CompareHead to head
E2B vs Vercel Sandbox
E2B: Firecracker microVMs and templates for agent code, sold per running second. Vercel Sandbox: Firecracker microVMs inside Vercel, billed on active CPU and provisioned memory.
Short answer: E2B is the cheaper fit for 1 of 9 common workloads and Vercel Sandbox for 4; for the rest neither runs it as described or they cost the same. E2B offers 36 of 78 checked capabilities without a catch, Vercel Sandbox 34; they differ on 40. 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 | Vercel Sandbox |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | $73.12 on Pro Catch: Sessions end after 24 hours, so an always-on machine has to be restarted by your own code. |
| A coding agent for one developer | $202.99 on Pro Catch: 40 GiB of disk is over the 20 GiB limit. | $32.91 on Pro |
| A code interpreter inside your product | $55.20 on Hobby | $42.77 on Pro |
| A browser agent for a small team | $828.00 on Hobby | $462.40 on Pro |
| 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. | $72.74 on Pro Catch: Sessions end after 24 hours, so an always-on machine has to be restarted by your own code. |
| 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. | $33.76 on Pro Catch: Sessions end after 24 hours, so an always-on machine has to be restarted by your own code. |
| Claude Code for a team of five | $414.96 on Pro Catch: 40 GiB of disk is over the 20 GiB limit. | $162.10 on Pro |
| A scraper that runs four times a day | $1.66 on Hobby | $20.00 on Pro |
| 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. | $20.00 on Pro Catch: Sessions end after 24 hours, so an always-on machine has to be restarted by your own code. |
Feature by feature
The figure that decides each feature, from each provider's own pages.
| Feature | E2B | Vercel Sandbox |
|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Yes Firecracker; non-root user | Partly Firecracker; root + Docker |
| Sizes and regions | Partly 8 vCPU / 8 GiB; no GPU | Yes 19 regions |
| Lifecycle | Partly RAM + disk | Partly Filesystem only |
| Snapshots and forks | Yes RAM + disk; 20 forks | Partly Filesystem only |
| Storage | Partly 10–20 GiB; volumes in beta | Partly 64 GB ephemeral; drives |
| Idle and waking | Partly 5 min, then killed | Partly 5 min session |
| Reaching it | Partly No auth | Partly Web ports only |
| Custom domains | Partly Own proxy in front | Not published Not published |
| Outbound network | Yes No rate; no static IP | Yes $0.15/GB |
| Keys and secrets | Yes No, proxy | Yes No, proxy |
| Ways to drive it | Yes No; SDK | Partly No; CLI or SDK |
| Built-in agents | Partly None preinstalled; guides | Partly Agents in image; no API |
| Teams and accounts | Partly Per-project limit | Partly Spend management |
| Billing models | Partly $0.000014/vCPU-s | Partly $0.128/CPU-hour |
| Trials and free tiers | Yes $100 one-off | Partly Hobby quotas; 14-day Pro |
| The company | Partly FoundryLabs, Inc.; SOC 2 II | Yes Vercel Inc.; 99.99% platform |
Where they differ
The 40 capabilities where one does something the other does not, or does it with a catch.
| Capability | E2B | Vercel Sandbox |
|---|---|---|
| Large machines | No The ceiling is 8 cores and 8 GB of memory, so a 32 GB machine cannot be bought. | With a catch Machines above 8 cores and 16 GB need the Enterprise plan; the self-serve plans stop there. |
| 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 | No |
| Starts in under a second | Not published | Yes |
| Snapshots with memory | Yes | No |
| Copy a running machine | Yes The source pauses while it is copied and its open connections drop. | With a catch A fork starts from a snapshot of the current state, and taking one stops the session it copies. |
| Automatic backups | No | With a catch A copy is saved each time the machine stops, but there is no schedule and only the last few are kept. |
| Files survive a stop | No | Yes |
| Separate volumes | With a catch Volumes exist but are in private beta and need access from support. | Yes |
| Mount outside storage | With a catch Mounting a bucket needs a custom template with the right filesystem tool installed; it is not built in. | No |
| Large disk | No The largest included disk is 20 GiB, short of 100 GB. | 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. | No |
| Scheduled runs | No | Yes |
| Terminal in the browser | Not published | Yes |
| Tunnel to your computer | Not published | No Exposed ports are reachable on the internet, but there is no documented way to map one onto your own computer. |
| Non-web ports | Not published | No Only web ports can be exposed, so a database or game server cannot be reached from outside. |
| Your own domain | With a catch You have to run a server of your own in front of the machine to use your domain. | Not published |
| Automatic HTTPS | No The certificate is obtained by the server you run in front of the machine, not by the provider. | Not published |
| Outbound data included | Not published | With a catch Only 20 GB a month is included; beyond that, traffic costs $0.15 a gigabyte. |
| Fixed outgoing IP | No There is no dedicated or fixed outbound address on any plan, including Enterprise. | Not published |
| Stored secrets | Yes | With a catch There is no saved list of secrets for a sandbox; you pass the values each time you create or run one. |
| Documented HTTP API | Yes | No Sandbox is driven through the SDKs and the CLI; no HTTP API is documented. |
| 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. | No No MCP server manages sandboxes; Vercel's MCP material is about building MCP servers on Vercel. |
| Coding agents preinstalled | With a catch A prebuilt Hermes template exists, but the default image has no agent and there is no Claude Code or Codex template. | 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 A Hermes guide exists, but you follow terminal steps; nothing is one click. |
| Browser built in | With a catch A browser comes with the desktop image or through Kernel cloud browsers, not in the default sandbox image. | No No browser is documented in the image or as an API; agents in the image are terminal tools. |
| Desktop for computer use | Yes | No No desktop, VNC or computer-use API is published for Sandbox. |
| Roles and permissions | Not published | Yes |
| Single sign-on | Not published | With a catch SAML single sign-on is a paid add-on at $300 a month. |
| Hard spending cap | Yes | With a catch Spend Management can pause projects at an amount you set, but it is a project pause rather than a sandbox stop. |
| Usage alerts | Not published | Yes |
| Audit log | Not published | With a catch Audit Logs are a Vercel Enterprise feature; Sandbox-specific coverage is not established. |
| Billed per second | Yes | With a catch Memory is counted in whole minutes, so a 20-second task is charged for a full minute of memory. |
| CPU billed only while working | No The bill follows the cores and memory you gave the machine, not what it used. | Yes |
| No monthly fee | Yes | With a catch The free Hobby plan is for personal projects only; commercial use needs the $20-a-month Pro plan. |
| Ongoing free tier | No The $100 is a one-time credit, not a monthly allowance. | With a catch The free Hobby plan is limited to personal projects and stops creating sandboxes when its allowance runs out. |
| Free starting credit | Yes | With a catch The credit is part of a 14-day Pro trial, not a standing signup credit. |
| Try without a card | Yes | Not published |
| SOC 2 report | Yes | With a catch Vercel holds SOC 2 Type 2, but Sandbox's place in the audit scope is not published. |
| Open source or self-hostable | Yes | No Vercel Sandbox is hosted on Vercel; no self-hosted edition is published. |
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 Vercel Sandbox for
- A Firecracker microVM with root, Docker and FUSE, up to 32 vCPU and 64 GB of NVMe.
- A workload that needs to run close to users: 19 regions, and the most of any provider here.
- A Vercel-hosted app that wants a sandbox next to its deployments, with credentials brokered out of the machine.
Avoid it for
- An always-on agent: the default session timeout is five minutes and the Hobby cap is 45 minutes.
- A confidential Hobby workload: Hobby content may be used for model training, and the plan is non-commercial.
- Anything needing SSH, a desktop or a raw TCP inbound port.
Want a third provider in the picture? Use side by side, or price your own numbers in the cost calculator.