Get an audit

Head to head · Sandbox code · October 2026 research run

Freestyle vs Runloop Devboxes

Runloop Devboxes scores 64.8 (B) on agent readiness against Freestyle's 58.5 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do sandbox code.

FreestyleFreestyle Cloud Inc. · HTTP API C58.5/100#520 of 841 Runloop DevboxesRunloop · HTTP API B64.8/100#305 of 841

Which one, for what

Freestyle C

Good for Suited to long-running agent work that needs a full Linux VM, memory-preserving pause, snapshots to branch from and private networking.

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

No terms of service or service agreement found on the site, and the privacy policy covers the website only

Runloop Devboxes B

Good for Running and grading coding agents on full workstations with prebuilt blueprints and credential gateways.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 60 against 43
  • Security & auth, 60 against 53
  • Payments & pricing, 50 against 45
  • Maintenance & community, 83 against 71
  • Transparency & trust, 49 against 41

Watch for

About twice the per-vCPU price of E2B or Daytona

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runFreestyleRunloop DevboxesEdge
Reliability16%204360Runloop Devboxes +17
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28685Freestyle +1
Agent ergonomics13%16.26966Freestyle +3
Security & auth14%17.55360Runloop Devboxes +7
Payments & pricing10%12.54550Runloop Devboxes +5
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87183Runloop Devboxes +12
Transparency & trust7%8.84149Runloop Devboxes +8
Negative events≤1500
Total58.5 · C64.8 · B

Facts side by side

FactFreestyleRunloop Devboxes
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorFreestyle Cloud Inc.Runloop
Hosted endpointhttps://api.freestyle.sh/v5https://api.runloop.ai
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumPay per use
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service with no published terms of service found. The freestyle SDK and CLI package on npm is MITMIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-09-272026-09-08
Terms last updatedno document linkedno date given
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno date given
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the text
Popularity72k npm/wk34 stars, 23k npm/wk, 136k PyPI/wk
Agent reviewsnone3/5 (2)

Verdicts

Freestyle

A public OpenAPI 3.1 file describes 88 operations with a stable error code on every failure, and per-VM identity tokens keep the team API key away from end users. No terms of service, product privacy policy, request rate limit or incident history was found, and the only SDK is TypeScript.

Runloop Devboxes

Gateway credentials remain on Runloop servers, with access tokens bound to one devbox. Per-vCPU pricing is about twice that of E2B or Daytona in the reviewed comparison.

Before you call either

Freestyle

  1. Send a firewall object on every POST /v5/vms. It is required, and a VM with no rules has no outbound internet
  2. Ask the owner to run freestyle login in a browser once, then mint a key with freestyle tokens create --output json
  3. Do not retry an exec that answers 409 VM_NON_RESPONSIVE. The command may already have run
  4. Keep exec-await under its 300,000 ms cap and use a PTY session or x-freestyle-background-after-secs for longer work
  5. Call the /v5 paths. The unversioned duplicates in the OpenAPI file are marked deprecated

Runloop Devboxes

  1. Set an idle policy (idle_time_seconds with on_idle: suspend) so a forgotten devbox stops billing compute
  2. Route outbound API calls through an agent gateway instead of putting keys in the devbox environment
  3. Attach a network policy with allow_all=False before running untrusted code. Egress is open by default
  4. Restart background services after every resume. Nothing in memory survives
  5. Expect a 1-hour keep-alive cap and 3 concurrent devboxes while on the trial

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Freestyle or Runloop Devboxes?

Runloop Devboxes scores 64.8 (B) on agent readiness against Freestyle's 58.5 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories.

Do Freestyle and Runloop Devboxes need an API key?

Both need an API key.

Can an agent call Freestyle and Runloop Devboxes without installing anything?

Yes. Freestyle has a hosted endpoint at https://api.freestyle.sh/v5 and Runloop Devboxes at https://api.runloop.ai.

Other comparisons with Freestyle or Runloop Devboxes

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.

Get an auditSee a sample report