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Best E2B Alternatives

6 editor-verified alternatives · E2B overview →

source: tools.alternatives · stored order · active records only; review scores are annotations and never change membership or order

Dagger Container Use logo
1

Dagger Container Use

open sourceexplicit relation

Dagger Container Use provides isolated container environments for AI coding agents, enabling multiple agents to work in separate sandboxed branches simultaneously. Built by the Dagger team, it ensures reproducibility and safety for autonomous code execution by giving each agent its own containerized workspace with full toolchain access.

Free and open-source
Steel logo
2

Steel

open sourceexplicit relation

Steel is an open-source browser API purpose-built for AI agents, providing managed headless browser sessions with anti-bot bypass, proxy rotation, CAPTCHA solving, and session persistence. It handles the infrastructure layer that browser automation agents like Browser Use and Stagehand run on top of. Self-hostable or available as a cloud service. Over 6,000 GitHub stars.

Free self-hosted (Apache-2.0); Steel.dev cloud usage-based
Microsandbox logo
3

Microsandbox

76/100open sourceexplicit relation

Microsandbox provides hardware-level isolated sandboxes for AI agents to execute code safely on local machines. Using libkrun microVMs and a 320ms bare-metal Linux/KVM homepage benchmark, it offers stronger isolation than Docker containers while staying lightweight enough for dev workstations. OCI-compatible with Python and Node.js runtimes. Apache-2.0 licensed with 6.6K+ GitHub stars.

Free and open source (Apache-2.0)Review →
NVIDIA OpenShell logo
4

NVIDIA OpenShell

open sourceexplicit relation

NVIDIA OpenShell provides kernel-level isolation for AI agent workloads with Landlock, seccomp, and network namespace sandboxing. Announced at GTC 2026 with 17 enterprise partners including Adobe, Atlassian, SAP, and Salesforce, it offers declarative YAML policy enforcement, L7 HTTP inspection, and GPU passthrough — purpose-built to contain the blast radius when autonomous coding agents interact with filesystems and networks.

Free and open source (Apache-2.0). Part of NVIDIA Agent Toolkit.
Lume logo
5

Lume

open sourceexplicit relation

Lume is an open-source CLI for creating and managing macOS and Linux virtual machines on Apple Silicon, built specifically for AI agent sandboxing, CI/CD pipelines, and desktop automation. Using Apple's native Virtualization.Framework for near-native performance, it provides the missing isolation layer for running coding agents safely — so an accidental destructive command doesn't affect your host machine.

Free and open source (MIT). Managed cloud offering in development.
OpenSandbox logo
6

OpenSandbox

open sourceexplicit relation

OpenSandbox is an open-source sandbox platform from Alibaba providing secure, isolated execution environments for AI coding agents. It supports Python, Java, JavaScript, and C# SDKs with a unified Sandbox Protocol for custom runtimes. Integrates with Docker and Kubernetes, offering isolation through gVisor, Kata Containers, and Firecracker microVMs with per-sandbox network controls.

Free and open source under Apache 2.0 license

Open-source E2B alternatives

Dagger Container Use, Steel, Microsandbox, NVIDIA OpenShell, Lume, OpenSandboxsee all open-source developer tools.

E2B head-to-head

FAQ

What is the best E2B alternative?

Dagger Container Use tops our editor-verified list of 6 E2B alternatives.

Are there open-source E2B alternatives?

Yes — Dagger Container Use, Steel, Microsandbox, and more are open source.