Head to head · Sandbox code · October 2026 research run
Cloudflare Sandbox SDK vs E2B
E2B has a score of 68.5 (B) against Cloudflare Sandbox SDK's 67.8 (B). Both do sandbox code. The largest gap is reliability, 27 points.
Which one, for what
Pick Cloudflare Sandbox SDK for
- reliability (+27)
Pick E2B for
- schema & documentation (+15)
- payments & pricing (+20)
- maintenance & community (+18)
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Cloudflare Sandbox SDK | E2B | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 87 | 60 | Cloudflare Sandbox SDK +27 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 77 | 92 | E2B +15 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 63 | 65 | E2B +2 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 65 | 62 | Cloudflare Sandbox SDK +3 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 30 | 50 | E2B +20 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 70 | 88 | E2B +18 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 73 | 71 | Cloudflare Sandbox SDK +2 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 67.8 · B | 68.5 · B |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Cloudflare Sandbox SDK | E2B |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | SDK + MCP | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Cloudflare | E2B |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | https://api.e2b.app |
| Transports | HTTP | |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Pricing | Paid | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | none | none |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-30 | 2026-10-01 |
| Popularity | 1.1k stars, 723k npm/wk | 13k stars, 2.2M npm/wk, 1.4M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | 3/5 (2) |
Verdicts
Cloudflare Sandbox SDK
Each sandbox runs in its own VM with a separate filesystem, process space and network stack. No hosted API. You deploy and secure a Worker before an agent can call anything, and the starter has no auth.
E2B
Firecracker microVM with its own kernel per sandbox. Two major incidents over an hour in September 2026, on sandbox creation and on creating from snapshots.
Before you call either
Cloudflare Sandbox SDK
- Derive the sandbox ID from the authenticated user, as the docs advise. IDs aren't secrets
- Put API keys in an outbound handler in the Worker, not in the container's environment
- Set
enableInternet = falseor anallowedHostslist before running untrusted code. Internet access is on by default - Check that a restored backup has every directory you expect. Backups of 10 MB or more have open bugs
- Start new projects on 1.0. The 0.x library only gets fixes until 31 December 2026
E2B
- Set a timeout when you create a sandbox. The default is 5 minutes
- Pause rather than kill when you'll come back. Resume takes about a second and nothing is billed while paused
- Use
Secret.fillin network transforms instead of passing API keys into the sandbox environment - Pace sandbox creation. Hobby allows 1 a second and 20 running at once
- Move to the v2 sandbox endpoints. SDK 2.51.0 and later use them by default
Other comparisons with Cloudflare Sandbox SDK or E2B
- Blaxel Sandboxes vs Cloudflare Sandbox SDK
- Blaxel Sandboxes vs E2B
- Cloudflare Sandbox SDK vs Daytona
- Cloudflare Sandbox SDK vs Modal Sandboxes
- Cloudflare Sandbox SDK vs Runloop Devboxes
- Cloudflare Sandbox SDK vs Vercel Sandbox
- Daytona vs E2B
- E2B vs Modal Sandboxes
- E2B vs Runloop Devboxes
- E2B vs Vercel Sandbox
Machine-readable
/api/v1/tools/cloudflare-sandbox-sdk.json·/api/v1/tools/e2b.json- This page as Markdown,
/compare/cloudflare-sandbox-sdk-vs-e2b.md