# Deno Sandbox vs InstaVM (slim)

> 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.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deno-sandbox-vs-instavm.md (~4,600 tokens) · this version ~2,280 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deno-sandbox-vs-instavm.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deno-sandbox-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)

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: D 49.5, rank #1091 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/deno-sandbox.min.md
- InstaVM: D 52.1, rank #1000 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/instavm.min.md
- Deno Sandbox, 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.
- InstaVM, good for Hosted microVM sandboxes with browser, desktop, OCI images, clones and public shares. Ahead on Reliability, 77 against 43. Also A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install.

| Category | Deno Sandbox | InstaVM |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 43 | 77 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 66 | 66 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 60 | 51 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 58 | 41 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 20 | 20 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 45 | 35 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 67 | 57 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Deno Sandbox | InstaVM |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Deno Land Inc. | Checksum Labs, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.instavm.io` |
| Pricing | Paid | Pay per use |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| Popularity | 6 stars, 2k npm/wk | 57 npm/wk, 370 PyPI/wk |

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.)