# E2B vs Together Code Sandbox

> E2B scores 68.3 (B) on agent readiness against Together Code Sandbox's 53.6 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Together Code Sandbox leads on agent ergonomics. Both do sandbox code. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- 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 Together Code Sandbox's 53.6 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Together Code Sandbox leads on agent ergonomics. 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
- Together Code Sandbox: grade D, 53.6/100, rank #628 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/together-code-sandbox.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/together-code-sandbox.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 25
- Schema & documentation, 92 against 86
- Security & auth, 62 against 47
- Payments & pricing, 50 against 20
- Maintenance & community, 88 against 83
- Transparency & trust, 68 against 60

Also in its favour:
- 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

### Together Code Sandbox (D)

Good for: Teams already buying from Together, and former CodeSandbox SDK users, who want Docker-defined sandboxes with disk and memory snapshots from Python or TypeScript.

Ahead on:
- Agent ergonomics, 70 against 65

Watch for: The SDK and CLI work only for organisations Together has enabled, and the docs say to contact Together for access


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | E2B | Together Code Sandbox | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 60 | 25 | E2B +35 |
| 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 | 70 | Together Code Sandbox +5 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 62 | 47 | E2B +15 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 50 | 20 | E2B +30 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 88 | 83 | E2B +5 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 68 | 60 | E2B +8 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **68.3 · B** | **53.6 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | E2B | Together Code Sandbox |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | E2B | Together AI |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.e2b.app` | `https://api.bartender.codesandbox.io` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Proprietary service under Together's terms of service. The SDKs, CLI and OpenAPI documents on GitHub are MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-10-07 |
| Terms last updated | 2024-12-04 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2024-04-08 | no date given |
| 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 | yes |
| 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 | 3 stars, 1.3k npm/wk, 3.4k 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.

**Together Code Sandbox.** Two public OpenAPI documents, MIT clients for Python and TypeScript, cursor pagination and built-in retries make the surface easy for an agent to drive. Access is the limit. Together enables the SDK per organisation on request, publishes no rate limits or SLA, and neither status page names the sandbox service.

## 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

### Together Code Sandbox

1. Confirm the organisation is on Together's allowlist before installing. A valid `TOGETHER_API_KEY` alone is not enough
2. Build a snapshot first with `snapshots.create`. No default image exists, and every sandbox needs `snapshot_id` or `snapshot_alias`
3. Set `ttl` at creation or call `terminate()`. Nothing stops a sandbox otherwise, and closing the Python client leaves it running
4. Store the snapshot alias, not the sandbox ID. A terminated sandbox can't restart, and its state lives at `sandbox:<id>`
5. Exclude `snapshots.create` from retries with `should_retry`, and set `experimental.network_policy` before serving anything private on a port

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, E2B or Together Code Sandbox?

E2B scores 68.3 (B) on agent readiness against Together Code Sandbox's 53.6 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Together Code Sandbox leads on agent ergonomics.

### Do E2B and Together Code Sandbox need an API key?

Both need an API key.

### Can an agent call E2B and Together Code Sandbox without installing anything?

Yes. E2B has a hosted endpoint at https://api.e2b.app and Together Code Sandbox at https://api.bartender.codesandbox.io.

### Are E2B and Together Code Sandbox open source?

E2B is open source (Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for Together Code Sandbox.


## For agents

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

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