E2B alternatives: Daytona, Modal, Cloudflare Sandbox

Daytona, Modal and Cloudflare Sandbox SDK are three documented alternatives to E2B for running agent-generated code in isolated sandboxes. They differ mainly in where they run: Daytona is a standalone sandbox platform, Modal extends its container platform, and Cloudflare runs through Workers. Checked 2026-10-14.

Quick comparison

Why teams look for alternatives

The sources do not state any reasons for leaving E2B. Treat the following as criteria to check instead: whether you need a given hosting surface, SDK language coverage, persistence behavior and license terms.

For reference, E2B's documentation describes a Linux VM sandbox that can be paused and resumed, with pausing saving filesystem and memory (E2B docs). The E2B repository reports Apache-2.0 (E2B repo). Compare these against the options below. See the E2B hub for more.

How the options differ

Surfaces and SDKs

Daytona documents SDKs for TypeScript, Python, Ruby, Go and Java, plus a CLI and OpenAPI-described APIs (Daytona docs). Its sandboxes are managed through SDKs, API and CLI.

Modal documents Sandboxes as secure containers created through Sandbox.create, with Python and JavaScript examples (Modal).

Cloudflare documents two sandbox environments, both accessed through a Worker (Cloudflare docs).

Isolation and persistence

Daytona describes sandboxes with a dedicated kernel, filesystem and network stack, and stateful snapshots that persist across sessions.

Cloudflare's container instances are microVMs with their own kernel and network. The sandbox container uses the Durable Object scheduling policy, which is in public beta.

Modal's excerpts describe isolated containers; persistence behavior is not stated in the cited sources.

Deployment and license

Daytona and Modal excerpts describe hosted platforms accessed with an account or app; self-hosting is not stated in the cited sources. Cloudflare's sandbox runs on its edge network, per the repository, which reports no recognized license.

Migration notes

None of the sources state API compatibility between E2B and any alternative. Expect to rewrite integration code.

E2B's pattern is Sandbox.create() then sandbox.commands.run(...) with an E2B_API_KEY. Daytona's equivalent documented pattern is daytona.create() then sandbox.process.code_run(...) with an API key. Modal uses Sandbox.create(app=...) then sb.exec(...).

Cloudflare documents a migration path only for its own 0.x SDK users. Its docs say Sandbox SDK 0.x apps can move to the current version.

How we compared

We read the Daytona documentation, the Modal Sandboxes guide, the Cloudflare Sandbox SDK repository metadata and Cloudflare docs, and the E2B repository and docs, all checked 2026-10-14. We did not run any tool, benchmark, or test migrations, and we did not verify pricing.

Limitations

The sources do not state pricing, Daytona or Modal licenses, self-hosting options, API compatibility with E2B, or performance comparisons. The ordering here reflects documented surface fit only and is not a recommendation.

See also the Agent infra category, the hubs for E2B, Daytona, Modal and Cloudflare Sandbox SDK, and the latest launch: Cloudflare Sandbox SDK 1.0.0 is a ground-up rewrite.