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

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- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/e2b-vs-sprites.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)
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- Updated: 2026-10-09

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.

- 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
- Sprites: grade C, 58.3/100, rank #528 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/sprites.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/sprites.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 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.

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 | E2B | Sprites | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 60 | 55 | E2B +5 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 92 | 74 | E2B +18 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 65 | 68 | Sprites +3 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 62 | 59 | E2B +3 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 50 | 30 | E2B +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 88 | 80 | E2B +8 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 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

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.


## For agents

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

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