# 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. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/e2b-vs-freestyle
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/e2b-vs-freestyle.md (~2,250 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/e2b-vs-freestyle.min.md (~630 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/e2b-vs-freestyle.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-09

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.

- E2B: grade B, 68.3/100, rank #207 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/e2b.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/e2b.json
- Freestyle: grade C, 58.5/100, rank #520 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/freestyle.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/freestyle.json

## 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

### Freestyle (C)

Good for: Suited to long-running agent work that needs a full Linux VM, memory-preserving pause, snapshots to branch from and private networking.

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 | E2B | Freestyle | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 60 | 43 | E2B +17 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 92 | 86 | E2B +6 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 65 | 69 | Freestyle +4 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 62 | 53 | E2B +9 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 50 | 45 | E2B +5 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 88 | 71 | E2B +17 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 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

1. Set a timeout when you create a sandbox. The default is 5 minutes
2. Pause rather than kill when you'll come back. Resume takes about a second and nothing is billed while paused
3. Use `Secret.fill` in network transforms instead of passing API keys into the sandbox environment
4. Pace sandbox creation. Hobby allows 1 a second and 20 running at once
5. Move to the v2 sandbox endpoints. SDK 2.51.0 and later use them by default

### Freestyle

1. Send a `firewall` object on every `POST /v5/vms`. It is required, and a VM with no rules has no outbound internet
2. Ask the owner to run `freestyle login` in a browser once, then mint a key with `freestyle tokens create --output json`
3. Do not retry an exec that answers 409 `VM_NON_RESPONSIVE`. The command may already have run
4. Keep `exec-await` under its 300,000 ms cap and use a PTY session or `x-freestyle-background-after-secs` for longer work
5. Call the `/v5` paths. 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.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/e2b-vs-freestyle.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/e2b-vs-freestyle.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "e2b", "b": "freestyle"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare e2b freestyle`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/e2b.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/freestyle.json

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- [E2B vs Morph Cloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/e2b-vs-morph-cloud.md)
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- [E2B vs Vercel Sandbox](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/e2b-vs-vercel-sandbox.md)
- [Freestyle vs Microsoft Execution Containers](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/freestyle-vs-microsoft-execution-containers.md)
- [Freestyle vs Modal Sandboxes](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/freestyle-vs-modal-sandboxes.md)
- [Freestyle vs Morph Cloud](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/freestyle-vs-morph-cloud.md)
- [Freestyle vs Runloop Devboxes](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/freestyle-vs-runloop.md)
- [Freestyle vs Sprites](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/freestyle-vs-sprites.md)
- [Freestyle vs Together Code Sandbox](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/freestyle-vs-together-code-sandbox.md)
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