# E2B vs Vercel Sandbox

> Vercel Sandbox has a score of 69.6 (B) against E2B's 68.5 (B). Both do sandbox code. The largest gap is security & auth, 18 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/e2b-vs-vercel-sandbox
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/e2b-vs-vercel-sandbox.md (~1,350 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/e2b-vs-vercel-sandbox.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/e2b-vs-vercel-sandbox.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)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-05

Vercel Sandbox has a score of 69.6 (B) against E2B's 68.5 (B). Both do sandbox code. The largest gap is security & auth, 18 points.

- E2B: grade B, 68.5/100, rank #122 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/e2b.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/e2b.json
- Vercel Sandbox: grade B, 69.6/100, rank #111 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/vercel-sandbox.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/vercel-sandbox.json

## Which one, for what

Pick E2B for schema & documentation (+15), payments & pricing (+10), maintenance & community (+8).

Pick Vercel Sandbox for reliability (+10), security & auth (+18).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | E2B | Vercel Sandbox | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 60 | 70 | Vercel Sandbox +10 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 92 | 77 | E2B +15 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 65 | 65 | even |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 62 | 80 | Vercel Sandbox +18 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 50 | 40 | E2B +10 |
| 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) | 71 | 75 | Vercel Sandbox +4 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **68.5 · B** | **69.6 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | E2B | Vercel Sandbox |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | E2B | Vercel |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.e2b.app` | `https://api.vercel.com/v1/sandboxes` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | none | none |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-09-11 |
| Popularity | 13k stars, 2.2M npm/wk, 1.4M PyPI/wk | 168 stars, 6.5M npm/wk, 462k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | 3.5/5 (2) |

## 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.

**Vercel Sandbox.** Active CPU billing, so waiting on model responses costs only memory. Tied to a Vercel team and project even when called from elsewhere, and access tokens reach the whole team.

## 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

### Vercel Sandbox

1. Call `sandbox.stop()` when the task is done. Memory bills until the session ends
2. Use `Sandbox.getOrCreate` with a name so retries land in the same sandbox
3. Set `networkPolicy` to `deny-all` for untrusted code. The default is allow-all
4. Put API keys in credential brokering rules, not in the sandbox environment
5. Pass `persistent: false` for one-off runs so no snapshot is stored or billed

## Other comparisons with E2B or Vercel Sandbox

- [Blaxel Sandboxes vs E2B](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blaxel-sandboxes-vs-e2b.md)
- [Blaxel Sandboxes vs Vercel Sandbox](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blaxel-sandboxes-vs-vercel-sandbox.md)
- [Cloudflare Sandbox SDK vs E2B](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-sandbox-sdk-vs-e2b.md)
- [Cloudflare Sandbox SDK vs Vercel Sandbox](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-sandbox-sdk-vs-vercel-sandbox.md)
- [Daytona vs E2B](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/daytona-vs-e2b.md)
- [Daytona vs Vercel Sandbox](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/daytona-vs-vercel-sandbox.md)
- [E2B vs Modal Sandboxes](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/e2b-vs-modal-sandboxes.md)
- [E2B vs Runloop Devboxes](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/e2b-vs-runloop.md)
- [Modal Sandboxes vs Vercel Sandbox](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/modal-sandboxes-vs-vercel-sandbox.md)
- [Runloop Devboxes vs Vercel Sandbox](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/runloop-vs-vercel-sandbox.md)