---
title: Self-hosted Firecracker
slug: diy-firecracker
url: "https://toolweight.com/tools/diy-firecracker"
homepage: "https://firecracker-microvm.github.io"
categories: sandbox-providers
last_verified: 2026-01-15
dataset_version: 0738be72
license: CC-BY-4.0
---

# Self-hosted Firecracker

> The baseline: Firecracker on your own metal, plus every hard part you now own.

- The microVM monitor underneath most of this roster; self-hosting on bare metal is the honest baseline
- You get 125 ms guest boots, total network control and compute at cost
- You also build snapshotting, pool warming, image distribution, multi-tenant scheduling, quotas and an API
- Which is why most 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 |
| Compared in | 1 |

## Where it is compared

### [Sandbox providers](https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers)
Ranked **#16 of 19** on default weights.
| Field | Value | Confidence | Verified | Source | Note | Permalink |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Cold start | 200ms | 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. | https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers#diy-firecracker--cold_start_measured |
| Cold start (claimed) | 125ms | Vendor-claimed | 2026-01-15 | https://firecracker-microvm.github.io | The canonical 125 ms boot figure from the Firecracker project. | https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers#diy-firecracker--cold_start_claimed |
| Isolation | microvm | Vendor-claimed | 2026-01-15 | https://firecracker-microvm.github.io | - | https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers#diy-firecracker--isolation_tech |
| Root in guest | ● | Inferred | - | - | - | https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers#diy-firecracker--root_access |
| Egress control | allowlist | Inferred | - | - | Your TAP devices, your nftables rules. Total control, total responsibility. | https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers#diy-firecracker--egress_control |
| Max runtime | 24h | Inferred | - | - | Whatever you decide. | https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers#diy-firecracker--max_runtime |
| Persistent FS | ● | Inferred | - | - | - | https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers#diy-firecracker--persistent_fs |
| 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. | https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers#diy-firecracker--snapshot_fork |
| Custom images | ● | Inferred | - | - | - | https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers#diy-firecracker--custom_images |
| GPU | ◐ | Inferred | - | - | Firecracker has no first-class GPU passthrough; you would use Cloud Hypervisor or plain KVM. | https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers#diy-firecracker--gpu |
| Runtimes | any-oci-image | Inferred | - | - | - | https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers#diy-firecracker--language_runtimes |
| Preview URLs | ○ | Inferred | - | - | You build the ingress. | https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers#diy-firecracker--preview_urls |
| Browser inside | ◐ | Inferred | - | - | - | https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers#diy-firecracker--browser_in_sandbox |
| File up/download | ○ | Inferred | - | - | You build it. | https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers#diy-firecracker--file_transfer_api |
| Sydney region | ● | Inferred | - | - | Wherever you rent metal. | https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers#diy-firecracker--sydney_region |
| Concurrent limit | 1,000 sandboxes | Inferred | - | - | Bounded by hardware; hundreds of microVMs per host is routine. | https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers#diy-firecracker--max_concurrency |
| MCP server | ○ | Inferred | - | - | - | https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers#diy-firecracker--mcp_server |
| SDKs | rest-api | Inferred | - | - | - | https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers#diy-firecracker--sdk_languages |
| Streaming output | ○ | Inferred | - | - | You build it. | https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers#diy-firecracker--streaming_stdout |
| 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. | https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers#diy-firecracker--price_per_hour |
| Meter | per-hour | Inferred | - | - | You rent the host, not the sandbox. | https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers#diy-firecracker--billing_granularity |
| Idle cost | full-rate | Inferred | - | - | The host bills whether or not a microVM is running on it. | https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers#diy-firecracker--idle_billing |
| GitHub stars | 27,000 | Community-reported | - | - | firecracker-microvm/firecracker, rounded. | https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers#diy-firecracker--github_stars |
| Funding | - | Inferred | - | - | - | https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers#diy-firecracker--funding_stage |
| Shipped | 2018 | Vendor-claimed | 2026-01-15 | https://firecracker-microvm.github.io | - | https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers#diy-firecracker--launched |
| Positioning | The microVM monitor underneath most of this roster, and none of the platform. | Inferred | - | - | - | https://toolweight.com/compare/sandbox-providers#diy-firecracker--positioning |

**Verdict.** The honest baseline: identical isolation at a tenth the cost, minus the two engineer-years of orchestration.

## Alternatives

- [Blaxel](https://toolweight.com/tools/blaxel), Agent-first cloud claiming ~25 ms microVM boots from snapshots.
- [boat](https://toolweight.com/tools/boat), Persistent Ubuntu VMs for agents with SSH, Docker and disk-level fork, billed per second.
- [Cloudflare Sandbox](https://toolweight.com/tools/cloudflare-sandbox), Container sandboxes driven from a Worker, addressed through Durable Objects.
- [CodeSandbox SDK](https://toolweight.com/tools/codesandbox-sdk), Firecracker VMs with memory snapshots, from the online IDE, now owned by Together AI.
- [Daytona](https://toolweight.com/tools/daytona), Sub-second container sandboxes for agent workloads, from a team that built a dev-env manager.
- [E2B](https://toolweight.com/tools/e2b), Open-source Firecracker sandboxes with Python and TypeScript SDKs for AI agents.
- [exe.dev](https://toolweight.com/tools/exe-dev), Persistent VMs you SSH into, with root, apt and systemd, on a flat monthly plan.
- [Fly.io Machines](https://toolweight.com/tools/fly-machines), Raw Firecracker microVMs with a REST API, durable volumes and 35+ regions.
- [Freestyle](https://toolweight.com/tools/freestyle), Run untrusted JavaScript and full dev servers, with git hosting and domains built in.
- [GitHub Codespaces](https://toolweight.com/tools/github-codespaces), Devcontainer-backed cloud VMs built for humans, occasionally repurposed for agents.
- [Islo](https://toolweight.com/tools/islo), Per-agent isolated cloud sandboxes with enterprise policy controls, from Incredibuild.
- [Modal](https://toolweight.com/tools/modal), Serverless Python compute with a Sandbox API bolted onto a GPU-first platform.

## 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/tools/diy-firecracker
- Machine-readable: https://toolweight.com/tools/diy-firecracker.md · https://toolweight.com/api/v1 · https://toolweight.com/mcp
- Toolweight takes no affiliate revenue and sells no placements.