# Freestyle vs Together Code Sandbox

> Freestyle scores 58.5 (C) on agent readiness against Together Code Sandbox's 53.6 (D), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Together Code Sandbox leads on maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do sandbox code. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes…

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/freestyle-vs-together-code-sandbox
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/freestyle-vs-together-code-sandbox.md (~2,650 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/freestyle-vs-together-code-sandbox.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/freestyle-vs-together-code-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: 2026-10-09

Freestyle scores 58.5 (C) on agent readiness against Together Code Sandbox's 53.6 (D), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Together Code Sandbox leads on maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do sandbox code.

- Freestyle: grade C, 58.5/100, rank #520 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/freestyle.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/freestyle.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

### 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.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 43 against 25
- Security & auth, 53 against 47
- Payments & pricing, 45 against 20

Also in its favour:
- Free to start without a card

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

### 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:
- Maintenance & community, 83 against 71
- Transparency & trust, 60 against 41

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 | Freestyle | Together Code Sandbox | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 43 | 25 | Freestyle +18 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 86 | 86 | even |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 69 | 70 | Together Code Sandbox +1 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 53 | 47 | Freestyle +6 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 45 | 20 | Freestyle +25 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 71 | 83 | Together Code Sandbox +12 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 41 | 60 | Together Code Sandbox +19 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **58.5 · C** | **53.6 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Freestyle | Together Code Sandbox |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Freestyle Cloud Inc. | Together AI |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.freestyle.sh/v5` | `https://api.bartender.codesandbox.io` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service with no published terms of service found. The `freestyle` SDK and CLI package on npm is MIT | 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 | 2026-09-27 | 2026-10-07 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no date given |
| Customer content may train models |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 72k npm/wk | 3 stars, 1.3k npm/wk, 3.4k PyPI/wk |

## 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.

**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

### 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

### 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, Freestyle or Together Code Sandbox?

Freestyle scores 58.5 (C) on agent readiness against Together Code Sandbox's 53.6 (D), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Together Code Sandbox leads on maintenance & community and transparency & trust.

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

Both need an API key.

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

Yes. Freestyle has a hosted endpoint at https://api.freestyle.sh/v5 and Together Code Sandbox at https://api.bartender.codesandbox.io.


## For agents

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

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