E2B vs Daytona: pricing, isolation and limits

E2B and Daytona charge the same published rates, so one job costs the same on both. They differ in isolation, plans and limits.

On price the two tie, and Runtime undercuts both by 77%. A batch of 1,000 one-minute runs on a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox comes to $2.76 whichever of the two you pick, and to $0.64 on Runtime. The gap is the billing basis: E2B and Daytona charge for both vCPUs for the whole minute, while Runtime charges for the CPU the code actually burns. Rates checked 23 September 2026.

At a glance

	E2B	Daytona	Runtime
Isolation	Firecracker microVM, own kernel	Containers by default; VM sandboxes as a separate class	Firecracker microVM, own kernel, every sandbox
CPU	$0.0504 per allocated vCPU-hour	$0.0504 per allocated vCPU-hour	$0.025 per vCPU-hour of measured CPU, with a small floor
Memory	$0.0162 per GiB-hour	$0.0162 per GiB-hour	$0.0075 per reserved GiB-hour
Disk	Included, no separate charge	First 5 GiB free, then $0.000108 per GiB-hour	Included while running; paused storage $0.08 per GB-month
Plan fee	Hobby $0; Pro $150 a month	None published	None; prepaid credit from $10
Free start	$100 of usage credit	$200 of compute	50 sandbox hours, no card
Session length	1 hour on Hobby, 24 hours on Pro	Stops after 15 idle minutes by default	Leases of up to an hour, extended as often as needed
Pause	Files, memory and processes	Files and memory on VM sandboxes	Files, memory and processes, every sandbox
Agent sign-in	API key	API key	Browser approval; no key in the agent's config

If the rates match, what actually separates them?

Four things, none of them the per-hour price.

• The boundary around the code. Every E2B sandbox is a Firecracker microVM with its own kernel. Daytona hands out containers unless you ask for its VM class, a separate kind of sandbox.
• How long a session may run. E2B's free Hobby tier caps a sandbox at one hour; 24 hours needs Pro at $150 a month. Daytona publishes no plan fee and instead stops a sandbox after 15 idle minutes unless you change it.
• What a pause keeps. E2B keeps files, memory and running processes. Daytona keeps files and memory, and only on its VM sandboxes.
• Disk. E2B folds disk into the price. Daytona gives 5 GiB free and meters the rest by the GiB-hour.

The free start also differs: $100 of credit on E2B against $200 of compute on Daytona.

Cost for the same job

The workload: 1,000 runs, each on a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB sandbox for 60 seconds, of which the code keeps a CPU busy for 20 CPU-seconds. That is the shape of an agent loop that spends most of its time waiting on model replies.

TextE2B      CPU    1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 2 × $0.0504 = $1.68         Memory 1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 4 × $0.0162 = $1.08         Total                                        $2.76Daytona  CPU    1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 2 × $0.0504 = $1.68         Memory 1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 4 × $0.0162 = $1.08         Total                                        $2.76Runtime  CPU    1,000 × 20 s / 3,600 × $0.025      = $0.14         Memory 1,000 × 60 s / 3,600 × 4 × $0.0075 = $0.50         Total                                        $0.64

The two rival entries are line for line identical, which is the point: moving between E2B and Daytona saves nothing on compute. Scaled to 100,000 runs a month, either one bills $276.00 and Runtime $63.89. Push the load up so both CPUs are busy for the whole minute and the figures become $1.33 on Runtime, $2.76 on E2B and $2.76 on Daytona. The two rival totals do not move, because they already charged for full use. Plan fees, disk, network and free credit are outside these sums.

Which one to pick

You need	Best fit
A microVM for every sandbox and a self-hosted option	E2B
GPU sandboxes or Windows machines	Daytona
The biggest free start of the two	Daytona
E2B-grade isolation at under a quarter of the price	Runtime

E2B's runtime is Apache-2.0, so a team can run it on its own hardware; past an hour per session it needs the Pro plan. Runtime keeps memory and processes on every pause with no plan fee, and an agent signs in by browser approval instead of holding an API key.

Moving off E2B or Daytona

Both SDKs have a drop-in on Runtime, so the first step is one import line:

TypeScriptimport { Sandbox } from "withruntime/e2b"; // was: from "e2b"import { Daytona } from "withruntime/daytona"; // was: from "@daytona/sdk"

Pythonfrom withruntime.e2b import Sandbox  # was: from e2b import Sandboxfrom withruntime.daytona import Daytona  # was: from daytona import Daytona

If you would rather not edit by hand, migration has a single instruction for a coding agent, which does the swap on a branch, runs it on the free trial and tells you the monthly difference. For every call and limit, read Runtime vs E2B or Runtime vs Daytona.

Sources

E2B and Daytona pricing pages rechecked 24 September 2026; the rest checked 23 September 2026.

• E2B pricing, E2B sandbox persistence
• Daytona pricing, Daytona sandboxes
• Runtime pricing