CompareHead to head
E2B vs Daytona
E2B: Firecracker microVMs and templates for agent code, sold per running second. Daytona: Linux containers by default and real VMs on request, with a 15-minute idle stop, a 10 GiB disk cap and two regions.
Short answer: E2B is the cheaper fit for 3 of 9 common workloads and Daytona for 2; for the rest neither runs it as described or they cost the same. E2B offers 36 of 78 checked capabilities without a catch, Daytona 45; they differ on 32. Prices checked 29 October 2026.
What each costs
Monthly machine cost at list prices, before any AI model. A catch means it cannot run the workload exactly as described.
| Workload | E2B | Daytona |
|---|---|---|
| A personal agent that stays on (Hermes, OpenClaw) | $270.89 on Pro Catch: Sessions end after 24 hours, so an always-on machine has to be restarted by your own code. | $122.07 on Pay as you go Catch: 20 GiB of disk is over the 10 GiB limit. |
| A coding agent for one developer | $202.99 on Pro Catch: 40 GiB of disk is over the 20 GiB limit. | $55.75 on Pay as you go Catch: 40 GiB of disk is over the 10 GiB limit. |
| A code interpreter inside your product | $55.20 on Hobby | $55.38 on Pay as you go |
| A browser agent for a small team | $828.00 on Hobby | $830.70 on Pay as you go |
| Self-hosted n8n for a small team | $270.89 on Pro Catch: Sessions end after 24 hours, so an always-on machine has to be restarted by your own code. | $122.07 on Pay as you go Catch: 20 GiB of disk is over the 10 GiB limit. |
| A Discord or Slack bot for one server | $60.44 on Hobby Catch: Sessions end after 1 hour, so an always-on machine has to be restarted by your own code. | $60.84 on Pay as you go |
| Claude Code for a team of five | $414.96 on Pro Catch: 40 GiB of disk is over the 20 GiB limit. | $278.76 on Pay as you go Catch: 40 GiB of disk is over the 10 GiB limit. |
| A scraper that runs four times a day | $1.66 on Hobby | $1.67 on Pay as you go |
| Your own remote MCP server | $48.62 on Hobby Catch: Sessions end after 1 hour, so an always-on machine has to be restarted by your own code. | $49.01 on Pay as you go |
Feature by feature
The figure that decides each feature, from each provider's own pages.
| Feature | E2B | Daytona |
|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Yes Firecracker; non-root user | Partly Containers; VM on request |
| Sizes and regions | Partly 8 vCPU / 8 GiB; no GPU | Partly 4 vCPU / 8 GiB / 10 GiB |
| Lifecycle | Partly RAM + disk | Partly VM pause: RAM; container stop |
| Snapshots and forks | Yes RAM + disk; 20 forks | Partly Hot: RAM (VM); cold: disk |
| Storage | Partly 10–20 GiB; volumes in beta | Partly 10 GiB cap; volumes free |
| Idle and waking | Partly 5 min, then killed | Partly 15 min container; 60 min VM |
| Reaching it | Partly No auth | Partly Token, or signed URL |
| Custom domains | Partly Own proxy in front | Partly Own proxy |
| Outbound network | Yes No rate; no static IP | Partly Tier 3 for internet |
| Keys and secrets | Yes No, proxy | Yes No, proxy headers only |
| Ways to drive it | Yes No; SDK | Yes Yes, playground |
| Built-in agents | Partly None preinstalled; guides | Partly None; guides |
| Teams and accounts | Partly Per-project limit | Partly Org-wide resource pool |
| Billing models | Partly $0.000014/vCPU-s | Partly $0.0504/vCPU-hour |
| Trials and free tiers | Yes $100 one-off | Yes $200 credit, no card |
| The company | Partly FoundryLabs, Inc.; SOC 2 II | Partly Daytona Platforms Inc.; 99.95% Tier 4+ |
Where they differ
The 32 capabilities where one does something the other does not, or does it with a catch.
| Capability | E2B | Daytona |
|---|---|---|
| Its own virtual machine | Yes | With a catch By default each sandbox is a container sharing the host's kernel; a real virtual machine is a separate kind you have to choose. |
| Nested virtualisation | Not published | With a catch Nested virtual machines only work on the Linux VM class, and the feature has to be switched on for your organisation. |
| Large machines | No The ceiling is 8 cores and 8 GB of memory, so a 32 GB machine cannot be bought. | With a catch A normal sandbox stops at 4 cores and 8 GB; larger machines only come attached to graphics cards. |
| Resize while running | No The machine keeps the size it was created with; there is no resize. | With a catch You can add cores and memory while it runs, but you cannot shrink them, and the feature has to be switched on by support first. |
| GPUs | No There is no graphics processor option in any plan, tool or template. | Yes |
| Choose the region | With a catch Four regions exist, but outside the United States you have to contact support to be switched on. | Yes |
| Pause keeps memory | Yes | With a catch Only the full virtual machine can be paused with memory; a container sandbox loses what was running. |
| Pre-started pools | No | With a catch Pools exist, but they must be switched on for your organisation by asking support. |
| Starts in under a second | Not published | Yes |
| Snapshots with memory | Yes | With a catch Memory snapshots are only for full virtual machines; container sandboxes get files only. |
| Files survive a stop | No | Yes |
| Separate volumes | With a catch Volumes exist but are in private beta and need access from support. | Yes Volumes are network filesystems, not block disks, so a database table store is a poor fit. |
| One volume, several machines | With a catch One volume can serve several sandboxes, but volumes are in private beta. | Yes Writes are not transactional, so two machines writing one file means the last write wins. |
| Mount outside storage | With a catch Mounting a bucket needs a custom template with the right filesystem tool installed; it is not built in. | Yes |
| Can stay on indefinitely | With a catch A sandbox cannot run longer than an hour on the free plan or 24 hours on Pro, whether or not it is busy. | Yes |
| Choose the idle timeout | With a catch The clock counts down from creation and commands do not reset it, and the default action is to kill rather than pause. | Yes |
| Wakes on a request | Yes | No |
| Private link | No There is no built-in lock: anyone who has the link can open it. | Yes |
| Real SSH | With a catch SSH only works if you build a custom image with an SSH server and a relay inside it. | Yes |
| Terminal in the browser | Not published | Yes |
| Fixed outgoing IP | No There is no dedicated or fixed outbound address on any plan, including Enterprise. | Not published |
| Limited API keys | With a catch A key belongs to one team and there is no published read-only or per-machine scope. | Yes |
| Create from the website | No | Yes |
| MCP server | With a catch E2B's MCP support runs other companies' tools inside a sandbox; nothing of E2B's lets your assistant create sandboxes. | Yes |
| One-click Hermes | With a catch A prebuilt template is ready, but you still create the sandbox with a command and pay by usage. | No Daytona documents OpenClaw but not Hermes, so there is no one-click route. |
| One-click OpenClaw | No No OpenClaw template or guide is published. | With a catch OpenClaw is in the default snapshot, but you still run a command to start and configure it. |
| Browser built in | With a catch A browser comes with the desktop image or through Kernel cloud browsers, not in the default sandbox image. | Not published |
| Roles and permissions | Not published | With a catch Roles decide who can manage the organisation, but any member or key can still run commands in any running sandbox. |
| Single sign-on | Not published | With a catch SSO is available only on the Enterprise plan for collaborative organisations. |
| Hard spending cap | Yes | With a catch The ceiling is a prepaid pool of computing resources rather than a dollar amount, and running sandboxes are not stopped when it runs out. |
| Audit log | Not published | With a catch The log exists, but exporting it for an audit is not shipped yet. |
| Open source or self-hostable | Yes | With a catch Only the sandbox compute runs on your own machines, only after Daytona enables it, and the control plane stays Daytona's. |
Which to pick
Our reading of the sourced material, not a provider claim.
Pick E2B for
- A microVM with its own kernel, Docker, snapshots that keep memory, and up to 20 forks from a running sandbox.
- An agent that needs a real API and SDKs, plus templates built from any Docker image.
- A team that needs a SOC 2 report and a HIPAA path without an enterprise contract.
Avoid it for
- A long-running agent: the default timeout kills the sandbox after five minutes and commands do not reset it.
- Memory above 8 GiB, or any GPU workload.
- A client-facing link that must be private: public URLs have no authentication by default.
Pick Daytona for
- A Docker or Windows workload: the VM and Windows classes have their own kernel, and Docker-in-Docker is documented.
- A fast container for untrusted code, priced per reserved vCPU and second, with $200 of free compute and no card.
- A GPU sandbox alongside the CPU ones: up to 8 GPUs per sandbox, though on shared capacity and preemptible.
- Browser or desktop agents: a VNC desktop and a computer-use API are first-class.
Avoid it for
- A workload that needs more than 10 GiB of disk on a Linux sandbox; the 50 GiB presets are Windows only.
- An agent that runs long jobs with no inbound traffic: a container stops after 15 idle minutes even mid-build.
- Full internet on a small account: Tier 1 and 2 are network-restricted and cannot be overridden per sandbox.
- A strict per-tenant boundary: any organisation member or API key can exec in any running sandbox.
Want a third provider in the picture? Use side by side, or price your own numbers in the cost calculator.