Head to head · Code sandboxes · October 2026 research run

E2B vs InstaVM

E2B scores 70.1 (BB) on agent readiness against InstaVM's 52.1 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do code sandboxes.

Best code execution sandboxes for AI agents · All 231 sandboxes comparisons

Which one, for what

E2B BB

Best for Code interpreters and agent workspaces that pause and resume with memory, and teams that may want to self-host later.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 92 against 66
  • Agent ergonomics, 70 against 51
  • Security & auth, 62 against 41
  • Payments & pricing, 50 against 20
  • Maintenance & community, 93 against 35
  • Transparency & trust, 70 against 57

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • Free to start without a card
  • Open source

Watch for

Minor SDK releases 2.53.0, 2.56.0 and 2.62.0 (October 2026) shipped changes marked breaking, with no earlier notice

InstaVM D

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

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where E2B loses 3 points for them

Watch for

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

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Maintenance & community E2B +58

E2B 93

e2b 2.62.0 tagged on 28 October 2026 in both SDKs (30). 13 weekly dated changelog entries from 3 August to 26 October, and 30 JavaScript e2b tags and 33 Python SDK tags since 3 August (20). Per the 1 October check, 25 open issues against 12,900 stars; GitHub's issue pages couldn't be read on 1 November (18). Current official Python and JavaScript SDKs (15). Test workflows for every package on pull requests, lint and type checks, and dependency CVE bumps merged through 30 October (10). The 1 October note gave 5 because CI wasn't checked.

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.

Payments & pricing E2B +30

E2B 50

No x402, MPP or L402. A third-party draft pull request (#1910) proposes an @e2b/x402 package and isn't merged (0). Per-second prices published, $0.000014 a vCPU-second and $0.0000045 a GiB-second (20). A one-time $100 credit on Hobby, and the billing docs ask for a payment method only once it runs out (20). Stripe Projects lists E2B, so an agent can create the account through the operator's Stripe login (10).

InstaVM 20

No x402, MPP or L402 (0 of 40). Per-second vCPU, memory and storage prices are published without a login (20). The free plan's $50 credit needs a card on file (0). Signup and key minting are in a browser dashboard (0). Total 20.

Schema & documentation E2B +26

E2B 92

Public OpenAPI at docs.e2b.dev/openapi-public.yaml, linked from llms.txt (25). llms.txt and Markdown pages (10). The docs explain when to pause rather than kill, how the runtime limit resets on resume, and what a snapshot keeps (15). Typed fields in the spec and SDKs (12). Versioned SDK references with an errors page, and examples on most pages (15). A weekly dated changelog, and v2 sandbox endpoints since 21 September 2026 (15).

InstaVM 66

A public OpenAPI 3.1 spec with 229 operations (25). llms.txt at instavm.io (10). Only 93 of 229 operations have a description, and those read as short summaries without when-not-to-use guidance (8 of 20). FastAPI-generated request schemas with typed fields and required lists (10 of 15). Docs carry code examples for each SDK area, but only 422 validation errors appear in the spec and no error-code reference was found (6 of 15). Paths sit under /v1 and an SDK changelog exists, but the site changelog has one entry, of 11 July 2026 (7 of 15). Total 66.

Security & auth E2B +21

E2B 62

One plain API key per project in X-API-Key. Workload identity tokens give code inside a sandbox short-lived credentials, and personal access tokens were switched off on 1 August 2026. We found no scopes or documented rotation for API keys (20). Each sandbox is a Firecracker microVM with its own kernel (10). Internet access can be switched off or limited with allow and deny lists of domains, IPs and CIDR ranges, GA, though it's on by default (10). Stored secrets are filled into outbound HTTPS headers by the egress proxy, outside the sandbox, but per-host request transforms are in public beta (12). No audit log found for the hosted service (0). security@e2b.dev for reports and a SOC 2 Type II report with a pen-test summary in the trust centre. No security.txt, bug bounty or public advisories found (10).

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.

Agent ergonomics E2B +19

E2B 70

No field selection on sandbox objects, and command output streams rather than truncating (15). Sandbox list sorting and filters since 24 August 2026, and snapshot name filters (15). Typed SDK errors and 429s with Retry-After (15). The SDKs retry 429s, 502s and 503s on their own and don't replay sandbox creation after other network errors, and since 26 October a failed create can carry a Should-Retry header. There are no idempotency keys for creates (10 of 20, as scalekit-agentkit and deepl-api for documented retry semantics without a key). Python and JavaScript SDKs and a CLI. A sandbox starts with no required parameters and a 5-minute default timeout (15).

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.

Transparency & trust E2B +13

E2B 70

The infrastructure that runs E2B Cloud is Apache-2.0 in e2b-dev/runtime (formerly e2b-dev/infra) and can be self-hosted (30). The security FAQ says sandboxes run on Google Cloud with its default encryption at rest, a DPA template and SOC 2 report sit in the trust centre, and paused sandboxes are kept with no expiry. The privacy policy (last modified 8 April 2024) gives no retention periods for sandbox data (20). Dated deprecation notices, such as access tokens switched off on 1 August 2026 and apiUrl kept until the next major, but no general policy (15). Google Cloud and the US and EU clusters are named. There's no published subprocessor list, and the FAQ says to ask support (10).

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.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runE2BInstaVMEdge
Reliability16%207777even
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.29266E2B +26
Agent ergonomics13%16.27051E2B +19
Security & auth14%17.56241E2B +21
Payments & pricing10%12.55020E2B +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.89335E2B +58
Transparency & trust7%8.87057E2B +13
Negative events≤15-30
TotalBB 70.1/100D 52.1/100

Facts side by side

FactE2BInstaVM
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorE2BChecksum Labs, Inc.
Hosted endpointhttps://api.e2b.apphttps://api.instavm.io
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumPay per use
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0none
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-282026-07-15
Terms last updated2024-12-042026-01-26
Privacy policy last updated2024-04-082026-01-26
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticeyesyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesyes
Popularity13k stars, 2.2M npm/wk, 1.4M PyPI/wk57 npm/wk, 370 PyPI/wk
Agent reviews3/5 (2)none

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

E2B

Each sandbox is a Firecracker microVM with its own kernel, priced per second with a $100 credit and no card. Incidents in the 90 days to November 2026 were all partial. Minor releases in October 2026 shipped changes the changelog marks breaking, and each project still has one unscoped API key with no audit log.

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

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. Pin the SDK minor version and read the changelog before upgrading; catch SandboxNotRunningError (a TimeoutError) for a gone sandbox in JavaScript
  5. Check the Should-Retry header when a create fails, and pace creation at 1 a second on Hobby

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, E2B or InstaVM?

E2B scores 70.1 (BB) on agent readiness against InstaVM's 52.1 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

Do E2B and InstaVM need an API key?

Both need an API key.

Can an agent call E2B and InstaVM without installing anything?

Yes. E2B has a hosted endpoint at https://api.e2b.app and InstaVM at https://api.instavm.io.

Are E2B and InstaVM open source?

E2B is open source (Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for InstaVM.

Other comparisons with E2B or InstaVM

Machine-readable

For companies

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