E2B Alternatives

Upstash vs E2B

Upstash Box gives agents persistent sandboxes billed on active CPU only, with memory free and boxes that freeze when idle. For agents that idle most of the time. A 2 vCPU / 4 GiB sandbox lists at $0.200 an hour on Upstash against $0.166 on E2B, 21% more.

active-cpu-billingmanagedpersistent

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Upstash against E2B, line by line

E2B baseline sources
Field -E2B (baseline) +Upstash Change
2 vCPU + 4 GiB, per hour $0.166 (source: E2B Pricing) $0.200 (source: Upstash Box pricing) +21%
vCPU, per hour $0.0504 (source: E2B Pricing) $0.10 (source: Upstash Box pricing) +98%
Memory, per GiB-hour $0.0162 (source: E2B Pricing) $0 (source: Upstash Box pricing) −100%
Billed on wall clock (source: E2B Pricing) active CPU (source: Upstash Box pricing) differs
Isolation Firecracker microVM (source: E2B homepage) container (source: Upstash Box pricing) differs
Max session 1 h (Hobby), 24 h (Pro) (source: E2B Pricing) Idle timeout 1 h (Free), 6 h (Pay as you go), none (Keep Alive) (source: Upstash Box pricing) differs
Persistence state kept, pause/resume, memory kept, fork (source: E2B homepage) state kept, pause/resume (source: Upstash Box pricing) differs
Self-host Yes, Apache-2.0 (source: E2B runtime (GitHub)) not published Upstash: no figure
Your own cloud (BYOC) Yes (source: E2B homepage) not published Upstash: no figure
GPU No (source: E2B Pricing) not published Upstash: no figure
SDKs Python, JavaScript/TypeScript (source: E2B Pricing) TypeScript (@upstash/box), Python (upstash-box); Node.js and Python runtimes (source: Upstash Box pricing) differs
SOC 2 Type II (source: E2B homepage) Type II (source: Upstash Compliance) same
Free tier Hobby: $0 plan fee, one-time $100 usage credit, 10 concurrent sandboxes, 1-hour sessions. (source: E2B Pricing) Free: 5 CPU-hours/month, 10 concurrent boxes, 2 vCPU / 4 GB per box, 1-hour idle timeout. (source: Upstash Box pricing) differs

Prices 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 Upstash instead of E2B when

  • your agents run longer than E2B's 24-hour Pro session cap: Idle timeout 1 h (Free), 6 h (Pay as you go), none (Keep Alive).
  • your agents idle between tool calls: Upstash bills CPU only while it is busy, while E2B meters wall-clock time.
  • you are prototyping: Free: 5 CPU-hours/month, 10 concurrent boxes, 2 vCPU / 4 GB per box, 1-hour idle timeout.

Stay on E2B when

  • you run model-written code you do not control and want a dedicated kernel per sandbox: E2B uses Firecracker microVMs, Upstash uses container.
  • pause has to keep running memory as well as files: E2B's pause saves both, and Upstash does not state memory state in our data.
  • price decides it: Upstash lists $0.200 an hour for the 2 vCPU / 4 GiB box against $0.166 on E2B at full CPU; idle time between tool calls bills less.
  • you want managed cloud, your own cloud account and self-hosting from one vendor: E2B offers all three, with BYOC on its Enterprise plan.

All Upstash facts

Source per value
Isolation Isolation technology the vendor states for each sandbox.
container 1
Other isolation options Alternative runtimes the vendor offers besides the default (e.g. VM runtime, gVisor for GPU).
Not published
Deployment Managed cloud service, self-hosted software, or both.
managed 1
Billing basis What the meter counts: wall-clock allocated resources, active CPU only, requests/plan quota, session-hours, or free software.
active CPU 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.
$0.10 1
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.
$0.00 1
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.
Yes 1
Free tier detail What the free tier or credit includes, as published.
Free: 5 CPU-hours/month, 10 concurrent boxes, 2 vCPU / 4 GB per box, 1-hour idle timeout. 1
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.
Idle timeout 1 h (Free), 6 h (Pay as you go), none (Keep Alive) 1
Persistence / snapshots Filesystem state can be kept between runs (snapshots, persistent disks, volumes).
Yes 1
Pause / resume A sandbox can be paused, suspended, hibernated or put in standby and resumed later.
Yes 1
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).
Not published
BYOC / VPC Vendor-managed deployment inside your own cloud account.
Not published
Open source Core sandbox runtime is published under an open-source licence.
Not published
Licence Open-source licence of the runtime, if any.
Not published
SDKs / languages Official SDK languages (or supported execution languages where noted).
TypeScript (@upstash/box), Python (upstash-box); Node.js and Python runtimes 1
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.
8 1
Max memory per sandbox GiB Largest published memory per sandbox.
16 1
Concurrency Published concurrent sandbox limits by plan.
10 (Free), 1,000 soft limit (Pay as you go, Fixed) 1
SOC 2 SOC 2 status as stated by the vendor.
Type II 3
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.
$0.20 1
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.
1.21 1
Status Preview, experimental, beta, sunset or self-hosting caveats the vendor documents.
Not published
Pricing model
usage
From
$0.10 active CPU-hour
Pricing note
$0.10 per active CPU-hour (Small); memory free; storage $0.10/GB-month after 10 GB; Keep Alive from $8/box/month. Pricing checked 2026-11-09.

Sources

  1. Upstash Box pricing accessed 2026-11-09
  2. Upstash: AI Agent Sandboxes Compared (2026) accessed 2026-11-09
  3. Upstash Compliance accessed 2026-11-09

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