E2B vs Shellbox

E2B costs $0.0504 per vCPU-hour and Shellbox costs $0.01 per vCPU-hour. E2B runs Firecracker microVMs and limits a session to 24 hours. Shellbox runs Firecracker microVMs and has no session limit.

Updated

E2B

Isolation
Firecracker microVM
Free tier
$100 credit, one time
Max session
24 hours

Shellbox

Isolation
Firecracker microVM
Free tier
Not listed
Max session
No limit

What is different

9 fields differ. The rest are the same or not listed.

E2B
Shellbox
vCPU, per hour
E2B: $0.0504
Shellbox: $0.01
RAM, per GiB-hour
E2B: $0.0162
Shellbox: Included
Storage
E2B: Free
Shellbox: A stopped box costs $0.50 per x1 slot per month
Paid plan from
E2B: $150 / month
Shellbox: Pay as you go
Billing
E2B: Per second
Shellbox: Bundled machine time
Max session
E2B: 24 hours
Shellbox: No limit
Largest sandbox
E2B: 8 vCPU · 8 GiB
Shellbox: 16 vCPU · 32 GiB
Concurrent sandboxes
E2B: Up to 100
Shellbox: Up to 16
Integrations
E2B: LangChain, OpenAI Agents SDK, Vercel AI SDK, MCP, Claude Code
Shellbox: Claude Code

Full comparison

18 fields, at each provider's list price

Pricing

vCPU, per hour
E2B: $0.0504
Shellbox: $0.01
RAM, per GiB-hour
E2B: $0.0162
Shellbox: Included
Storage
E2B: Free
Shellbox: A stopped box costs $0.50 per x1 slot per month
Free tier
E2B: $100 credit, one time
Shellbox: Not listed
Paid plan from
E2B: $150 / month
Shellbox: Pay as you go
Billing
E2B: Per second
Shellbox: Bundled machine time

Limits

Max session
E2B: 24 hours
Shellbox: No limit
Idle stop
E2B: Not listed
Shellbox: After 2 minutes
Largest sandbox
E2B: 8 vCPU · 8 GiB
Shellbox: 16 vCPU · 32 GiB
Concurrent sandboxes
E2B: Up to 100
Shellbox: Up to 16

Platform

Isolation
E2B: Firecracker microVM
Shellbox: Firecracker microVM
GPU
E2B: No
Shellbox: Not listed
Snapshots
E2B:
Shellbox:
Pause and resume
E2B:
Shellbox:

Developer

SDKs
E2B: Python, JavaScript / TypeScript
Shellbox: Not listed
Integrations
E2B: LangChain, OpenAI Agents SDK, Vercel AI SDK, MCP, Claude Code
Shellbox: Claude Code

Trust

License
E2B: Apache-2.0
Shellbox: Not listed
BYOC
E2B: Enterprise plan
Shellbox: Not listed

Hourly cost

One sandbox running for one hour

E2B
Shellbox
1 vCPU · 2 GiB
E2B: $0.083
Shellbox: $0.010
2 vCPU · 4 GiB
E2B: $0.166
Shellbox: $0.020
4 vCPU · 8 GiB
E2B: $0.331
Shellbox: $0.040

Compute only, at list rates.

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Which one fits

Based on the fields above

E2B fits when

  • You want an open-source platform (Apache-2.0) that you can self-host.
  • You use LangChain, the OpenAI Agents SDK, the Vercel AI SDK or MCP.
  • You need a desktop in the sandbox.
  • You need the sandboxes in your own cloud account.

Shellbox fits when

  • A session must run longer than 24 hours.
  • You want to pay only for usage, with no plan fee.
  • You want the lower list price: $0.020 against $0.166 an hour for 2 vCPU and 4 GiB.
  • You need a sandbox larger than 8 vCPU · 8 GiB.

More comparisons

See all comparisons

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