Head to head · Sandbox fs · October 2026 research run

DeltaBox Lite vs Vercel Sandbox

Vercel Sandbox scores 73.5 (BB) on agent readiness against DeltaBox Lite's 52.3 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. DeltaBox Lite leads on payments & pricing. Both do sandbox fs.

Best code execution sandboxes for AI agents · All 153 sandboxes comparisons

Which one, for what

DeltaBox Lite D

Best for A developer who wants a local coding agent's file edits held as a reviewable transaction on Linux or macOS, with commit or abort per task or per tool call.

Ahead on

  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 50

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Free to start without a card
  • Open source
  • No incidents deducted, where Vercel Sandbox loses 3 points for them

Watch for

Version 0.1.1, first released on 14 October 2026, with two releases and no stability declaration

Vercel Sandbox BB

Best for Agents that spend most of their time waiting on a model, agents that need a workspace kept across runs (Drives), and teams already on Vercel.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 75 against 37
  • Schema & documentation, 88 against 68
  • Agent ergonomics, 73 against 67
  • Security & auth, 86 against 47
  • Maintenance & community, 82 against 43
  • Transparency & trust, 78 against 40

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.5 against 2.8 out of 5

Watch for

Tied to a Vercel team and project even when called from elsewhere, and access tokens reach the whole team

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDeltaBox LiteVercel SandboxEdge
Reliability16%203775Vercel Sandbox +38
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26888Vercel Sandbox +20
Agent ergonomics13%16.26773Vercel Sandbox +6
Security & auth14%17.54786Vercel Sandbox +39
Payments & pricing10%12.56050DeltaBox Lite +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.84382Vercel Sandbox +39
Transparency & trust7%8.84078Vercel Sandbox +38
Negative events≤150-3
TotalD 52.3/100BB 73.5/100

Facts side by side

FactDeltaBox LiteVercel Sandbox
KindSDK + MCPHTTP API
VendorDeltaBox (delta-box)Vercel
Hosted endpointno (local only)https://api.vercel.com/v1/sandboxes
TransportsHTTP
AuthNoneOAuth or key
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-10-142026-10-13
Terms last updatedno document linked2026-06-01
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2026-06-01
Customer content may train modelsyes, with an opt-out
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryes
Popularitynone168 stars, 6.5M npm/wk, 462k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews2.8/5 (4)3.5/5 (2)

Verdicts

DeltaBox Lite

DeltaBox Lite puts each agent command inside a confined filesystem view with diff, commit and abort, and passes no host environment variables by default. It is version 0.1.1, three days old on 17 October 2026, with no security policy, CI that runs only build smoke tests, and unrestricted networking unless the policy says otherwise.

Vercel Sandbox

Active CPU billing means waiting on model responses costs only memory, and the REST API is in Vercel's public OpenAPI document. Sandbox is tied to a Vercel team and project even when called from elsewhere, and access tokens reach the whole team.

Before you call either

DeltaBox Lite

  1. Skip step 5 of install-prompt.txt. Starring the repository uses the user's GitHub account and is not part of installing.
  2. Pass --commit or --abort to deltabox run explicitly. The child's exit status is preserved after that decision.
  3. Wrap redirection and pipes in sh -c '...'. An unquoted > is handled by the host shell and writes outside the sandbox.
  4. Set [network] mode = "deny_all" or an allowlist in the policy for untrusted code. The default allows every destination.
  5. Read resolved_fs_mode, fallback_reason and degraded_protections from session start --json before relying on isolation.

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. Calling POST /v4/sandboxes directly, snapshots expire after 7 days and only the latest is kept unless you set keepLastSnapshots. The SDK still uses v3, with 30 days

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, DeltaBox Lite or Vercel Sandbox?

Vercel Sandbox scores 73.5 (BB) on agent readiness against DeltaBox Lite's 52.3 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. DeltaBox Lite leads on payments & pricing.

Can an agent call DeltaBox Lite and Vercel Sandbox without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for DeltaBox Lite. Vercel Sandbox has a hosted endpoint at https://api.vercel.com/v1/sandboxes.

Are DeltaBox Lite and Vercel Sandbox open source?

DeltaBox Lite is open source (Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for Vercel Sandbox.

Other comparisons with DeltaBox Lite or Vercel Sandbox

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