---
title: exe.dev
slug: exe-dev
url: "https://toolweight.com/options/exe-dev"
homepage: "https://exe.dev"
categories: sandbox-providers
last_verified: 2026-07-23
license: CC-BY-4.0
---

# exe.dev

> Persistent VMs you SSH into, with root, apt and systemd, on a flat monthly plan.

exe.dev sells long-lived Linux VMs driven over SSH, with root, a public hostname and a flat monthly plan rather than a per-second meter. It is on this page because a competitor's comparison table lists it: BYO repos with a setup script, SSH, Docker inside the guest, no session cap and flat pricing, and, per that same chart, no snapshot or fork story and no dedicated IPv4. toolweight has verified none of those rows, and the absences in particular are a rival's characterisation rather than a checked fact.

## Identity

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| Name | exe.dev |
| Company | exe.dev |
| One-liner | Persistent VMs you SSH into, with root, apt and systemd, on a flat monthly plan. |
| Site | https://exe.dev |
| Docs | https://exe.dev/sandbox |
| Compared in | 1 |

## Where it is compared

### [Sandbox providers](https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers)
Ranked **#12 of 20** on default weights.
| Field | Value | Confidence | Verified | Source | Note |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Cold start | - | Unknown | - | - | toolweight has not measured exe.dev, and the comparison table it appears in publishes no boot figure for it. |
| Cold start (claimed) | - | Unknown | - | - | Absent from the "<500ms time to VM-ready" row of a competitor's table, which is not the same as exe.dev claiming anything either way. |
| Isolation | - | Unknown | - | - | The table claims Docker inside the VM but names no hypervisor or isolation technology. |
| Root in guest | ● | Inferred | 2026-07-23 | https://box.ascii.dev/compare | Derived from the "Docker inside the VM" row: a Docker daemon in the guest implies root. The table claims Docker, not root. Transcribed from box's comparison table, a competitor's chart, not exe.dev's own documentation, and not verified by toolweight. |
| Egress control | - | Unknown | - | - | The table covers what the network can reach, not what the platform can restrict. |
| Max runtime | - | Unknown | - | - | The "No session cap / runs 24/7" row is a marketing statement in a competitor's chart, not a runtime ceiling exe.dev publishes. Left unknown rather than awarded this page's 24 h maximum. |
| Persistent FS | - | Unknown | - | - | Not a row in the table. |
| Snapshot & fork | - | Unknown | - | - | exe.dev is absent from both the "Fast disk snapshots / branching" and "Process fork" rows. A rival declining to tick a box for a competitor is not the table addressing the field, so this is recorded as nothing rather than as a no, the previous "no" scored exe.dev zero on a weight-8 field (10 under the agentic preset) on a competitor's say-so. Note the asymmetry, which is deliberate: box's and ascii's own absence from the process-fork row is credited, because a vendor conceding a gap in its own product is evidence and a vendor asserting a gap in someone else's is not. |
| Custom images | ◐ | Inferred | 2026-07-23 | https://box.ascii.dev/compare | Derived from "BYO repos + arbitrary setup script", a base extended by a setup script, this field's partial. The mapping is ours. From a competitor's table, unverified. |
| GPU | - | Unknown | - | - | Not a row in the table. |
| Runtimes | - | Unknown | - | - | Not a row in the table. |
| Preview URLs | - | Unknown | - | - | exe.dev is absent from the "Dedicated IPv4 per VM" and "Full TCP/UDP + BYO domain" rows, but neither row is about first-party preview URLs, so the table settles nothing here. |
| Browser inside | - | Unknown | - | - | Not a row in the table. |
| File up/download | ◐ | Inferred | 2026-07-23 | https://box.ascii.dev/compare | Derived from the "SSH access" row: scp and sftp follow from SSH, and CLI-only access is this field's partial. No first-party file API is described. Competitor's table, unverified. |
| Sydney region | - | Unknown | - | - | The table says nothing about regions. |
| Concurrent limit | - | Unknown | - | - | Absent from the "1000+ concurrent VMs ergonomically" row; no figure is given. |
| MCP server | - | Unknown | - | - | Not a row in the table. |
| SDKs | - | Unknown | - | - | Not a row in the table. |
| Streaming output | - | Unknown | - | - | Not a row in the table. |
| Price / hour | - | Unknown | - | - | The table records only that pricing is flat, not what it costs. No rate for a comparable vCPU/RAM shape has been verified. |
| Meter | subscription | Inferred | 2026-07-23 | https://box.ascii.dev/compare | Derived from the "Flat pricing" row and mapped to subscription because that is this field's option for a flat fee rather than a meter. Competitor's table, unverified. |
| Idle cost | - | Unknown | - | - | Not a row in the table. |
| GitHub stars | - | Unknown | - | - | - |
| Funding | - | Unknown | - | - | - |
| Shipped | - | Unknown | - | - | - |
| Positioning | Modern VMs you SSH into, with root, apt and systemd, on a flat monthly plan. | Vendor-claimed | 2026-07-23 | https://exe.dev | Paraphrased from exe.dev's own site. The capability cells on this row, unlike this one, come from a competitor's comparison table. |

**Verdict.** Present on this page only because a competitor put it there, and every capability cell reflects that: box's table credits exe.dev with BYO repos and a setup script, SSH, Docker in the guest, 24/7 VMs and flat pricing, and omits it from the rows for snapshots, forking, a dedicated IPv4 and BYO domains. The positive claims are believable precisely because they come from a rival, and they are recorded. The omissions are not: a competitor declining to tick a box is not evidence that the box is empty, so exe.dev's snapshot-and-fork cell is unknown here rather than a zero, and the 24/7 row buys it no runtime ceiling. Nothing on this row is measured, and no price, boot time or isolation detail is established at all, treat it as a placeholder until it can be sourced from exe.dev directly.

## 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.
- [Self-hosted Firecracker](https://toolweight.com/options/diy-firecracker), The baseline: Firecracker on your own metal, plus every hard part you now own.
- [E2B](https://toolweight.com/options/e2b), Open-source Firecracker sandboxes with Python and TypeScript SDKs for AI agents.
- [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/exe-dev
- Machine-readable: https://toolweight.com/options/exe-dev.md · https://toolweight.com/api/v1 · https://toolweight.com/mcp
- toolweight takes no affiliate revenue and sells no placements. Corrections: https://toolweight.com/suggest