E2B alternative

orkestr vs E2B

E2B popularised sandboxes for AI agents. orkestr runs the same kind of disposable VM in the EU by default, from an EU company, and bills what the sandbox actually uses.

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The short version

  • E2B runs in the US by default. Its EU region is for Pro customers ($150/mo) and enabled through support. orkestr sandboxes run in the EU on every tier.
  • E2B bills the CPU and RAM a sandbox is allocated. orkestr bills actual on-CPU time and working-set RAM, so an idle sandbox costs almost nothing.
  • Our example agent workload is about $205/mo on E2B in its EU region and at most about €51/mo on orkestr.
  • E2B wins on scale (up to 1,100 concurrent sandboxes on Pro), memory snapshots and forking, open source and APAC.

Quick comparison

orkestrE2B
CompanyEU company (Romania), EU sub-processors onlyFoundryLabs, Inc. (Delaware, US)
Where sandboxes runEU only: Germany, Finland, FranceUS by default; EU and APAC on Pro and above, via support
IsolationA VM per sandbox, own kernel, on every tiermicroVM per sandbox, own kernel
Billing basisActual on-CPU time and working-set RAM, per secondAllocated CPU and RAM, per second
Rates€0.045/vCPU-h, €0.015/GiB-h at full use$0.0504/vCPU-h, $0.0162/GiB-h
Plan feeNone, pay as you go$0 Hobby, $150/mo Pro
Free credit€5 credit with no card, €25 with a card$100 one-time, no card
Session lengthUp to 24 h per call; pause to keep longer1 h Hobby, 24 h Pro; pause to keep longer
Concurrency32 GB of RAM running at once on pay as you go (8 medium), more on Enterprise20 Hobby, 100 to 1,100 Pro
Persistent volumesPersistent volumes, up to 200 GB on pay as you goPrivate beta
Egress controlOff by default; open internet or a domain allowlist on every tierAllow and deny lists
SnapshotsPause/resume, 10 paused sandboxes kept 30 daysPause/resume, memory snapshots, fork
SDKs and toolsPython, JS, REST, CLI, MCPPython, JS/TS, CLI

E2B prices from their public pricing pages, last checked . All prices exclude VAT.

The EU is a plan upgrade on E2B

E2B's managed cloud runs in three regions and the US is the default on every plan. The EU region is a shared cluster for Pro customers and above, $150 a month, switched on through support. Its privacy policy says data may be processed outside your jurisdiction, specifically the USA.

On orkestr every sandbox runs in the EU from the first one, on the free tier too. Code, files, env vars and snapshots stay in Germany, Finland or France, operated by an EU company with a self-serve GDPR DPA.

Allocated vs actually used

E2B says it plainly: the rate depends on how much compute a sandbox is allocated, not on how much it uses. An agent that spends most of a session waiting on a model call still pays for the full size.

orkestr meters per second from the VM itself: real on-CPU time and working-set memory. A sandbox sitting idle while your agent thinks costs close to nothing. The cost example below assumes the worst case, a sandbox flat out the whole time, so your real bill is lower.

What an agent workload costs

An AI agent product running 2,000 sandbox sessions a month, each 2 vCPU / 4 GB for 10 minutes (about 333 sandbox-hours), plus 20 GB of persistent storage, one developer.

orkestr

  • Compute, 333 h x medium (2 vCPU / 4 GB), flat out≤ €50
  • 20 GB persistent storage (first 10 GB free)€1
  • Plan fee or seat€0
Total / monthat most €51

E2B

  • Pro plan (needed for the EU region)$150
  • Compute, 333 h x 2 vCPU / 4 GiB$55.20
  • 20 GB persistent volumebeta, no price
Total / month$205.20

E2B in USD, orkestr in EUR, both excl. VAT. E2B's compute is billed on allocation, so it is the same whether the sandbox is busy or idle; orkestr's figure is a ceiling for sandboxes running flat out. In E2B's default US region the Hobby plan has no fee, which makes the same workload $55.20, after a one-time $100 credit.

When E2B is the better pick

We'd rather you pick the right tool than churn in a month. Stay on E2B if:

  • You need more than about 8 medium sandboxes running at the same moment. E2B Pro goes to 1,100 concurrent.
  • You rely on memory snapshots or forking a running sandbox into many copies.
  • You want to self-host or run in your own cloud account (E2B is open source and offers BYOC on Enterprise).
  • Your users are in Asia, or US hosting is fine for your data.

Common questions

Is the API similar?
The shape is the same: create a sandbox, run commands, read and write files, pause, terminate. We ship Python and JS SDKs, a REST API, a CLI and an MCP server. Porting is mostly renaming calls.
Are orkestr sandboxes real VMs?
Yes. Every sandbox is its own virtual machine with its own kernel, the same isolation model E2B uses. Nothing is a shared-kernel container.
Why is my bill lower if the sizes are the same?
Because we bill what the sandbox uses, not what it reserves. Agents spend a lot of a session waiting on model responses, and on orkestr those idle seconds cost close to nothing.
What are the limits?
On pay as you go: sizes up to 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 32 GB of RAM running at once, sessions up to 24 hours, 10 paused sandboxes kept for 30 days. Enterprise raises all of them. The full table is in our sandbox docs.

Sources

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Other comparisons

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Run your agent next to it and compare.

€5 of sandbox credit on sign-up, no credit card. Point the same agent at both and compare the bill.

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