Beam vs E2B (2026)

Code on Beam reaches other systems through what the customer writes. Secrets hold credentials, S3 buckets mount into apps and custom registries supply images. Task callbacks POST results to the customer's server, and sandbox ports expose services. Beam has no catalog of connectors, OAuth actions or tool gateway of its own, and the tools are the customer's code.

Sourcedocs.beam.cloud/llms.txtread 2026-09-22

An agent in a sandbox reaches other systems through a built in MCP gateway that runs inside the sandbox and exposes more than 200 tools from the Docker MCP Catalog (Airtable, GitHub, Browserbase, Exa and others) or custom MCP servers through one interface. Credentials are passed as secrets that resolve at egress instead of living in the sandbox.

Sourcedocs.e2b.dev/mcp-gatewayread 2026-11-03

An agent framework ships in the SDK (Bot, BotLocation, BotContext) and is built on a Petri net model. Locations hold typed state, and transitions consume inputs from locations and write outputs to others. Transitions can be driven by a model or by plain code, run concurrently in isolated containers and keep state synchronized between them. Task queues add retries and timeouts, and map fans work out. Deterministic steps mix with agent steps, and branching and retries are built in. Beam says it is launching the framework and does not say how mature it is beyond the example it gives.

Sourcedocs.beam.cloud/v2/agents/introductionread 2026-09-22

There is no workflow logic in E2B itself. The customer brings its own orchestration framework, and E2B provides the machine an agent's steps run on (commands, background processes, code contexts), not a runtime that sequences, branches, retries or routes those steps. Forking a sandbox copies its state, which is compute, not workflow logic.

Sourcee2b.dev/llms.txtread 2026-11-03

The schedule decorator runs a deployed job on a schedule, and web endpoints and task queues boot containers from zero when requests or tasks arrive. One app can send events to another through signals, for example to reload a model when retraining finishes. Task callbacks also notify the customer's server when a task finishes.

Sourcedocs.beam.cloud/v2/function/scheduled-jobread 2026-09-22

A sandbox can start without the customer's code calling it. With auto resume set, a paused sandbox resumes when activity arrives, so an agent served from a sandbox starts on an inbound request, and E2B's guides deploy agent gateways this way, for example OpenClaw answering Telegram. Sandbox lifecycle events are also pushed to the customer's webhook, signed. There is no scheduler.

Sourcedocs.e2b.dev/sandbox/auto-resumeread 2026-11-03

Any retrieval system on Beam is one the customer builds. Beam maintains no retrieval structure of its own over the customer's content for an agent to query. Volumes, durable disks, Maps and mounted S3 buckets store data but return no search results, and nothing Beam provides indexes, refreshes or permissions the customer's sources.

Sourcedocs.beam.cloud/llms.txtread 2026-09-22

There is no retrieval structure over the customer's content, since E2B runs the agent's code. Files uploaded to a sandbox or volume are storage the agent's code can read, not an index a query returns, and the MCP gateway's tools reach outside knowledge sources owned by others.

Sourcee2b.dev/llms.txtread 2026-11-03

State carries across runs. Sandbox snapshots capture filesystem and memory as an immutable artifact to fork from or restore, and distributed volumes and durable disks on each node persist data. Distributed Queues and Maps share it across tasks, and the agent framework synchronizes state between transitions, so an agent's code can read that state and carry on. Snapshot state is the machine's own state, which a customer can restore or delete but not review or edit. Beam names no memory layer for agents.

Sourcedocs.beam.cloud/v2/sandbox/snapshotsread 2026-09-22

An agent's working state carries across sessions. A paused sandbox resumes exactly as it was, with filesystem and memory, running processes and loaded variables, and is kept until it is killed. Snapshots and forks copy that state, volumes, in private beta, keep files across sandboxes, and code contexts keep interpreter variables between executions, which the agent's code reads to continue its task. This is machine state the developer manages, with no memory layer of stated types or scope that can be reviewed, edited or deleted as memory.

Sourcedocs.e2b.dev/sandbox/persistenceread 2026-11-03

For work running on Beam, including agents built with its framework, Beam names no approval step, consent checkpoint or escalation to a person. The platform isolates workloads with containers per customer, network separation and scoped secrets.

Sourcedocs.beam.cloud/v2/security/securityread 2026-09-22

There is no approval step, consent checkpoint or escalation to a person for work inside an E2B sandbox. Egress control (allow and deny lists for each sandbox, a proxy the customer runs that fails closed, and access tokens on public URLs) limits what an agent's code can reach, but that is isolation the developer configures, not a point where a person reviews the agent's action.

Sourcee2b.dev/enterpriseread 2026-11-03

A SOC 2 Type II audit by Advantage Partners covers Beam, with the report under NDA, and Beam offers HIPAA BAAs for Enterprise customers and a GDPR DPA. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, and containers and networks are isolated per customer. The customer scopes, rotates and deletes its encrypted secrets, and workspace API tokens can be created, rotated and revoked. All members of a workspace currently have the same permissions, and single sign on is not yet available.

Sourcedocs.beam.cloud/v2/security/securityread 2026-09-22

E2B holds SOC 2 Type II, with the report under NDA in its trust center at trust.e2b.dev, and signs HIPAA Business Associate Agreements on Enterprise plans. Its controls protect the sandbox. Every sandbox is its own Firecracker microVM with its own kernel, egress can be allowed or denied for each sandbox, secrets are injected at the egress proxy so no sandbox holds them, and public sandbox URLs can require an access token. Who inside a customer's organization can do what has no published control yet, since E2B lists single sign on, SCIM and role based access as planned.

Sourcee2b.dev/securityread 2026-11-03

Application logs are kept 30 days on Developer and Team plans and one year on Growth, and log export is included. Task status can be queried by ID, with callbacks on completion. Prompts, tool calls, retrieved knowledge and outputs can be inspected step by step only as far as the customer's code logs them. Beam names no audit log of workspace actions separate from the runtime logs.

Sourcebeam.cloud/pricingread 2026-09-22

The record covers the sandbox, not the agent. Every lifecycle event is available through an events API and delivered as a signed webhook, sandbox metrics report CPU and memory use, template builds keep logs, and on Enterprise OpenTelemetry metrics and logs export to the customer's OTLP endpoint. Prompts, tool calls, retrieved knowledge and outputs cannot be inspected step by step in E2B, since the agent's reasoning runs outside the sandbox, and there is no audit log of user actions apart from the runtime.

Sourcee2b.dev/enterpriseread 2026-11-03

There are three ways to run Beam. The managed cloud runs on AWS and Google Cloud. With bring your own cloud, Beam runs the control plane and compute in the customer's AWS or GCP account for a flat management fee, and the compute bills to the customer's cloud. The pricing plans add Azure as a bring your own cloud option.

Beta9, the engine that powers Beam, is open source under AGPL 3.0 and can be self hosted on a local machine or Amazon EKS. Compute pools can also run Beam workloads on the customer's own machines. The beta9 repository is actively maintained. Beam names no region selection for the managed cloud.

Sourcedocs.beam.cloud/v2/self-hosting/overviewread 2026-09-22

Three deployment modes share the same SDK, CLI and API. E2B Cloud defaults to Google Cloud us-west1, and AWS us-west-2 and us-east-1 and Google Cloud europe-west1 and asia-southeast1 are available on request on every plan. With BYOC on AWS, Google Cloud or Azure on Enterprise, the data plane runs in the customer's own cloud account. E2B Embed packages the Apache-2.0 runtime for a single node self hosted install, and a private cloud option is in development.

Sourcedocs.e2b.dev/faq/egress-ip-rangesread 2026-11-03

Ready made starting points ship as end to end examples for model serving (Llama, DeepSeek, Qwen and Hugging Face models, plus an OpenAI compatible vLLM server), for media (ComfyUI, Whisper and text to speech), and for fine tuning and web scraping, plus a research assistant agent built on the agent framework. Developers build from these examples, and Beam offers no browsable catalog of agents a customer can adopt as they are.

Sourcedocs.beam.cloud/v2/examples/overviewread 2026-09-22

Starting points ship with the platform, including sandbox templates for Claude Code, a desktop, Docker and web app stacks, a cookbook of examples ready to run, setup guides for more than thirty agents and frameworks, and open source reference apps, Surf, a computer use agent, and Fragments, a builder that turns a prompt into an app. These are environments and examples a developer builds from, not a browsable catalog of agents a customer adopts.

Sourcedocs.e2b.dev/llms.txtread 2026-11-03

Customers choose the model, and Beam runs any model on the GPU the customer picks. Examples serve Hugging Face models such as Llama 3.1, DeepSeek R1 and Qwen through vLLM, including an OpenAI compatible vLLM server, or through SGLang, and others fine tune Gemma and Llama. Customers can bring their own deployments and providers.

Sourcedocs.beam.cloud/llms.txtread 2026-09-22

Compute is what E2B provides for agents, with the customer bringing its own model and orchestration framework. Sandboxes connect to any LLM and to agents and frameworks such as Claude Code, Codex, the OpenAI Agents SDK, the Vercel AI SDK, LangChain, CrewAI, Mastra and Google ADK. E2B imposes no model, so model choice stays with the customer.

Sourcee2b.dev/llms.txtread 2026-11-03

Outside callers reach Beam through Python and TypeScript SDKs, a CLI, and a REST API with published Swagger specifications for the gateway and pods, covering tasks, pods and sandboxes. Web endpoints expose the customer's code as HTTP APIs, the open source Beta9 engine can be extended, and a docs MCP server serves Beam's documentation to coding tools.

Sourcedocs.beam.cloud/llms.txtread 2026-09-22

Outside systems can call E2B through Python and JavaScript/TypeScript SDKs, a CLI, a REST API described by a published OpenAPI 3.1 specification, and custom sandbox templates the customer builds, tags and versions. A public MCP server serves E2B's documentation to agents.

Sourcee2b.dev/llms.txtread 2026-11-03

Code, experiments and fine tuning jobs run on Beam with retries and logs. Beam names no fixtures, scoring or quality gates for a customer's agent workflows, and no way to compare agent runs.

Sourcedocs.beam.cloud/llms.txtread 2026-09-22

There are no fixtures, scoring, quality gates or comparison of agent runs. E2B is where evaluations and reinforcement learning run, not how they are scored. It lists reinforcement learning among its workloads and runs NVIDIA NeMo Gym environments in sandboxes, but the datasets, reward functions and scoring belong to the customer's framework.

Sourcee2b.dev/llms.txtread 2026-11-03

Sandboxes run any code with GPUs, networking and storage and can expose ports for web services. Beam names no browser or desktop for an agent to operate and no API for screenshots, clicks or typing.

Sourcedocs.beam.cloud/v2/sandbox/overviewread 2026-09-22

Agents control real desktops hosted by E2B. E2B Desktop sandboxes are Ubuntu machines with an XFCE desktop and preinstalled applications, and the Desktop SDK gives the agent screenshots, mouse, keyboard and scroll, with a live VNC stream so a person can watch. A cloud browser can also run in a sandbox, and Surf is E2B's open source computer use agent built on it.

Sourcedocs.e2b.dev/use-cases/computer-useread 2026-11-03