--- title: Self-hosted Firecracker slug: diy-firecracker url: "https://toolweight.com/options/diy-firecracker" homepage: "https://firecracker-microvm.github.io" categories: sandbox-providers last_verified: 2026-01-15 license: CC-BY-4.0 --- # Self-hosted Firecracker > The baseline: Firecracker on your own metal, plus every hard part you now own. Firecracker is the microVM monitor underneath most of this roster, and running it yourself on bare metal is the honest baseline every vendor should be measured against. You get 125 ms guest boots, total network control and compute at cost. You also get to build snapshotting, pool warming, image distribution, multi-tenant scheduling, quota enforcement and an API, which is why most of the companies on this page exist. ## Identity | | | | --- | --- | | Name | Self-hosted Firecracker | | Company | Self-hosted Firecracker | | One-liner | The baseline: Firecracker on your own metal, plus every hard part you now own. | | Site | https://firecracker-microvm.github.io | | Docs | https://github.com/firecracker-microvm/firecracker/tree/main/docs | | Repo | https://github.com/firecracker-microvm/firecracker | | Founded | 2018 | | Open source | Yes | | Licence | Apache-2.0 | | Brand | https://toolweight.com/vendors/Firecracker | | Compared in | 1 | ## Where it is compared ### [Sandbox providers](https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers) Ranked **#17 of 20** on default weights. | Field | Value | Confidence | Verified | Source | Note | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Cold start | 200 ms | Inferred | - | - | Guest boot is about 125 ms on decent metal; add your own API and scheduler. This is the floor every vendor here is measured against, and it assumes you have already built pool warming. | | Cold start (claimed) | 125 ms | Vendor-claimed | 2026-01-15 | https://firecracker-microvm.github.io | The canonical 125 ms boot figure from the Firecracker project. | | Isolation | microvm | Vendor-claimed | 2026-01-15 | https://firecracker-microvm.github.io | - | | Root in guest | ● | Inferred | - | - | - | | Egress control | allowlist | Inferred | - | - | Your TAP devices, your nftables rules. Total control, total responsibility. | | Max runtime | 1440 min | Inferred | - | - | Whatever you decide. | | Persistent FS | ● | Inferred | - | - | - | | Snapshot & fork | ◐ | Inferred | - | - | Firecracker supports snapshot and restore, but productionising it, page cache, clock skew, unique IDs, network reattachment, is exactly the hard part vendors sell. | | Custom images | ● | Inferred | - | - | - | | GPU | ◐ | Inferred | - | - | Firecracker has no first-class GPU passthrough; you would use Cloud Hypervisor or plain KVM. | | Runtimes | any-oci-image | Inferred | - | - | - | | Preview URLs | ○ | Inferred | - | - | You build the ingress. | | Browser inside | ◐ | Inferred | - | - | - | | File up/download | ○ | Inferred | - | - | You build it. | | Sydney region | ● | Inferred | - | - | Wherever you rent metal. | | Concurrent limit | 1,000 sandboxes | Inferred | - | - | Bounded by hardware; hundreds of microVMs per host is routine. | | MCP server | ○ | Inferred | - | - | - | | SDKs | rest-api | Inferred | - | - | - | | Streaming output | ○ | Inferred | - | - | You build it. | | Price / hour | $0.03 /hr | Inferred | - | - | Approximate cost of 2 vCPU + 4 GB amortised across a rented bare-metal host at around 60% utilisation. Excludes the engineer maintaining it, which is the real number. | | Meter | per-hour | Inferred | - | - | You rent the host, not the sandbox. | | Idle cost | full-rate | Inferred | - | - | The host bills whether or not a microVM is running on it. | | GitHub stars | 27,000 | Community-reported | - | - | firecracker-microvm/firecracker, rounded. | | Funding | - | Inferred | - | - | - | | Shipped | 2018 | Vendor-claimed | 2026-01-15 | https://firecracker-microvm.github.io | - | | Positioning | The microVM monitor underneath most of this roster, and none of the platform. | Inferred | - | - | - | **Verdict.** The honest baseline. Compute is roughly a tenth of vendor pricing and the isolation is identical, because it is literally the same hypervisor. What you buy from everyone else is snapshot orchestration, pool warming, image distribution and multi-tenant quota enforcement, comfortably two engineer-years. ## Alternatives - [ascii](https://toolweight.com/options/ascii), Agent orchestration over Telegram, running on box's VM infrastructure. - [Blaxel](https://toolweight.com/options/blaxel), Agent-first cloud claiming ~25 ms microVM boots from snapshots. - [box](https://toolweight.com/options/box), Persistent Linux VMs with SSH, per-VM IPv4 and disk-level forking, priced flat. - [Cloudflare Sandbox](https://toolweight.com/options/cloudflare-sandbox), Container sandboxes driven from a Worker, addressed through Durable Objects. - [CodeSandbox SDK](https://toolweight.com/options/codesandbox-sdk), Firecracker VMs with memory snapshots, from the online IDE, now owned by Together AI. - [Daytona](https://toolweight.com/options/daytona), Sub-second container sandboxes for agent workloads, from a team that built a dev-env manager. - [E2B](https://toolweight.com/options/e2b), Open-source Firecracker sandboxes with Python and TypeScript SDKs for AI agents. - [exe.dev](https://toolweight.com/options/exe-dev), Persistent VMs you SSH into, with root, apt and systemd, on a flat monthly plan. - [Fly.io Machines](https://toolweight.com/options/fly-machines), Raw Firecracker microVMs with a REST API, durable volumes and 35+ regions. - [Freestyle](https://toolweight.com/options/freestyle), Run untrusted JavaScript and full dev servers, with git hosting and domains built in. - [GitHub Codespaces](https://toolweight.com/options/github-codespaces), Devcontainer-backed cloud VMs built for humans, occasionally repurposed for agents. - [Islo](https://toolweight.com/options/islo), Per-agent isolated cloud sandboxes with enterprise policy controls, from Incredibuild. ## Licence and attribution Data from toolweight (https://toolweight.com), licensed CC-BY-4.0. - Licence: [CC-BY-4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) - Canonical HTML: https://toolweight.com/options/diy-firecracker - Machine-readable: https://toolweight.com/options/diy-firecracker.md · https://toolweight.com/api/v1 · https://toolweight.com/mcp - toolweight takes no affiliate revenue and sells no placements. 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