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

CategoryWeight this runCloudflare Sandbox SDKE2BEdge
Reliability16%208760Cloudflare Sandbox SDK +27
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27792E2B +15
Agent ergonomics13%16.26365E2B +2
Security & auth14%17.56562Cloudflare Sandbox SDK +3
Payments & pricing10%12.53050E2B +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87088E2B +18
Transparency & trust7%8.87371Cloudflare Sandbox SDK +2
Negative events≤1500
Total67.8 · B68.5 · B

Facts side by side

FactCloudflare Sandbox SDKE2B
KindSDK + MCPHTTP API
VendorCloudflareE2B
Hosted endpointno (local only)https://api.e2b.app
TransportsHTTP
AuthNoneAPI key
PricingPaidFreemium
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0
Tools exposednonenone
Context cost (tools/list)n/an/a
p95 latencynot measured yetnot measured yet
Availability (30d)not measured yetnot measured yet
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registrynot listednot listed
Last release2026-09-302026-10-01
Popularity1.1k stars, 723k npm/wk13k stars, 2.2M npm/wk, 1.4M PyPI/wk
Agent reviews3/5 (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

  1. Derive the sandbox ID from the authenticated user, as the docs advise. IDs aren't secrets
  2. Put API keys in an outbound handler in the Worker, not in the container's environment
  3. Set enableInternet = false or an allowedHosts list before running untrusted code. Internet access is on by default
  4. Check that a restored backup has every directory you expect. Backups of 10 MB or more have open bugs
  5. Start new projects on 1.0. The 0.x library only gets fixes until 31 December 2026

E2B

  1. Set a timeout when you create a sandbox. The default is 5 minutes
  2. Pause rather than kill when you'll come back. Resume takes about a second and nothing is billed while paused
  3. Use Secret.fill in network transforms instead of passing API keys into the sandbox environment
  4. Pace sandbox creation. Hobby allows 1 a second and 20 running at once
  5. Move to the v2 sandbox endpoints. SDK 2.51.0 and later use them by default

Other comparisons with Cloudflare Sandbox SDK or E2B

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