandbox vs Morph: pricing, snapshots and limitsCloudflare bills a Worker-run container by active CPU; Morph bills full VMs by size and can branch a running machine, memory included.
Cloudflare Sandbox vs Northflank: pricing, isolation and limitsNorthflank bills allocated vCPUs at a low rate and costs less than Cloudflare, which bills active CPU but needs 3 GiB per vCPU.
Cloudflare Sandbox vs Runloop: pricing, isolation and limitsBoth run a container inside a VM.
CodeSandbox vs Morph: pricing, isolation and limitsCodeSandbox sells fixed microVM sizes billed per minute; Morph bills VMs in MCUs.
CodeSandbox vs Northflank: pricing, isolation and limitsCodeSandbox sells fixed VM sizes by the minute; Northflank bills each vCPU and GB by the hour.
CodeSandbox vs Runloop: pricing, isolation and limitsCodeSandbox bills a fixed VM size per minute; Runloop bills a devbox's CPU, memory and disk per hour.
Daytona vs Blaxel: pricing, isolation and limitsDaytona and Blaxel cost the same for a one-minute job; Daytona bills CPU and memory, Blaxel memory only, with free standby when idle.
Daytona vs Cloudflare Sandbox: pricing, isolation and limitsDaytona is a sandbox API billed on allocated CPU; Cloudflare's Sandbox SDK runs a container in a VM from a Worker, billed on active CPU.
Daytona vs CodeSandbox: pricing, isolation and limitsDaytona bills per second on separate CPU and memory meters; CodeSandbox sells fixed microVM sizes by the minute, rounded up.
Daytona vs Fly Machines: pricing, isolation and limitsDaytona is a sandbox API that defaults to containers; a Fly Machine is a Firecracker VM billed by size.
Daytona vs Fly Sprites: pricing, isolation and limitsDaytona bills allocated vCPUs and memory and defaults to containers; Sprites are Firecracker microVMs billed on CPU used and memory in use.
Daytona vs Modal: pricing, isolation and limitsDaytona runs sandboxes as containers by default and Modal uses gVisor.
Daytona vs Morph: pricing, isolation and limitsDaytona bills CPU and memory by the second, containers by default; Morph bills VMs in MCUs and branches running machines, memory included.
Daytona vs Northflank: pricing, isolation and limitsBoth bill allocated CPU and memory; Northflank's rates are about a third of Daytona's, and it isolates in microVMs rather than containers.
Daytona vs Runloop: pricing, isolation and limitsBoth bill allocated CPU and memory while a sandbox runs; the same job costs $2.76 on Daytona and $5.33 on a Runloop devbox.
Daytona vs Vercel Sandbox: pricing, isolation and limitsDaytona defaults to containers and bills allocated CPU; Vercel uses Firecracker microVMs and bills active CPU, cheaper for agents that wait.
E2B vs Blaxel: pricing, isolation and limitsA 2 vCPU, 4 GB sandbox costs the same on E2B and Blaxel, $0.1656 an hour.
E2B vs Cloudflare Sandbox: pricing, isolation and limitsE2B is a microVM API billed on allocated CPU; Cloudflare runs a container in a VM from a Worker, billed on active CPU.
E2B vs CodeSandbox: pricing, isolation and limitsBoth run Firecracker microVMs.
E2B vs Daytona: pricing, isolation and limitsE2B and Daytona charge the same published rates, so one job costs the same on both.
E2B vs Fly Machines: pricing, isolation and limitsE2B is a sandbox API billed on allocated vCPUs and memory; a Fly Machine is a general-purpose VM billed by size.
E2B vs Fly Sprites: pricing, isolation and limitsBoth run Firecracker microVMs.
E2B vs Modal: pricing, isolation and limitsE2B isolates each sandbox in a Firecracker microVM and Modal uses gVisor.
E2B vs Morph: pricing, isolation and limitsE2B bills vCPUs and memory separately; Morph bills a machine in MCUs, $0.05 each an hour.
E2B vs Northflank: pricing, isolation and limitsBoth bill allocated vCPUs and memory, and Northflank's rates are lower on both: the same job costs $1.11 there and $2.76 on E2B.
E2B vs Runloop: pricing, isolation and limitsBoth run agent code in microVMs and bill for the whole run.
E2B vs Vercel Sandbox: pricing, isolation and limitsBoth run Firecracker microVMs.
Fly Machines vs Blaxel: pricing, idle costs and limitsA Fly Machine bills a fixed size while started; Blaxel bills memory with CPU included, and costs nothing for compute in standby.
Fly Machines vs CodeSandbox: pricing, isolation and limitsBoth sell fixed-size Firecracker VMs; 2 vCPU and 4 GB costs $0.0861 an hour on a Fly Machine and $0.1486 on a CodeSandbox Nano VM.
Fly Machines vs Morph: pricing, snapshots and limitsA Fly Machine bills a fixed size while started; Morph bills MCUs for a VM's size and can branch a running VM to many copies.
Fly Machines vs Northflank: pricing, isolation and limitsBoth bill the CPU and memory a VM holds while it runs; 2 vCPU and 4 GB costs $0.0861 an hour on Fly and $0.0667 on Northflank.
Fly Machines vs Runloop: pricing, devboxes and limitsA 2 CPU, 4 GB Runloop devbox costs $0.3195 an hour; a Fly Machine of that size costs $0.0861.
Fly Machines vs Sprites: which Fly.io product fits agent sandboxes?Sprites bill measured CPU and memory in use, and pause when idle; Machines bill their size while started, which is cheaper for 4 GB.
Fly Sprites vs Blaxel: pricing, standby and limitsBoth pause idle sandboxes by themselves.
Fly Sprites vs CodeSandbox: pricing, persistence and limitsSprites bill measured CPU and memory in use on a persistent VM; CodeSandbox bills a fixed VM size by the minute.
Fly Sprites vs Morph: pricing, snapshots and limitsSprites checkpoint a persistent VM's filesystem and bill measured use; Morph snapshots memory and disk and bills MCUs for a VM's size.
Fly Sprites vs Northflank: pricing, isolation and limitsSprites bill measured CPU and memory in use; Northflank bills allocated vCPUs and memory at lower rates, so it costs less here.
Fly Sprites vs Runloop: pricing, persistence and limitsSprites bill measured CPU and memory in use and pause themselves; Runloop bills a devbox's CPUs, memory and disk while it runs.
Modal vs Blaxel: pricing, isolation and limitsModal bills a sandbox's requested core and memory under gVisor; Blaxel bills memory only while active and nothing for compute in standby.
Modal vs Cloudflare Sandbox: pricing, isolation and limitsModal runs sandboxes under gVisor and bills requested CPU; Cloudflare runs a container in a VM from a Worker and bills active CPU.
Modal vs CodeSandbox: pricing, isolation and limitsModal runs sandboxes under gVisor, billed per second on the request; CodeSandbox runs Firecracker VMs in fixed sizes, billed by the minute.
Modal vs Fly Machines: pricing, isolation and limitsModal Sandboxes run under gVisor, billed per core-second; Fly Machines are Firecracker VMs billed by size while started.
Modal vs Fly Sprites: pricing, isolation and limitsModal bills requested CPU under gVisor; Fly Sprites bill CPU and memory as used, cheaper for idle agents, costlier for busy ones.
Modal vs Morph: pricing, isolation and snapshotsModal runs gVisor sandboxes billed on requested CPU; Morph runs full VMs billed in MCUs and can branch a running machine, memory included.
Modal vs Northflank: sandbox pricing, isolation and limitsModal isolates with gVisor and bills requested CPU; Northflank runs Kata or gVisor microVMs and bills allocated CPU at a lower rate.
Modal vs Runloop: pricing, isolation and suspendModal bills gVisor sandboxes on requested CPU; Runloop bills microVM devboxes on allocated CPU at higher rates and adds agent benchmarks.
Modal vs Vercel Sandbox: pricing, isolation and limitsModal isolates with gVisor and bills requested CPU; Vercel uses Firecracker and bills active CPU, which is cheaper for agents that wait.
Morph vs Northflank: pricing, isolation and limitsMorph bills a VM in MCUs for its largest need; Northflank bills each vCPU and GB apart.
Morph vs Runloop: pricing, isolation and limitsMorph bills a VM in MCUs and snapshots its memory; Runloop bills a devbox's CPU, memory and disk.
Northflank vs Runloop: pricing, isolation and limitsBoth bill allocated CPU and memory while a sandbox runs, at very different rates.
Vercel Sandbox vs Blaxel: pricing, standby and limitsVercel bills active CPU plus provisioned memory; Blaxel bills memory per active second with CPU included, and idles to standby for free.
Vercel Sandbox vs Cloudflare Sandbox: pricing, isolation and limitsBoth bill active CPU.
Vercel Sandbox vs CodeSandbox SDK: pricing, sizes and limitsBoth run Firecracker microVMs.
Vercel Sandbox vs Fly Machines: pricing, isolation and limitsBoth are Firecracker microVMs.
Vercel Sandbox vs Fly Sprites: pricing, memory and idle timeBoth bill measured CPU in Firecracker microVMs.
Vercel Sandbox vs Morph: pricing, snapshots and branchingVercel bills active CPU plus memory in Firecracker microVMs; Morph bills full VMs by size in MCUs and branches running machines with memory.
Vercel Sandbox vs Northflank: sandbox pricing, isolation and limitsVercel bills active CPU in Firecracker microVMs; Northflank bills allocated CPU in Kata or gVisor microVMs, at a much lower rate.
Vercel Sandbox vs Runloop: pricing, isolation and limitsVercel Sandbox bills active CPU and Runloop bills every CPU a devbox holds, so an agent that waits on a model costs less on Vercel.

Isolation and approaches

Can you run LLM code on AWS Lambda?Yes, for short stateless runs: a Lambda function stops at 15 minutes.
Cloud Hypervisor vs Firecracker: features, boot time and fitBoth are Rust VMMs on KVM; Firecracker keeps a minimal device set for serverless, Cloud Hypervisor adds Windows, VFIO and live migration.
Docker vs virtual machine: which should run untrusted code?A Docker container is an isolated process that shares the host's kernel; a virtual machine runs its own kernel behind a hypervisor.
Firecracker vs Docker: what is the difference?Docker runs containers that share the host's Linux kernel; Firecracker runs microVMs that each boot a Linux kernel of their own on KVM.
Firecracker vs gVisor: isolation, overhead and compatibilityFirecracker runs each workload in a microVM with its own Linux kernel; gVisor runs it on a user-space kernel that intercepts system calls.
GitHub Codespaces vs an agent sandbox: which one should run AI agents?Codespaces gives a person a cloud dev environment per repository; an agent sandbox gives code a machine it creates and drives by API.
gVisor vs Docker: is gVisor safer than a container?gVisor runs a container on a user-space kernel that answers its system calls, so they never go straight to the host kernel as in Docker.
Kata Containers vs Firecracker: what is the difference?Firecracker is a virtual machine monitor; Kata Containers is a container runtime that runs each pod in a VM and can use Firecracker for it.
Local Docker vs a cloud sandbox for running AI agent codeLocal Docker runs agent code on your own machine, beside your files and network; a cloud sandbox runs it on a throwaway microVM elsewhere.
MicroVM vs container: which isolates untrusted code better?A container shares the host's kernel; a microVM runs its own kernel behind hardware virtualization, so a kernel exploit stays inside it.
nsjail vs Firecracker: process jail or microVM for untrusted code?nsjail confines a process on the host kernel with namespaces, limits and seccomp; Firecracker gives code its own kernel in a KVM microVM.
Pyodide vs a server sandbox: can Pyodide run pip packages?Pyodide installs pure-Python wheels and packages built for it, without threads or subprocesses; a server sandbox runs any pip package.
QEMU vs Firecracker: what is the difference?QEMU emulates or virtualizes almost any machine; Firecracker is a small KVM monitor built only for minimal microVMs.
Self-host an agent sandbox or use a managed one?Self-hosting means running KVM hosts, a VM monitor, networking, egress control and abuse handling yourself; a managed sandbox is one call.
Unikernel vs microVM: what is the difference?A microVM is a minimal virtual machine that boots a normal kernel; a unikernel is one application built with only the OS parts it needs.
WebAssembly vs microVM: is Wasm safe enough for LLM code?WebAssembly isolates one compiled module inside a runtime; a microVM isolates a whole Linux machine behind hardware virtualization.