# SPACE vs Sprites

> Sprites scores 58.3 (C) to SPACE's 56.2 (C) for code sandboxes. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
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- Updated: 2026-10-16

Sprites scores 58.3 (C) on agent readiness against SPACE's 56.2 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. SPACE leads on security & auth, payments & pricing and transparency & trust. Both do code sandboxes.

- SPACE: grade C, 56.2/100, rank #683 of 1098. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/perplexity-space.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/perplexity-space.json
- Sprites: grade C, 58.3/100, rank #625 of 1098. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/sprites.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/sprites.json
- Best code execution sandboxes for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/code-sandboxes/index.md
- All 120 sandboxes comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/code-sandboxes/index.md

## Which one, for what

### SPACE (C)

Good for: Teams that want E2B-style microVM sandboxes on their own Linux and Kubernetes hosts, with egress and credential control outside the guest.

Ahead on:
- Security & auth, 64 against 59
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
- Transparency & trust, 68 against 59

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

Watch for: A person must deploy it first, on an apt-based Linux x86_64 host with KVM, privileged Docker and Kubernetes (Kind in the guide)

### Sprites (C)

Good for: Agents that need a long-lived machine with installed tools and files kept between sessions, and rollback by checkpoint.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 55 against 32
- Maintenance & community, 80 against 26

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 | SPACE | Sprites | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 32 | 55 | Sprites +23 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 75 | 74 | SPACE +1 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 66 | 68 | Sprites +2 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 64 | 59 | SPACE +5 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 30 | SPACE +30 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 26 | 80 | Sprites +54 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 68 | 59 | SPACE +9 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -2 | |
| **Total** | | **56.2 · C** | **58.3 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | SPACE | Sprites |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Perplexity | Fly.io |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Free | 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 | no | yes |
| Last release | none | 2026-10-06 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2026-04-29 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2026-09-24 |
| Customer content may train models |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  | not found in the text |
| Popularity | none | 158k npm/wk, 59k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (4) | none |

## Verdicts

**SPACE.** Once deployed, SPACE's native API has a public OpenAPI 3.1 contract, stable error codes with a retryable flag and 24-hour idempotency keys, and egress and credential controls sit outside the VM. A person must first deploy it on a Linux x86_64 host with KVM and Kubernetes. Version 0.8.0 has no tagged release, changelog or public container images.

**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

### SPACE

1. Ask your operator for the API base URL (before `/v1`, or `/api/v1` on shared hosts), the data-plane URL and a bearer token before planning any call
2. Poll the returned operation until it succeeds and the sandbox is `running` before creating a command. A 202 response is not readiness
3. Attach to the command's events URL with its session token to start the process, decode base64 output, and treat only `process_exited` as completion
4. Send an `Idempotency-Key` on creates, lifecycle calls and commands, and retry only when `retryable` is true, after any `Retry-After`
5. Save output as it arrives. Reconnecting with `Last-Event-ID` returns `resync_required`, not the missed output

### 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, SPACE or Sprites?

Sprites scores 58.3 (C) on agent readiness against SPACE's 56.2 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. SPACE leads on security & auth, payments & pricing and transparency & trust.

### Do SPACE and Sprites need an API key?

SPACE takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Sprites needs an API key.

### Can an agent call SPACE and Sprites without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for SPACE. No hosted endpoint is listed for Sprites.

### Are SPACE and Sprites open source?

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

## Other comparisons with SPACE or Sprites

- [Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Code Interpreter vs SPACE](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentcore-code-interpreter-vs-perplexity-space.md)
- [Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Code Interpreter vs Sprites](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentcore-code-interpreter-vs-sprites.md)
- [Blaxel Sandboxes vs SPACE](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blaxel-sandboxes-vs-perplexity-space.md)
- [Blaxel Sandboxes vs Sprites](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/blaxel-sandboxes-vs-sprites.md)
- [Cloudflare Sandbox SDK vs SPACE](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-sandbox-sdk-vs-perplexity-space.md)
- [Cloudflare Sandbox SDK vs Sprites](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-sandbox-sdk-vs-sprites.md)
- [Daytona vs SPACE](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/daytona-vs-perplexity-space.md)
- [Daytona vs Sprites](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/daytona-vs-sprites.md)
- [Deno Sandbox vs SPACE](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deno-sandbox-vs-perplexity-space.md)
- [Deno Sandbox vs Sprites](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deno-sandbox-vs-sprites.md)
- [E2B vs SPACE](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/e2b-vs-perplexity-space.md)
- [E2B vs Sprites](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/e2b-vs-sprites.md)
- [Freestyle vs SPACE](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/freestyle-vs-perplexity-space.md)
- [Freestyle vs Sprites](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/freestyle-vs-sprites.md)
- [Microsoft Execution Containers vs SPACE](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/microsoft-execution-containers-vs-perplexity-space.md)
- [Microsoft Execution Containers vs Sprites](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/microsoft-execution-containers-vs-sprites.md)
- [Modal Sandboxes vs SPACE](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/modal-sandboxes-vs-perplexity-space.md)
- [Modal Sandboxes vs Sprites](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/modal-sandboxes-vs-sprites.md)
- [Morph Cloud vs SPACE](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/morph-cloud-vs-perplexity-space.md)
- [Morph Cloud vs Sprites](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/morph-cloud-vs-sprites.md)
- [SPACE vs Runloop Devboxes](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/perplexity-space-vs-runloop.md)
- [SPACE vs Together Code Sandbox](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/perplexity-space-vs-together-code-sandbox.md)
- [SPACE vs Vercel Sandbox](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/perplexity-space-vs-vercel-sandbox.md)
- [Runloop Devboxes vs Sprites](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/runloop-vs-sprites.md)
- [Sprites vs Together Code Sandbox](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/sprites-vs-together-code-sandbox.md)
- [Sprites vs Vercel Sandbox](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/sprites-vs-vercel-sandbox.md)
- [Agent 37 Cloud vs SPACE](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent37-vs-perplexity-space.md)
- [Agent 37 Cloud vs Sprites](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent37-vs-sprites.md)

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Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp