# Daytona vs InstaVM (slim)

> Daytona scores 67.7 (B) to InstaVM's 52.1 (D) for code sandboxes. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/daytona-vs-instavm.md (~4,750 tokens) · this version ~2,630 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/daytona-vs-instavm.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/daytona-vs-instavm
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Daytona scores 67.7 (B) on agent readiness against InstaVM's 52.1 (D), and leads in every scored category. Both do code sandboxes.

- Daytona: B 67.7, rank #310 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/daytona.min.md
- InstaVM: D 52.1, rank #1000 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/instavm.min.md
- Daytona, good for Agents that need a choice of machine, including Windows desktops and GPUs, and operators who want least-privilege keys. Ahead on Reliability, 85 against 77; Schema & documentation, 87 against 66; Security & auth, 73 against 41; Payments & pricing, 50 against 20; Maintenance & community, 80 against 35; Transparency & trust, 64 against 57. Also Runs on your own machine; Free to start without a card.
- InstaVM, good for Hosted microVM sandboxes with browser, desktop, OCI images, clones and public shares. Also No incidents deducted, where Daytona loses 4 points for them.

| Category | Daytona | InstaVM |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 85 | 77 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 87 | 66 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 55 | 51 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 73 | 41 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 50 | 20 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 80 | 35 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 64 | 57 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Daytona | InstaVM |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Daytona | Checksum Labs, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://app.daytona.io/api` | `https://api.instavm.io` |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 (SDKs and API clients), AGPL-3.0 (CLI) | none |
| Last release | 2026-10-29 | 2026-07-15 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-08-22 | 2026-01-26 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-08-22 | 2026-01-26 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | 6 stars, 706k npm/wk, 1.4M PyPI/wk | 57 npm/wk, 370 PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | none |

Why the edge:
- Maintenance & community, Daytona +45: Daytona 80 (v0.227.0 of daytona/clients on 29 October 2026 (30). 24 stable releases from v0.204.0 (11 August) to v0.227.0 (29 October), plus v2.0.0 alphas from 24 October (20). Core development went private in June 2026, and the old public repository keeps its open issues with a notice that it gets no further updates. Public changelog and releases, scored on the closed-service scale (10). Current official SDKs in five languages (15). CI workflows for PR checks, end-to-end tests and publishing exist in the clients repository, but their pass state couldn't be read (5). 30 + 20 + 10 + 15 + 5 = 80.); InstaVM 35 (Closed service lines. The latest dated change found is Python SDK 0.26.1 on 15 July 2026, 114 days before the check, and the site changelog's only entry is 11 July (10). No SDK release in the 90 days to 6 November (0). A public changelog, support email and Discord, with no reply times seen (8 of 15). Official Python and JavaScript SDKs, last released in July and May 2026 (12 of 15). Package health of the SDK repositories was not read (5 of 10). Total 35.)
- Security & auth, Daytona +32: Daytona 73 (API keys with per-action scopes (`write:sandboxes` separate from `delete:sandboxes`, plus snapshot, volume, audit, secret and billing scopes), an expiry date and immediate revocation, and manager keys that issue scoped child keys at runtime. The docs say any valid key in the organisation can reach a running sandbox whatever its scopes, so 27 of 30 (27). Container sandboxes get their own namespaces and resource limits on a shared kernel, while Linux VM and Windows classes get their own kernel (6). Tier 1 and 2 organisations get restricted network access that can't be changed per sandbox, and full internet with per-sandbox allow lists starts at Tier 3 (5). We found nothing on keeping credentials out of the sandbox or on running untrusted code (5). Audit logs behind their own key scope, log streaming and webhooks (15). An organisation-wide security policy (security@daytona.io or GitHub private reporting, acknowledgement within 5 business days, discretionary rewards) covers app.daytona.io and the clients repository. The SafeBase trust centre lists SOC 2 Type 1 and Type 2, ISO/IEC 27001 and HIPAA, with reports and a pen-test summary on request. Four advisories were published on GitHub in June 2026. No security.txt (404 on 2 November), and a discretionary reward doesn't count as a bounty. Read as modal-sandboxes' 15 (15). 27 + 6 + 5 + 5 + 15 + 15 = 73.); InstaVM 41 (Plain API keys in a header, with API endpoints to create, list and delete them and no scopes found (20 of 30). Egress policies per session or VM can block all outbound traffic or allow named domains and CIDRs, but llms.txt describes full network access as the default (8 of 20). No guidance on untrusted output from executed code or browser sessions (3 of 15). An Audit Logs endpoint group exists in the API reference (10 of 15). No security.txt, disclosure policy, bug bounty or certification found; the privacy policy names none (0 of 20). Total 41.)
- Payments & pricing, Daytona +30: Daytona 50 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-second prices published per vCPU, GiB of memory, GiB of storage and GPU, re-read on 2 November (20). $200 of compute, "no credit card required" (20). Stripe Projects lists Daytona, so an agent can create the account through the operator's Stripe login, per the 1 October check (10). Total 50.); InstaVM 20 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0 of 40). Per-second vCPU, memory and storage prices are published without a login (20). The free plan's $50 credit needs a card on file (0). Signup and key minting are in a browser dashboard (0). Total 20.)
- Schema & documentation, Daytona +21: Daytona 87 (Three public OpenAPI files, for the main API (OpenAPI 3.0.0, 138 paths and 170 operations on 2 November), the in-sandbox toolbox API and analytics (25). llms.txt and Markdown pages (10). The docs say what each sandbox class is for and what only VM classes can do (15). Typed fields from the spec, with the sandbox class an enum of linux-vm, container and windows (12). The 429 error body is documented and SDK pages carry examples, but we found no error-code reference (10). A public changelog (newest entry 0.225.0 on 16 October 2026) and release tags (15). Total 87.); InstaVM 66 (A public OpenAPI 3.1 spec with 229 operations (25). llms.txt at instavm.io (10). Only 93 of 229 operations have a description, and those read as short summaries without when-not-to-use guidance (8 of 20). FastAPI-generated request schemas with typed fields and required lists (10 of 15). Docs carry code examples for each SDK area, but only 422 validation errors appear in the spec and no error-code reference was found (6 of 15). Paths sit under /v1 and an SDK changelog exists, but the site changelog has one entry, of 11 July 2026 (7 of 15). Total 66.)
- Reliability, Daytona +8: Daytona 85 (Better Stack status page at status.app.daytona.io with per-service history, read from its RSS feed and incident pages on 2 November (20). The two Windows runner outages (31 July and 1 August) have left the 90 days from 4 August. The window holds a degradation of new sandbox creation in us-central-1 (11 August, 17.5 hours), elevated creation errors for 4 minutes (4 September), a builder queue backlog (12 September), sandbox listing degraded on 1 and 30 October, reduced GPU capacity (16 October), some dashboard settings unavailable (22 October) and a provider outage on a subset of US runners (29 and 30 October). Each is one region, one endpoint or a subset of runners, so partial and minor (20). Rate limits published per tier, 10,000 to 50,000 general requests and 300 to 600 sandbox creations a minute (15). 429s carry `Retry-After-{throttler}` and `X-RateLimit-*` headers, and the docs advise exponential backoff (1s, 2s, 4s, 8s). No idempotency keys found (10). An SLA page (last updated 22 August 2025) commits to 99.95% monthly uptime with service credits for Tier 4 and above (10). GA (10). 20 + 20 + 15 + 10 + 10 + 10 = 85.); InstaVM 77 (Hosted lines. Better Stack status page with four components, including the public API (20). The incident history shows no incidents for September, October or November 2026 (30). No rate limits with numbers found; Pro promises higher limits without figures (0). The Python SDK has a RateLimitError and an example retry loop with exponential backoff, but no 429 or Retry-After is documented, and there is no idempotency guidance (7 of 15). The terms commit to 99.9% monthly uptime with service credits, and Pro lists 99.9% (10). No beta or preview label on the API (10). Total 77.)
- Transparency & trust, Daytona +7: Daytona 64 (SDKs and API clients are Apache-2.0 and the CLI is AGPL-3.0, but the platform code went private in June 2026 (20). Privacy policy and terms (both updated 22 August 2025) and a DPA (last updated 13 October 2026) that returns or deletes customer personal data at termination or on request. The docs say stopped, paused and archived sandboxes are kept until you delete them, with no retention period after deletion (15). Breaking changes appear in release notes, with no deprecation policy or dated notices found (5). Shared regions in the US and EU are named, and the DPA points to a sub-processor list with service and location in the trust centre, with 30 days' email notice of changes. The trust centre shows Latitude.sh, Leaseweb, OVHcloud and Stripe, and we couldn't read the locations (15). 20 + 15 + 5 + 15 = 55.); InstaVM 57 (Closed service with clear terms (15). The terms and privacy policy agree on keeping code and execution logs up to one year and US storage, and the policy names Stripe, PostHog and Resend, but allows training on anonymised, aggregated data derived from user content with opt-out by email and mentions no DPA (18 of 30). No deprecation policy or notices found (0 of 20). US data location stated and three subprocessors named, cloud providers unnamed (12 of 20). Total 45.)