Piston vs E2B
Open-source compile-and-run engine with an HTTP API and many language packages. For self-hosted execution of bounded submissions rather than persistent agent desktops. Piston is free software you run yourself, so it has no hourly price; E2B lists $0.166 an hour for a 2 vCPU / 4 GiB sandbox.
Piston against E2B, line by line
E2B baseline sourcesPrices are list prices for one hour of a 2 vCPU / 4 GiB sandbox: 2 × the vCPU rate + 4 × the memory rate. Each value links to the page it came from; not published means the vendor states no figure. How we compare.
Pick Piston instead of E2B when
- you want to run the sandbox layer yourself under a MIT licence (E2B's runtime is Apache-2.0 and self-hostable too).
Stay on E2B when
- you run model-written code you do not control and want a dedicated kernel per sandbox: E2B uses Firecracker microVMs, Piston uses process sandbox.
- pause has to keep running memory as well as files: E2B's pause saves both, and Piston does not state memory state in our data.
- you need a SOC 2 report: E2B states Type II, and Piston states none in our data.
- you want managed cloud, your own cloud account and self-hosting from one vendor: E2B offers all three, with BYOC on its Enterprise plan, and Piston offers one of them.
All Piston facts
Source per value- Isolation Isolation technology the vendor states for each sandbox.
- process sandbox 1
- Other isolation options Alternative runtimes the vendor offers besides the default (e.g. VM runtime, gVisor for GPU).
- Isolate inside Docker; separate Linux namespaces per submission 1
- Deployment Managed cloud service, self-hosted software, or both.
- self-hosted 1
- Billing basis What the meter counts: wall-clock allocated resources, active CPU only, requests/plan quota, session-hours, or free software.
- free (OSS) 1
- vCPU price $/vCPU-hr Published on-demand CPU rate normalised to USD per vCPU-hour (per-second rates multiplied by 3,600; per-core rates divided by vCPUs per core where the vendor defines it). Lowest public tier, default region. 0 means the vendor states no separate CPU charge.
- Not published
- Memory price $/GiB-hr Published memory rate normalised to USD per GiB-hour (GB treated as GiB where the vendor does not distinguish). 0 means the vendor states memory is free.
- Not published
- Sandbox from $/sandbox-hr Smallest published per-sandbox hourly price, where the vendor publishes one.
- Not published
- Paid plan from $/mo Cheapest paid platform plan fee (before usage).
- Not published
- Free tier A free plan, free monthly allowance or sign-up credit exists.
- Not published
- Free tier detail What the free tier or credit includes, as published.
- Not published
- Cold start ms Vendor-published create/boot time in milliseconds (a vendor claim, not our benchmark). Only filled when the vendor publishes a number; see startup_claim for percentile and conditions.
- Not published
- Resume time ms Vendor-published resume-from-pause/standby/snapshot time in milliseconds.
- Not published
- Startup claim The vendor's startup/resume wording with conditions, quoted or closely paraphrased.
- Not published
- Max session length Longest single sandbox session by plan, as published.
- Defaults: 3 s run CPU and wall time, 10 s compile timeout 1
- Persistence / snapshots Filesystem state can be kept between runs (snapshots, persistent disks, volumes).
- Not published
- Pause / resume A sandbox can be paused, suspended, hibernated or put in standby and resumed later.
- Not published
- Memory state kept Pause/hibernate preserves running memory state, not only the filesystem.
- Not published
- Fork / branch A running or snapshotted sandbox can be cloned into new sandboxes.
- Not published
- GPU GPU sandboxes are offered.
- Not published
- Self-host Can run on your own hardware or cluster (open source or licensed).
- Yes 1
- BYOC / VPC Vendor-managed deployment inside your own cloud account.
- Not published
- Open source Core sandbox runtime is published under an open-source licence.
- Yes 1
- Licence Open-source licence of the runtime, if any.
- MIT 1
- SDKs / languages Official SDK languages (or supported execution languages where noted).
- Not published
- Regions Published regions or region count.
- Not published
- Max vCPU per sandbox vCPU Largest published vCPU count per sandbox on any self-serve or enterprise plan.
- Not published
- Max memory per sandbox GiB Largest published memory per sandbox.
- Not published
- Concurrency Published concurrent sandbox limits by plan.
- Not published
- SOC 2 SOC 2 status as stated by the vendor.
- Not published
- HIPAA Vendor offers HIPAA-compliant usage/BAA (on any plan).
- Not published
- 2 vCPU + 4 GiB per hour $/hr Hourly list price of one 2 vCPU / 4 GiB sandbox: 2 x the vCPU rate + 4 x the memory rate, from the two published rates. Left empty for self-hosted software and for vendors without both rates. Vendors that bill CPU only while busy (Vercel, Cloudflare, Upstash, Tensorlake, AWS AgentCore) cost less for idle agents than this shows.
- Not published
- Price vs E2B x E2B The 2 vCPU + 4 GiB hourly price divided by E2B's own ($0.1656 at $0.000014/vCPU-s and $0.0000045/GiB-s). Under 1 is cheaper than E2B.
- Not published
- Status Preview, experimental, beta, sunset or self-hosting caveats the vendor documents.
- Not published
Sources
- github.com accessed 2026-11-11
Piston in the E2B comparisons
- Self-hosted E2B alternativesWhich E2B alternatives can I run on my own hardware or cluster? 9 listed.
Compare with other E2B alternatives
All 41- Agent vs E2B no comparable hourly price, pluggable (gVisor/Kata)
- Docker vs E2B no comparable hourly price, microVM
- Judge0 vs E2B no comparable hourly price, process sandbox
- microsandbox vs E2B no comparable hourly price, microVM
- OpenSandbox vs E2B no comparable hourly price, Firecracker microVM
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