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E2B vs Hotcell
Hotcell has no usage fees: it runs on hardware you already have. Hotcell runs on your own machines, as Firecracker or Apple Virtualization microVMs or Docker containers, and keeps real API keys out of every sandbox.
At a glance
| E2B | Hotcell | |
|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Firecracker microVM | Docker container, Firecracker microVM (Linux with KVM) or Apple Virtualization microVM (macOS) |
| Price | $0.000014 per vCPU-second and $0.0000045 per GiB-second. | Free and open source. You pay only for the hardware you run it on. |
| 2 vCPU, 4 GiB for an hour | $0.17 | $0 (your hardware) |
| Free tier | One-time $100 credit on the free Hobby plan. Pro is $150 a month plus usage. | Free, Apache-2.0. |
| Longest session | 1 hour on Hobby, 24 hours on Pro. Pausing resets the clock. | No limit; sandboxes run until you remove them. |
| Largest sandbox | 8 vCPU and 8 GiB (default 2 vCPU, 4 GiB) | Whatever your machine has |
| Pause and persistence | Pause keeps memory and files, about 4 s per GiB to pause and 1 s to resume. Paused sandboxes are kept indefinitely. | Pause takes a memory snapshot on the microVM drivers, so processes survive resume. |
| Start time (published) | Not published in milliseconds; boots from a snapshot. | About 210 ms on the container driver; about 2.6 s for a cold microVM, faster from a warm pool. |
| GPUs | No | No |
| Self-hosting | Yes. The infrastructure is open source under Apache-2.0, with Terraform for Google Cloud, AWS and Azure, and a single-host option. | Yes, it only runs on your own hardware. Real API keys stay on the host; each sandbox gets a short-lived, spend-capped token. |
| SDKs | Python, JavaScript/TypeScript | TypeScript, Python, plus CLI and REST |
| Real build benchmark | 7 of 7 phases, 75.9 s | Not on the leaderboard |
On a real coding-agent build
The open-source ComputeSDK sandbox-dax benchmark runs OpenCode's provider benchmark in each sandbox: install packages and Bun, clone OpenCode, bun install, then bun typecheck. Results from the run of 30 October 2026:
- E2B completed all seven phases in 75.9 s on a sandbox reporting 8 CPUs and about 16 GiB: clone 3.0 s, install 17.2 s, typecheck 40.8 s.
- On a bare-metal Ryzen 9 5950X at 32 vCPU, the same workload's clone, install and typecheck took 35.4 s (58.5 s for all seven phases), in July 2026 with Hotcell's own harness.
Each provider is one run, and sandboxes report different CPU counts, so treat small gaps as noise. For what this build needs from a sandbox, and what isolation costs, see our benchmark write-up.
Which should you choose?
Choose Hotcell if
- you want no usage fees and already have a machine to run it on
- your agents run for longer than 24 hours
- you want real API keys kept out of every sandbox
More comparisons
Sources
- E2B: E2B pricing
- E2B: E2B persistence docs
- E2B: e2b-dev/infra
- Hotcell: Hotcell
- Hotcell: Hotcell benchmarks
- Hotcell: Our benchmark write-up
- Benchmark: ComputeSDK sandbox-dax results
Prices change often. We check them by hand and the benchmark refreshes on every build; if something here is out of date, tell us.
FAQs
Is E2B cheaper than Hotcell?
Hotcell is cheaper. A sandbox with 2 vCPU and 4 GiB running for an hour costs about $0 there, against $0.17 on E2B.
Which is faster, E2B or Hotcell?
E2B completed all seven phases in 75.9 s on a sandbox reporting 8 CPUs and about 16 GiB: clone 3.0 s, install 17.2 s, typecheck 40.8 s. On a bare-metal Ryzen 9 5950X at 32 vCPU, the same workload's clone, install and typecheck took 35.4 s (58.5 s for all seven phases), in July 2026 with Hotcell's own harness. The workload is OpenCode's provider benchmark: clone, bun install and typecheck. Results are from ComputeSDK's run of 30 October 2026, one run each.
Can I self-host E2B or Hotcell?
E2B: Yes. The infrastructure is open source under Apache-2.0, with Terraform for Google Cloud, AWS and Azure, and a single-host option. Hotcell: Yes, it only runs on your own hardware. Real API keys stay on the host; each sandbox gets a short-lived, spend-capped token.