# Daytona vs Modal Sandboxes

> Modal Sandboxes has a score of 75.6 (BB) against Daytona's 64.4 (B). Both do sandbox code. The largest gap is reliability, 35 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-05

Modal Sandboxes has a score of 75.6 (BB) against Daytona's 64.4 (B). Both do sandbox code. The largest gap is reliability, 35 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
- Modal Sandboxes: grade BB, 75.6/100, rank #33 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/modal-sandboxes.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/modal-sandboxes.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Daytona for schema & documentation (+8), payments & pricing (+10).

Pick Modal Sandboxes for reliability (+35), agent ergonomics (+12), security & auth (+13), maintenance & community (+13), transparency & trust (+16).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Daytona | Modal Sandboxes | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 60 | 95 | Modal Sandboxes +35 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 87 | 79 | Daytona +8 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 55 | 67 | Modal Sandboxes +12 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 63 | 76 | Modal Sandboxes +13 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 50 | 40 | Daytona +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 80 | 93 | Modal Sandboxes +13 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 58 | 74 | Modal Sandboxes +16 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **64.4 · B** | **75.6 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Daytona | Modal Sandboxes |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | SDK + MCP |
| Vendor | Daytona | Modal |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://app.daytona.io/api` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio |  |
| 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 | 2026-09-28 |
| Popularity | 6 stars, 706k npm/wk, 1.4M PyPI/wk | 514 stars, 941k npm/wk, 10.1M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | 3.3/5 (8) |

## 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.

**Modal Sandboxes.** GPU sandboxes at the same per-second rates as the rest of Modal. No REST API, and the JavaScript and Go SDKs are beta.

## 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

### Modal Sandboxes

1. Pass `timeout=` when you create a sandbox. The default lifetime is 5 minutes
2. Set `block_network=True` or a `cidr_allowlist` for untrusted code
3. Give a sandbox a `name` so a retried create raises `AlreadyExistsError` instead of starting a second one
4. Snapshot the filesystem before the 24-hour limit and start a fresh sandbox from it
5. Catch `ResourceExhaustedError` from `Sandbox.create()` on SDK 1.6.0 and later

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