Head to head · Sandbox code · October 2026 research run
E2B vs Freestyle
E2B scores 68.3 (B) on agent readiness against Freestyle's 58.5 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do sandbox code.
Which one, for what
E2B B
Good for Code interpreters and agent workspaces that pause and resume with memory, and teams that may want to self-host later.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 60 against 43
- Schema & documentation, 92 against 86
- Security & auth, 62 against 53
- Payments & pricing, 50 against 45
- Maintenance & community, 88 against 71
- Transparency & trust, 68 against 41
Also in its favour
- Open source
Watch for
Two major incidents over an hour in September 2026, on sandbox creation and on creating from snapshots
Good for Suited to long-running agent work that needs a full Linux VM, memory-preserving pause, snapshots to branch from and private networking.
No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.
Watch for
No terms of service or service agreement found on the site, and the privacy policy covers the website only
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | E2B | Freestyle | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 60 | 43 | E2B +17 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 92 | 86 | E2B +6 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 65 | 69 | Freestyle +4 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 62 | 53 | E2B +9 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 50 | 45 | E2B +5 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 88 | 71 | E2B +17 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 68 | 41 | E2B +27 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 68.3 · B | 58.5 · C |
Facts side by side
| Fact | E2B | Freestyle |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | E2B | Freestyle Cloud Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.e2b.app | https://api.freestyle.sh/v5 |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Proprietary service with no published terms of service found. The freestyle SDK and CLI package on npm is MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-09-27 |
| Terms last updated | 2024-12-04 | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2024-04-08 | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | |
| Popularity | 13k stars, 2.2M npm/wk, 1.4M PyPI/wk | 72k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | none |
Verdicts
E2B
Firecracker microVM with its own kernel per sandbox. Two major incidents over an hour in September 2026, on sandbox creation and on creating from snapshots.
Freestyle
A public OpenAPI 3.1 file describes 88 operations with a stable error code on every failure, and per-VM identity tokens keep the team API key away from end users. No terms of service, product privacy policy, request rate limit or incident history was found, and the only SDK is TypeScript.
Before you call either
E2B
- Set a timeout when you create a sandbox. The default is 5 minutes
- Pause rather than kill when you'll come back. Resume takes about a second and nothing is billed while paused
- Use
Secret.fillin network transforms instead of passing API keys into the sandbox environment - Pace sandbox creation. Hobby allows 1 a second and 20 running at once
- Move to the v2 sandbox endpoints. SDK 2.51.0 and later use them by default
Freestyle
- Send a
firewallobject on everyPOST /v5/vms. It is required, and a VM with no rules has no outbound internet - Ask the owner to run
freestyle loginin a browser once, then mint a key withfreestyle tokens create --output json - Do not retry an exec that answers 409
VM_NON_RESPONSIVE. The command may already have run - Keep
exec-awaitunder its 300,000 ms cap and use a PTY session orx-freestyle-background-after-secsfor longer work - Call the
/v5paths. The unversioned duplicates in the OpenAPI file are marked deprecated
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, E2B or Freestyle?
E2B scores 68.3 (B) on agent readiness against Freestyle's 58.5 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.
Do E2B and Freestyle need an API key?
Both need an API key.
Can an agent call E2B and Freestyle without installing anything?
Yes. E2B has a hosted endpoint at https://api.e2b.app and Freestyle at https://api.freestyle.sh/v5.
Are E2B and Freestyle open source?
E2B is open source (Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for Freestyle.
Other comparisons with E2B or Freestyle
- Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Code Interpreter vs E2B
- Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Code Interpreter vs Freestyle
- Blaxel Sandboxes vs E2B
- Blaxel Sandboxes vs Freestyle
- Cloudflare Sandbox SDK vs E2B
- Cloudflare Sandbox SDK vs Freestyle
- Daytona vs E2B
- Daytona vs Freestyle
- Deno Sandbox vs E2B
- Deno Sandbox vs Freestyle
- E2B vs Microsoft Execution Containers
- E2B vs Modal Sandboxes
- E2B vs Morph Cloud
- E2B vs Runloop Devboxes
- E2B vs Sprites
- E2B vs Together Code Sandbox
- E2B vs Vercel Sandbox
- Freestyle vs Microsoft Execution Containers
- Freestyle vs Modal Sandboxes
- Freestyle vs Morph Cloud
- Freestyle vs Runloop Devboxes
- Freestyle vs Sprites
- Freestyle vs Together Code Sandbox
- Freestyle vs Vercel Sandbox
- Agent 37 Cloud vs E2B
- Agent 37 Cloud vs Freestyle
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/e2b-vs-freestyle.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/e2b.json·/api/v1/tools/freestyle.json - From a terminal
anchor compare e2b freestyle(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "e2b", "b": "freestyle"}at/mcp, no key