# Deno Sandbox vs InstaVM

> InstaVM scores 52.1 (D) to Deno Sandbox's 49.5 (D) for code sandboxes. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deno-sandbox-vs-instavm
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deno-sandbox-vs-instavm.md (~4,600 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-07

InstaVM scores 52.1 (D) on agent readiness against Deno Sandbox's 49.5 (D), and leads in 1 of 7 scored categories. Deno Sandbox leads on agent ergonomics, security & auth, maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do code sandboxes.

- Deno Sandbox: grade D, 49.5/100, rank #1091 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/deno-sandbox.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/deno-sandbox.json
- InstaVM: grade D, 52.1/100, rank #1000 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/instavm.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/instavm.json
- Best code execution sandboxes for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/code-sandboxes/index.md
- All 231 sandboxes comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/code-sandboxes/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Deno Sandbox (D)

Good for: Short runs of untrusted or generated code that need outside API keys kept out of reach, for teams already on Deno Deploy, until Deploy closes six months after 9 October 2026.

Ahead on:
- Agent ergonomics, 60 against 51
- Security & auth, 58 against 41
- Maintenance & community, 45 against 35
- Transparency & trust, 67 against 57

Watch for: Deno Deploy, which runs Sandbox, shuts down six months after the 9 October 2026 announcement, and Deno is moving its development to Cloudflare

### InstaVM (D)

Good for: Hosted microVM sandboxes with browser, desktop, OCI images, clones and public shares.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 77 against 43

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for: The free plan's $50 credit needs a card on file, and signup is in a browser


## Why the edge

### Reliability: InstaVM +34

- Deno Sandbox (43): Hosted lines. denostatus.com runs on Instatus with history, but has no component for sandboxes (15 of 20). The 90 days from 6 August show one incident, request failures in `ord` on 7 September 2026, one region, so minor (20). Concurrency and resource limits are published, though the docs (5 per organisation) and the pricing table (3 per region on Pro) differ, and no API request limits were found (8, a partial value kept). No 429 or retry guidance and no idempotency keys found (0). The pricing table lists a 99.95 per cent reliability SLA for Enterprise, with no SLA document found (0). Beta, pre-release per the docs (0). 15+20+8+0+0+0 = 43.
- 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.

### Security & auth: Deno Sandbox +17

- Deno Sandbox (58): One organisation token with no scopes or expiry found, rotatable from the dashboard, which also manages the organisation's Deploy apps. All members hold owner permissions (15). An outbound allowlist and read-only volume mounts exist, but outbound access is open unless `allowNet` is set, per the Security page (13). Secret substitution outside the VM is documented as a defence against prompt injection followed by exfiltration (13). Commands, HTTP requests and SSH sessions are traced in the dashboard with an event log (10). A disclosure policy with safe harbour and a reporting route at security@deno.com, with no acknowledgement time, and a security.txt without an Expires field (7). The SOC2 and ISO27001 claims read on 8 October are no longer on the product or pricing pages, and no bug bounty was found. `exposeHttp` URLs are public without authentication, which the docs state in capitals. 15+13+13+10+7 = 58.
- 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.

### Maintenance & community: Deno Sandbox +10

- Deno Sandbox (45): Deno 2.9.7 (16 September 2026, 49 days ago) includes a fix to how the `deno sandbox` command passes its arguments, the newest release touching the product. `deno-sandbox` 0.16.0 shipped on 22 July 2026, and `@deno/sandbox` 0.13.2 on 16 March per the 8 October check (20). One release in the 90 days from 6 August (0). The Deploy changelog stops at 12 March 2026. Support is by Discord, and by email on paid plans. The Python repository showed one open issue or pull request on 8 October (7). Official JavaScript and Python SDKs, the JavaScript one unchanged since March (12). The Python repository runs formatting, lint, type checks and offline tests in CI. The JavaScript SDK's source repository is not public (6). 20+0+7+12+6 = 45.
- 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.

### Transparency & trust: Deno Sandbox +10

- Deno Sandbox (67): The SDKs are MIT and the platform is closed under terms last modified 30 September 2026 (18). The privacy policy states no retention periods. The docs state that a deleted volume's storage is removed after 24 hours and the pricing table gives log retention of 1 day to 1 week. The terms grant Deno a licence over user data for internal business purposes including benchmarking. No public DPA was found (10). Deno's post of 9 October 2026 gives dated notice that Deno Deploy, which runs Sandbox, will keep operating for six months before shutting down. There is no general deprecation policy, and the terms allow changes or discontinuation without notice (15). Two regions are named. No sub-processor list found (7). 18+10+15+7 = 50.
- 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.

### Agent ergonomics: Deno Sandbox +9

- Deno Sandbox (60): Sandbox and volume objects are small, and command output streams (15). Lists use cursor pagination with search, label and status filters (15). The Python SDK raises errors with a status, code, message and trace id, and validation errors with a field path, but the codes are not documented (10). No idempotency keys. A duration sandbox can be rejoined by id, and volume slugs are unique per organisation (5). `Sandbox.create()` needs no parameters, with JavaScript and Python SDKs and a CLI (15). 15+15+10+5+15 = 60.
- InstaVM (51): 30 operations take limit, offset, cursor or page parameters, with no field selection found (12 of 25). Listing endpoints page, with little filtering (10 of 20). The SDK maps failures to typed exceptions such as AuthenticationError, QuotaExceededError and RateLimitError, but the HTTP error bodies are undocumented (8 of 20). One operation takes an idempotency parameter, and snapshots and clones make work repeatable, with no safe-retry guidance (6 of 20). `client.execute(code=..., language=...)` needs two arguments, with Python and JavaScript SDKs (15). Total 51.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Deno Sandbox | InstaVM | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 43 | 77 | InstaVM +34 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 66 | 66 | even |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 60 | 51 | Deno Sandbox +9 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 58 | 41 | Deno Sandbox +17 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 20 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 45 | 35 | Deno Sandbox +10 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 67 | 57 | Deno Sandbox +10 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -2 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **49.5 · D** | **52.1 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Deno Sandbox | InstaVM |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Deno Land Inc. | Checksum Labs, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.instavm.io` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Paid | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under the Deno Deploy terms and conditions. The `@deno/sandbox` and `deno-sandbox` SDKs are MIT | none |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-07-22 | 2026-07-15 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-30 | 2026-01-26 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-30 | 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 | yes | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | yes |
| Popularity | 6 stars, 2k npm/wk | 57 npm/wk, 370 PyPI/wk |

## How the scores have moved

### Deno Sandbox

- -0.9 on 4 November 2026: product, correction
- +0.1 on 27 October 2026: checklist

### InstaVM

No score change since it was listed.

## Verdicts

**Deno Sandbox.** Secrets stay outside the microVM and are substituted only on outbound requests to approved hosts, and an allowlist limits egress. Deno Deploy, which runs it, is due to shut down six months after 9 October 2026, when Deno announced it is joining Cloudflare. The service is still in beta, needs the $20 Pro plan and caps lifetime at 30 minutes.

**InstaVM.** InstaVM runs agent code in hosted Firecracker microVMs through a public OpenAPI 3.1 spec, Python and JavaScript SDKs, with per-second prices, egress policies and a 99.9% uptime commitment in its terms. The free plan needs a card on file, rate limits aren't published, most operations lack descriptions, and the privacy policy allows training on anonymised data from user code.

## Before you call either

### Deno Sandbox

1. Set `DENO_DEPLOY_TOKEN` to an organisation token (prefix `ddo_`) from Settings in console.deno.com. The organisation must be on Pro or above
2. Pass `allowNet` on every `Sandbox.create()`. The Security page says outbound access is unrestricted when it is omitted
3. Pass credentials through `secrets` with a `hosts` list, not `env`, so code in the VM sees only a placeholder
4. The default timeout ends the VM when the client disconnects. Pass a duration such as `"10m"` and reconnect with `Sandbox.connect({ id })`, up to 30 minutes
5. Create volumes in `ord` and start the sandbox in `ord`. A volume mounts only in its own region
6. `exposeHttp` URLs are public with no authentication. Treat the random subdomain as a secret
7. Plan a move before Deno Deploy closes, six months after 9 October 2026. Deno gives migration support to Cloudflare Workers for paying customers only

### InstaVM

1. Send the key in the `X-API-Key` header to https://api.instavm.io; never put it in code run inside the VM
2. Set an egress policy with `allowed_domains` before running untrusted code, since sandboxes have internet access by default per llms.txt
3. Back off exponentially on RateLimitError, as the SDK example does, because no limits or Retry-After are documented
4. Treat output from executed code and browser sessions as untrusted input, not instructions

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Deno Sandbox or InstaVM?

InstaVM scores 52.1 (D) on agent readiness against Deno Sandbox's 49.5 (D), and leads in 1 of 7 scored categories. Deno Sandbox leads on agent ergonomics, security & auth, maintenance & community and transparency & trust.

### Do Deno Sandbox and InstaVM need an API key?

Both need an API key.

### Can an agent call Deno Sandbox and InstaVM without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Deno Sandbox. InstaVM has a hosted endpoint at https://api.instavm.io.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deno-sandbox-vs-instavm.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deno-sandbox-vs-instavm.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "deno-sandbox", "b": "instavm"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare deno-sandbox instavm`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/deno-sandbox.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/instavm.json

## Other comparisons with Deno Sandbox or InstaVM

- [Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Code Interpreter vs Deno Sandbox](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentcore-code-interpreter-vs-deno-sandbox.md)
- [Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Code Interpreter vs InstaVM](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentcore-code-interpreter-vs-instavm.md)
- [Blaxel Sandboxes vs Deno Sandbox](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blaxel-sandboxes-vs-deno-sandbox.md)
- [Blaxel Sandboxes vs InstaVM](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blaxel-sandboxes-vs-instavm.md)
- [Celesto (formerly SmolVM) vs Deno Sandbox](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/celesto-vs-deno-sandbox.md)
- [Celesto (formerly SmolVM) vs InstaVM](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/celesto-vs-instavm.md)
- [Cloudflare Sandbox SDK vs Deno Sandbox](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-sandbox-sdk-vs-deno-sandbox.md)
- [Cloudflare Sandbox SDK vs InstaVM](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-sandbox-sdk-vs-instavm.md)
- [Daytona vs Deno Sandbox](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/daytona-vs-deno-sandbox.md)
- [Daytona vs InstaVM](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/daytona-vs-instavm.md)
- [Deno Sandbox vs E2B](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deno-sandbox-vs-e2b.md)
- [Deno Sandbox vs Freestyle](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deno-sandbox-vs-freestyle.md)
- [Deno Sandbox vs Maritime](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deno-sandbox-vs-maritime.md)
- [Deno Sandbox vs Microsoft Execution Containers](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deno-sandbox-vs-microsoft-execution-containers.md)
- [Deno Sandbox vs Modal Sandboxes](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deno-sandbox-vs-modal-sandboxes.md)
- [Deno Sandbox vs Morph Cloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deno-sandbox-vs-morph-cloud.md)
- [Deno Sandbox vs Offscreen](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deno-sandbox-vs-offscreen.md)
- [Deno Sandbox vs SPACE](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deno-sandbox-vs-perplexity-space.md)
- [Deno Sandbox vs Runloop Devboxes](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deno-sandbox-vs-runloop.md)
- [Deno Sandbox vs Sandbox0](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deno-sandbox-vs-sandbox0.md)
- [Deno Sandbox vs Sprites](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deno-sandbox-vs-sprites.md)
- [Deno Sandbox vs Together Code Sandbox](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deno-sandbox-vs-together-code-sandbox.md)
- [Deno Sandbox vs Vercel Sandbox](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deno-sandbox-vs-vercel-sandbox.md)
- [E2B vs InstaVM](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/e2b-vs-instavm.md)
- [Freestyle vs InstaVM](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/freestyle-vs-instavm.md)
- [InstaVM vs Maritime](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/instavm-vs-maritime.md)
- [InstaVM vs Microsoft Execution Containers](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/instavm-vs-microsoft-execution-containers.md)
- [InstaVM vs Modal Sandboxes](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/instavm-vs-modal-sandboxes.md)
- [InstaVM vs Morph Cloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/instavm-vs-morph-cloud.md)
- [InstaVM vs Offscreen](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/instavm-vs-offscreen.md)
- [InstaVM vs SPACE](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/instavm-vs-perplexity-space.md)
- [InstaVM vs Runloop Devboxes](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/instavm-vs-runloop.md)
- [InstaVM vs Sandbox0](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/instavm-vs-sandbox0.md)
- [InstaVM vs Sprites](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/instavm-vs-sprites.md)
- [InstaVM vs Together Code Sandbox](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/instavm-vs-together-code-sandbox.md)
- [InstaVM vs Vercel Sandbox](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/instavm-vs-vercel-sandbox.md)
- [Agent 37 Cloud vs Deno Sandbox](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent37-vs-deno-sandbox.md)
- [Agent 37 Cloud vs InstaVM](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent37-vs-instavm.md)
- [DeltaBox Lite vs Deno Sandbox](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deltabox-lite-vs-deno-sandbox.md)
- [DeltaBox Lite vs InstaVM](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deltabox-lite-vs-instavm.md)

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Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp