Head to head · Sandbox code · October 2026 research run
E2B vs Sprites
E2B scores 68.3 (B) on agent readiness against Sprites's 58.3 (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 55
- Schema & documentation, 92 against 74
- Payments & pricing, 50 against 30
- Maintenance & community, 88 against 80
- Transparency & trust, 68 against 59
Also in its favour
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Free to start without a card
- Open source
Watch for
Two major incidents over an hour in September 2026, on sandbox creation and on creating from snapshots
Sprites C
Good for Agents that need a long-lived machine with installed tools and files kept between sessions, and rollback by checkpoint.
No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.
Watch for
Four Sprites incidents on the status page in 90 days, including a partial outage of 7 hours 28 minutes on 23 September 2026 and failed creates outside Europe for 28 minutes on 8 October
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | E2B | Sprites | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 60 | 55 | E2B +5 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 92 | 74 | E2B +18 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 65 | 68 | Sprites +3 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 62 | 59 | E2B +3 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 50 | 30 | E2B +20 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 88 | 80 | E2B +8 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 68 | 59 | E2B +9 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -2 | |
| Total | 68.3 · B | 58.3 · C |
Facts side by side
| Fact | E2B | Sprites |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | E2B | Fly.io |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.e2b.app | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Proprietary service under the Fly.io Terms of Service. The JavaScript, Go, Python and Elixir SDKs are MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-10-06 |
| Terms last updated | 2024-12-04 | 2026-04-29 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2024-04-08 | 2026-09-24 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 13k stars, 2.2M npm/wk, 1.4M PyPI/wk | 158k npm/wk, 59k PyPI/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.
Sprites
A Sprite keeps a 100 GB ext4 disk between runs, bills compute only while active and can be checkpointed and restored through a published OpenAPI contract. The status page records four Sprites incidents in the last 90 days, one lasting over seven hours, and outbound network access is unrestricted until a policy is set.
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
Sprites
- Create a token at sprites.dev/account after a browser signup, and send it as
Authorization: Bearer <token>tohttps://api.sprites.dev - Follow the OpenAPI document, not the product page example. Create with
POST /v1/spritesand a JSONname, and run commands withPOST /v1/sprites/{name}/execusingcmdquery parameters - Set a network policy with
POST /v1/sprites/{name}/policy/networkbefore running untrusted code. Egress is open until one is set - Processes started by exec stop on a cold wake. Define a Service for anything that must answer the request that wakes the Sprite
- Create a checkpoint before a restore. Restoring replaces the filesystem, ends active sessions and keeps no copy of the replaced state
- Sprite creation is limited to 10 a minute on pay-as-you-go. The Go SDK reads
Retry-Afterand the error codesprite_creation_rate_limitedon a 429 - Delete Sprites you no longer need. An idle Sprite still bills cold storage for the bytes it holds
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, E2B or Sprites?
E2B scores 68.3 (B) on agent readiness against Sprites's 58.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.
Do E2B and Sprites need an API key?
Both need an API key.
Can an agent call E2B and Sprites without installing anything?
E2B has a hosted endpoint at https://api.e2b.app. No hosted endpoint is listed for Sprites.
Are E2B and Sprites open source?
E2B is open source (Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for Sprites.
Other comparisons with E2B or Sprites
- Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Code Interpreter vs E2B
- Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Code Interpreter vs Sprites
- Blaxel Sandboxes vs E2B
- Blaxel Sandboxes vs Sprites
- Cloudflare Sandbox SDK vs E2B
- Cloudflare Sandbox SDK vs Sprites
- Daytona vs E2B
- Daytona vs Sprites
- Deno Sandbox vs E2B
- Deno Sandbox vs Sprites
- E2B vs Freestyle
- E2B vs Microsoft Execution Containers
- E2B vs Modal Sandboxes
- E2B vs Morph Cloud
- E2B vs Runloop Devboxes
- E2B vs Together Code Sandbox
- E2B vs Vercel Sandbox
- Freestyle vs Sprites
- Microsoft Execution Containers vs Sprites
- Modal Sandboxes vs Sprites
- Morph Cloud vs Sprites
- Runloop Devboxes vs Sprites
- Sprites vs Together Code Sandbox
- Sprites vs Vercel Sandbox
- Agent 37 Cloud vs E2B
- Agent 37 Cloud vs Sprites
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/e2b-vs-sprites.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/e2b.json·/api/v1/tools/sprites.json - From a terminal
anchor compare e2b sprites(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "e2b", "b": "sprites"}at/mcp, no key