# Blaxel Sandboxes vs Freestyle

> Blaxel Sandboxes scores 60.7 (C) on agent readiness against Freestyle's 58.5 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Freestyle leads on reliability, schema & documentation and payments & pricing. Both do sandbox code. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by…

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blaxel-sandboxes-vs-freestyle
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blaxel-sandboxes-vs-freestyle.md (~2,500 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blaxel-sandboxes-vs-freestyle.min.md (~630 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blaxel-sandboxes-vs-freestyle.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-09

Blaxel Sandboxes scores 60.7 (C) on agent readiness against Freestyle's 58.5 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Freestyle leads on reliability, schema & documentation and payments & pricing. Both do sandbox code.

- Blaxel Sandboxes: grade C, 60.7/100, rank #450 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/blaxel-sandboxes.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/blaxel-sandboxes.json
- Freestyle: grade C, 58.5/100, rank #520 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/freestyle.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/freestyle.json

## Which one, for what

### Blaxel Sandboxes (C)

Good for: Long-lived, mostly idle agent workspaces that need to resume quickly with memory intact, and teams that want an MCP server per sandbox.

Ahead on:
- Security & auth, 64 against 53
- Maintenance & community, 85 against 71
- Transparency & trust, 65 against 41

Watch for: 25 status-page incidents from 9 July to 1 October 2026, three of them sandbox outages over an hour

### Freestyle (C)

Good for: Suited to long-running agent work that needs a full Linux VM, memory-preserving pause, snapshots to branch from and private networking.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 43 against 35
- Schema & documentation, 86 against 80
- Payments & pricing, 45 against 40

Also in its favour:
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: No terms of service or service agreement found on the site, and the privacy policy covers the website only


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Blaxel Sandboxes | Freestyle | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 35 | 43 | Freestyle +8 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 86 | Freestyle +6 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 70 | 69 | Blaxel Sandboxes +1 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 64 | 53 | Blaxel Sandboxes +11 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 45 | Freestyle +5 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 85 | 71 | Blaxel Sandboxes +14 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 65 | 41 | Blaxel Sandboxes +24 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **60.7 · C** | **58.5 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Blaxel Sandboxes | Freestyle |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Blaxel | Freestyle Cloud Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.blaxel.ai/v0` | `https://api.freestyle.sh/v5` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | Proprietary service with no published terms of service found. The `freestyle` SDK and CLI package on npm is MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-30 | 2026-09-27 |
| Terms last updated |  | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models |  |  |
| Terms restrict automated access |  |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  |  |
| Popularity | 27 stars, 353k npm/wk, 75k PyPI/wk | 72k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2/5 (2) | none |

## Verdicts

**Blaxel Sandboxes.** No compute charge in standby, only $0.20 a GB-month of snapshot storage. 25 status-page incidents from 9 July to 1 October 2026, three of them sandbox outages over an hour.

**Freestyle.** A public OpenAPI 3.1 file describes 88 operations with a stable error code on every failure, and per-VM identity tokens keep the team API key away from end users. No terms of service, product privacy policy, request rate limit or incident history was found, and the only SDK is TypeScript.

## Before you call either

### Blaxel Sandboxes

1. Close WebSocket and terminal connections when done. An open connection keeps the sandbox active and billed
2. Set a TTL or idle expiry on throwaway sandboxes. The default is to keep them
3. Set `forbiddenDomains` or an allow list at creation, with `network.firewall` for tools that ignore proxy settings. Both can only be set when the sandbox is created
4. Retry only on WORKLOAD_UNAVAILABLE. The error reference says other codes won't succeed on retry
5. Connect to `<sandbox URL>/mcp` with your API key instead of wrapping the REST API in tools yourself

### Freestyle

1. Send a `firewall` object on every `POST /v5/vms`. It is required, and a VM with no rules has no outbound internet
2. Ask the owner to run `freestyle login` in a browser once, then mint a key with `freestyle tokens create --output json`
3. Do not retry an exec that answers 409 `VM_NON_RESPONSIVE`. The command may already have run
4. Keep `exec-await` under its 300,000 ms cap and use a PTY session or `x-freestyle-background-after-secs` for longer work
5. Call the `/v5` paths. The unversioned duplicates in the OpenAPI file are marked deprecated

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Blaxel Sandboxes or Freestyle?

Blaxel Sandboxes scores 60.7 (C) on agent readiness against Freestyle's 58.5 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Freestyle leads on reliability, schema & documentation and payments & pricing.

### Do Blaxel Sandboxes and Freestyle need an API key?

Blaxel Sandboxes takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Freestyle needs an API key.

### Can an agent call Blaxel Sandboxes and Freestyle without installing anything?

Yes. Blaxel Sandboxes has a hosted endpoint at https://api.blaxel.ai/v0 and Freestyle at https://api.freestyle.sh/v5.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blaxel-sandboxes-vs-freestyle.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blaxel-sandboxes-vs-freestyle.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "blaxel-sandboxes", "b": "freestyle"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare blaxel-sandboxes freestyle`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/blaxel-sandboxes.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/freestyle.json

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- [Freestyle vs Modal Sandboxes](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/freestyle-vs-modal-sandboxes.md)
- [Freestyle vs Morph Cloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/freestyle-vs-morph-cloud.md)
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