# Celesto (formerly SmolVM) vs Freestyle (slim)

> Celesto scores 68 (B) to Freestyle's 59.6 (C) for code sandboxes. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/celesto-vs-freestyle.md (~4,500 tokens) · this version ~2,230 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/celesto-vs-freestyle.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/celesto-vs-freestyle
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Celesto (formerly SmolVM) scores 68 (B) on agent readiness against Freestyle's 59.6 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Both do code sandboxes.

- Celesto (formerly SmolVM): B 68, rank #298 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/celesto.min.md
- Freestyle: C 59.6, rank #693 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/freestyle.min.md
- Celesto (formerly SmolVM), good for Local microVM sandboxes for agent code, browsers and desktops on Linux and macOS, with a path to a hosted cloud. Ahead on Reliability, 66 against 47; Payments & pricing, 60 against 45; Maintenance & community, 81 against 71; Transparency & trust, 70 against 44. Also No key needed to call it; Open source.
- Freestyle, good for Suited to long-running agent work that needs a full Linux VM, memory-preserving pause, snapshots to branch from and private networking. Also A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install.

| Category | Celesto (formerly SmolVM) | Freestyle |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 66 | 47 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 85 | 86 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 69 | 69 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 52 | 53 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 60 | 45 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 81 | 71 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 70 | 44 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Celesto (formerly SmolVM) | Freestyle |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | SDK + MCP | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Celesto AI, Inc. | Freestyle Cloud Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.freestyle.sh/v5` |
| Transports |  | HTTP |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Proprietary service with no published terms of service found. The `freestyle` SDK and CLI package on npm is MIT |
| Last release | 2026-11-05 | 2026-09-27 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-10-30 | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-10-30 | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not read yet |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not read yet |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | not read yet |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not read yet |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not read yet |
| Popularity | 1.1k stars, 699 PyPI/wk | 72k npm/wk |

Why the edge:
- Transparency & trust, Celesto (formerly SmolVM) +26: Celesto (formerly SmolVM) 70 (Apache-2.0 in LICENSE and on PyPI (30). The privacy policy of 30 October 2026 links a subprocessor registry and describes the CLI telemetry in the same terms as the docs, but gives no retention periods beyond as long as necessary. Stopped cloud disks are kept 30 days per the pricing page (18 of 30). The changelog marks removals and the breaking rename, and the glossary lists older names still accepted, with no written deprecation policy (10 of 20). Telemetry is disclosed in the README, CLI reference and privacy policy, with three opt-outs, but it is on by default after the notice (16 of 20). Total 74.); Freestyle 44 (The platform is closed. The SDK and CLI are MIT on npm, and no terms of service or service agreement was found on www.freestyle.sh (`/terms`, `/tos` and `/legal` still answer 404 on 4 November), so the terms of use are unclear (8 of 30). The privacy policy, last updated 15 June 2025, covers the website only, and no DPA, retention period or statement on customer VM data was found (3 of 30). The 9 September 2026 changelog deprecates the Git, code execution, web deployment and scheduled trigger APIs, and the OpenAPI file marks every unversioned route deprecated, in both cases without a removal date (6 of 20). The privacy policy names Google Analytics and PostHog for the website. No sub-processor list or data location for VMs was found (3 of 20). 8 + 3 + 6 + 3 = 20.)
- Reliability, Celesto (formerly SmolVM) +19: Celesto (formerly SmolVM) 66 (Read with the local-software lines, because the graded surface runs on the owner's machine. Installs from PyPI as `celesto` with Python 3.11 or newer on Linux and macOS stated, plus an install script (20). The repository has pytest, e2e, lint, TypeScript and smoke-test workflows and 38 test packages, but GitHub's API answered with a rate limit, so no run result was read (15 of 25, unchecked). 22 open issues and pull requests against about 188 commits in 90 days. The open bugs include a snapshot restore that can lose a VM's disk if interrupted and a thread-safety issue with five replies (18 of 25). A dated changelog with Security, Fixed, Added and Removed sections, and the rename to Celesto marked as a breaking release, though versions stay below 1.0 (13 of 15). Pre-1.0 per SECURITY.md (0). Total 66.); Freestyle 47 (Graded on the hosted lines. www.freestyle.sh/status is the vendor's own page with three components (Freestyle VMs, API, Dashboard), all operational, last updated 25 October 2026 on 4 November, with no incident list or component history (10 of 20). No readable history (5). Plan limits are published with numbers (10, 40 and 400 concurrent VMs, per-VM and total resource budgets), but no request rate limit for the API was found in the reviewed documentation (5 of 15). The OpenAPI file documents 429 `LIMIT_EXCEEDED` on VM creation and resize and marks which 409s are safe to retry, per the 8 October check (the file wasn't re-read on 4 November), resumable uploads take retryable chunks, and the SDK's terminal sessions reconnect with exponential backoff and jitter without rerunning a command. No Retry-After header or idempotency keys found. That is safe-retry guidance without idempotency keys, 12 in this run, where 8 was given on 8 October (12 of 15). The pricing page lists a 99.99% SLA for Enterprise with no SLA document published (5 of 10). The API is served under `/v5` with no beta label (10). 10 + 5 + 5 + 12 + 5 + 10 = 47.)
- Payments & pricing, Celesto (formerly SmolVM) +15: Celesto (formerly SmolVM) 60 (Read with the self-hosted rule, scoring the hosted option for the price lines. No x402, MPP or L402 (0 of 40). Celesto Cloud publishes hourly prices for six sizes without a login (20). A one-time $5 Micro credit needs no card, and the local SDK is free (20). The graded local SDK installs from PyPI and runs with no account, so an agent needs no signup (20). Cloud use needs a browser signup and a card top-up. Total 60.); Freestyle 45 (No x402, MPP or L402 found in the docs, the OpenAPI file or the pricing page (0). Per-unit prices are public, $0.04032 a vCPU-hour, $0.0129 a GiB-hour of memory, $0.000086 a GiB-hour of storage and $0.02 a GB of data transfer (20). The Free plan costs $0 with 200 vCPU-hours and 400 GiB-hours of memory a month and needs no card (20). A person has to sign in through a browser first. After that an agent can mint its own key with `freestyle tokens create --output json`, so 5 of 20 (5). Pricing re-read on 4 November, unchanged. 0 + 20 + 20 + 5 = 45.)
- Maintenance & community, Celesto (formerly SmolVM) +10: Celesto (formerly SmolVM) 81 (0.1.13 on PyPI on 5 November 2026, tagged 6 November (30). 22 PyPI releases in the 90 days to 6 November (20). Most open issues are filed by maintainers. Outside reports such as the thread-safety issue got replies, and several recent ones have none yet; pull-request reply times were not read (15 of 25). The Python SDK is current, the TypeScript SDK is an alpha not published to npm (8 of 15). uv and Cargo lock files, CodeQL and publish workflows, with run results unread (8 of 10). Total 81.); Freestyle 71 (The newest dated change is the 14 October 2026 changelog entry (browser terminals, expiring identity tokens, 24-hour commands, scoped S3 access), 21 days before this check. `freestyle` 0.2.16 was published to npm on 27 September 2026, per the 8 October check (30). 25 npm versions between 13 August and 27 September 2026 per the 8 October check, and changelog entries on 9 September and 14 October, all inside the 90 days from 6 August. npm couldn't be re-read on 4 November (20). Closed service with a public changelog of four entries in 2026 and a Discord server, whose response times we did not check (8 of 15). One current official SDK, TypeScript, with the CLI in the same package (10 of 15). The package has three dependencies and no `repository` field, and no public CI was found, per the 8 October check (3 of 10). 30 + 20 + 8 + 10 + 3 = 71.)