# Sprites vs Vercel Sandbox

> Vercel Sandbox scores 69.6 (B) on agent readiness against Sprites's 58.3 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do sandbox code. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/sprites-vs-vercel-sandbox
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/sprites-vs-vercel-sandbox.md (~2,500 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/sprites-vs-vercel-sandbox.min.md (~630 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/sprites-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: 2026-10-09

Vercel Sandbox scores 69.6 (B) on agent readiness against Sprites's 58.3 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do sandbox code.

- Sprites: grade C, 58.3/100, rank #528 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/sprites.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/sprites.json
- Vercel Sandbox: grade B, 69.6/100, rank #168 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/vercel-sandbox.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/vercel-sandbox.json

## Which one, for what

### Sprites (C)

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

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

### Vercel Sandbox (B)

Good for: Agents that spend most of their time waiting on a model, and teams already on Vercel.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 70 against 55
- Security & auth, 80 against 59
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 30
- Transparency & trust, 75 against 59

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for: Tied to a Vercel team and project even when called from elsewhere, and access tokens reach the whole team


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Sprites | Vercel Sandbox | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 55 | 70 | Vercel Sandbox +15 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 74 | 77 | Vercel Sandbox +3 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 68 | 65 | Sprites +3 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 59 | 80 | Vercel Sandbox +21 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 40 | Vercel Sandbox +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 80 | 80 | even |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 59 | 75 | Vercel Sandbox +16 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -2 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **58.3 · C** | **69.6 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Sprites | Vercel Sandbox |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Fly.io | Vercel |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.vercel.com/v1/sandboxes` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under the Fly.io Terms of Service. The JavaScript, Go, Python and Elixir SDKs are MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-06 | 2026-09-11 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-04-29 | 2026-06-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-24 | 2026-06-01 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes, with an opt-out |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | 158k npm/wk, 59k PyPI/wk | 168 stars, 6.5M npm/wk, 462k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.5/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**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.

**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

### 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

### 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

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Sprites or Vercel Sandbox?

Vercel Sandbox scores 69.6 (B) on agent readiness against Sprites's 58.3 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories.

### Do Sprites and Vercel Sandbox need an API key?

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

### Can an agent call Sprites and Vercel Sandbox without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Sprites. Vercel Sandbox has a hosted endpoint at https://api.vercel.com/v1/sandboxes.


## For agents

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

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