Head to head · Sandbox code · October 2026 research run
Daytona vs E2B
E2B has a score of 68.5 (B) against Daytona's 64.4 (B). Both do sandbox code. The largest gap is transparency & trust, 13 points.
Which one, for what
Pick Daytona for
No category where it leads by five points or more.
Pick E2B for
- schema & documentation (+5)
- agent ergonomics (+10)
- maintenance & community (+8)
- transparency & trust (+13)
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Daytona | E2B | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 60 | 60 | even |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 87 | 92 | E2B +5 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 55 | 65 | E2B +10 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 63 | 62 | Daytona +1 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 50 | 50 | even |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 80 | 88 | E2B +8 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 58 | 71 | E2B +13 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 64.4 · B | 68.5 · B |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Daytona | E2B |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Daytona | E2B |
| Hosted endpoint | https://app.daytona.io/api | https://api.e2b.app |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 (SDKs and API clients), AGPL-3.0 (CLI) | 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 | 2026-09-29 | 2026-10-01 |
| Popularity | 6 stars, 706k npm/wk, 1.4M PyPI/wk | 13k stars, 2.2M npm/wk, 1.4M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | 3/5 (2) |
Verdicts
Daytona
API keys with per-action scopes, so an agent can create sandboxes without being able to delete them. The container class shares the host kernel. Only the VM classes get their own.
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
Daytona
- Pick a Linux VM class for untrusted code or when memory must survive a pause. Container sandboxes stop and archive instead
- Set autoStopInterval yourself. The 15-minute idle default can stop a sandbox while the agent is still thinking
- Give the agent a key without
delete:sandboxesif it shouldn't destroy work - Read
Retry-After-{throttler}on a 429 before retrying sandbox creation - Check the organisation's tier before relying on outbound calls from inside the sandbox
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 Daytona or E2B
Machine-readable
/api/v1/tools/daytona.json·/api/v1/tools/e2b.json- This page as Markdown,
/compare/daytona-vs-e2b.md