# 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. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-05

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.

- Daytona: grade B, 64.4/100, rank #183 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/daytona.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/daytona.json
- E2B: grade B, 68.5/100, rank #122 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/e2b.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/e2b.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Daytona for nothing in particular (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 | Daytona | E2B | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 60 | 60 | even |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 87 | 92 | E2B +5 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 55 | 65 | E2B +10 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 63 | 62 | Daytona +1 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 50 | 50 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 80 | 88 | E2B +8 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 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

1. Pick a Linux VM class for untrusted code or when memory must survive a pause. Container sandboxes stop and archive instead
2. Set autoStopInterval yourself. The 15-minute idle default can stop a sandbox while the agent is still thinking
3. Give the agent a key without `delete:sandboxes` if it shouldn't destroy work
4. Read `Retry-After-{throttler}` on a 429 before retrying sandbox creation
5. Check the organisation's tier before relying on outbound calls from inside the sandbox

### 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 Daytona or E2B

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- [Daytona vs Modal Sandboxes](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/daytona-vs-modal-sandboxes.md)
- [Daytona vs Runloop Devboxes](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/daytona-vs-runloop.md)
- [Daytona vs Vercel Sandbox](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/daytona-vs-vercel-sandbox.md)
- [E2B vs Modal Sandboxes](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/e2b-vs-modal-sandboxes.md)
- [E2B vs Runloop Devboxes](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/e2b-vs-runloop.md)
- [E2B vs Vercel Sandbox](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/e2b-vs-vercel-sandbox.md)