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

CategoryWeight this runE2BSpritesEdge
Reliability16%206055E2B +5
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.29274E2B +18
Agent ergonomics13%16.26568Sprites +3
Security & auth14%17.56259E2B +3
Payments & pricing10%12.55030E2B +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88880E2B +8
Transparency & trust7%8.86859E2B +9
Negative events≤150-2
Total68.3 · B58.3 · C

Facts side by side

FactE2BSprites
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorE2BFly.io
Hosted endpointhttps://api.e2b.appno (local only)
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumPay per use
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Proprietary service under the Fly.io Terms of Service. The JavaScript, Go, Python and Elixir SDKs are MIT
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-012026-10-06
Terms last updated2024-12-042026-04-29
Privacy policy last updated2024-04-082026-09-24
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticeyesnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesnot found in the text
Popularity13k stars, 2.2M npm/wk, 1.4M PyPI/wk158k npm/wk, 59k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews3/5 (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

  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

Sprites

  1. Create a token at sprites.dev/account after a browser signup, and send it as Authorization: Bearer <token> to https://api.sprites.dev
  2. Follow the OpenAPI document, not the product page example. Create with POST /v1/sprites and a JSON name, and run commands with POST /v1/sprites/{name}/exec using cmd query parameters
  3. Set a network policy with POST /v1/sprites/{name}/policy/network before running untrusted code. Egress is open until one is set
  4. Processes started by exec stop on a cold wake. Define a Service for anything that must answer the request that wakes the Sprite
  5. Create a checkpoint before a restore. Restoring replaces the filesystem, ends active sessions and keeps no copy of the replaced state
  6. Sprite creation is limited to 10 a minute on pay-as-you-go. The Go SDK reads Retry-After and the error code sprite_creation_rate_limited on a 429
  7. 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

Machine-readable

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