E2B

E2B — Open-source Firecracker sandboxes with Python and TypeScript SDKs for AI agents. E2B was the first company to sell sandboxes specifically to people building AI agents, and it is still the reference implementation. Sandboxes are Firecracker microVMs defined by a Dockerfile-based template system, driven by first-class Python and TypeScript SDKs. The core infrastructure is Apache-licensed and self-hostable, which makes it the only major option here with a credible exit path. Founded 2023. Series A. Open source under Apache-2.0.

We track it in 1 comparison — Sandbox providers — so every claim below is a cell in a table you can open and check rather than an impression. Across those rosters it sits against 19 other tools, and what follows is where it visibly separates from them.

Where it wins.

• Cold start — 400 ms, 5th of 16.
• Browser inside — Yes, and it is the only one of 16 here that manages it.

Each of those is ranked against the whole roster on its category page, not against a hand-picked subset, so a first place here means first of everything we list.

Where it gives ground.

• Egress control — open, 13th of 16. Daytona records allowlist.
• GitHub stars — 9,000, the weakest of the 3 here. Self-hosted Firecracker records 27,000.

None of these disqualify it on their own. They are the fields to check against your own requirements before you commit, because they are the ones where a competitor genuinely does better.

Provenance. 26 of 26 tracked fields carry a value for E2B, and 11 of those cite a document you can open. Last verified 2026-07-23. Every figure keeps its own provenance — measured by us, claimed by the vendor, inferred, or community-reported — and we would rather print a dash than a guess.

Its nearest neighbour in our data is ascii. E2B is ahead on Meter (per-second against subscription) and Custom images (Yes against Partial). That pattern repeats across the rest of the roster — see E2B alternatives for the other rivals, each compared the same way.

Founded

2023

Funding

Series A

Licence

Apache-2.0 (open source)

Fields we track

26 of 26

Last verified

2026-07-23

Still the safest default: the SDKs are the most complete, templates are just Dockerfiles, and the Apache licence means a bad pricing decision by E2B is an inconvenience rather than a migration. It is no longer the fastest, and the monthly base fee makes it a poor fit for hobby-scale traffic.

Cold start

400 ms5th of 16

Inferred

Egress control

open13th of 16

Inferred

Price / hour

$0.17 /hr4th of 9

Inferred

Browser inside

●Yes1st of 16

Vendor-claimedverified 2026-01-15source

Isolation

microvm1st of 16

Vendor-claimedverified 2026-01-15source

Custom images

●Yes1st of 20

Vendor-claimedverified 2026-01-15source

Streaming output

●Yes1st of 16

Vendor-claimedverified 2026-01-15source

Max runtime

1440 min1st of 16

Vendor-claimedverified 2026-01-15source

E2B is the right call in these situations, each one drawn from a field we actually record:

• You want the category default with a real self-host escape hatch.
• Your environments are already Dockerfiles.
• Python code-interpreter workloads at steady volume.
• Cold start is your binding constraint. E2B records 400 ms, 5th of 16 in the Sandbox providers roster. We define that field as p50 wall-clock from a single client in a fixed region calling create-sandbox on an account with nothing running, until a trivial command returns output.
• Browser inside is your binding constraint. E2B records Yes, which only 1 of the 16 tools in the Sandbox providers roster do. We define that field as whether the vendor ships a supported image with a headless or streamed browser and a CDP endpoint.

Reach for something else when any of the following is a requirement rather than a nice-to-have:

• Egress control. E2B records open, 13th of 16 in the Sandbox providers roster. Daytona records allowlist on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.
• GitHub stars. E2B records 9,000, the weakest of the 3 tools in the Sandbox providers roster. Self-hosted Firecracker records 27,000 on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.

We publish this block because a comparison that only lists what a tool is good at is marketing. Every figure above sits on the same page as its source, and the field definitions are on the category tables if you want to check how we measured them.

What we don't know. Nothing, on the fields we track: all 26 of them carry a value for E2B. That is unusual and it will decay — vendors add dimensions faster than we add columns — so the verification dates beside each figure matter more than the completeness does.