# Daytona vs Vercel Sandbox

> Vercel Sandbox has a score of 69.6 (B) against Daytona's 64.4 (B). Both do sandbox code. The largest gap is security & auth, 17 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: 2026-10-04

Vercel Sandbox has a score of 69.6 (B) against Daytona's 64.4 (B). Both do sandbox code. The largest gap is security & auth, 17 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
- Vercel Sandbox: grade B, 69.6/100, rank #111 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/vercel-sandbox.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/vercel-sandbox.json

## Which one, for what

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

Pick Vercel Sandbox for reliability (+10), agent ergonomics (+10), security & auth (+17), transparency & trust (+17).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Daytona | Vercel Sandbox | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 60 | 70 | Vercel Sandbox +10 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 87 | 77 | Daytona +10 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 55 | 65 | Vercel Sandbox +10 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 63 | 80 | Vercel Sandbox +17 |
| 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 | 80 | even |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 58 | 75 | Vercel Sandbox +17 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **64.4 · B** | **69.6 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Daytona | Vercel Sandbox |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Daytona | Vercel |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://app.daytona.io/api` | `https://api.vercel.com/v1/sandboxes` |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or 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 | 2026-09-11 |
| Popularity | 6 stars, 706k npm/wk, 1.4M PyPI/wk | 168 stars, 6.5M npm/wk, 462k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | 3.5/5 (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.

**Vercel Sandbox.** Active CPU billing, so waiting on model responses costs only memory. Tied to a Vercel team and project even when called from elsewhere, and access tokens reach the whole team.

## 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

### Vercel Sandbox

1. Call `sandbox.stop()` when the task is done. Memory bills until the session ends
2. Use `Sandbox.getOrCreate` with a name so retries land in the same sandbox
3. Set `networkPolicy` to `deny-all` for untrusted code. The default is allow-all
4. Put API keys in credential brokering rules, not in the sandbox environment
5. Pass `persistent: false` for one-off runs so no snapshot is stored or billed

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