boxd vs E2B (2026)

Agents on a machine act in outside systems through 128 integrations, including GitHub, Linear, Slack, Notion, Jira, Salesforce, HubSpot, Stripe and Zendesk, each with typed tools such as creating an issue or sending a message.

A person connects an account once through the provider's consent screen, personally or as a shared connection for the whole organization, and the platform then makes each call on the machine's behalf, so the credential never enters the machine.

The in machine run CLI and the @boxd/run SDK call these tools, and scripts reach any other API, database or cloud account with ordinary libraries.

Sourcedocs.boxd.sh/guides/integrations/connectionsread 2026-11-05

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

Background jobs give automations a managed lifecycle.

A script that registers a schedule or trigger runs as a job that survives reboots, waits for a missing connection instead of failing, and restarts with exponential backoff for up to five attempts before it is marked failed. boxd's fan out pattern has a coordinator create one machine per worker, run a coding agent headless in each and let a lead agent merge the reports, and a fork brings a machine's jobs along paused so nothing runs twice.

The sequencing, branching and hand offs in that pattern are code the customer writes against the SDK, and boxd has no workflow graph, step model or multi agent runtime of its own.

Sourcedocs.boxd.sh/guides/automations/jobsread 2026-11-05

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

Work reaches a machine on schedules, events and inbound requests. An automation registers durations or cron expressions with every() and subscribes to integration events with .on(), such as a new Linear issue or a pull request through the boxd GitHub App, and 36 integrations emit triggers.

The platform holds the next due time and wakes a hibernated machine shortly before it, holds events that arrive while a machine wakes for up to 15 minutes, and fires a missed cron slot once on wake. A hibernated machine also wakes on the next HTTPS request, so an agent served from it answers webhooks at its own address.

Sourcedocs.boxd.sh/guides/automations/scriptsread 2026-11-05

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

No retrieval index, vector store or knowledge base over the customer's content comes with the platform. Files on a machine's disk, standalone disks that outlive a machine and data sets saved into a snapshot are storage the agent's code reads, not an index a query returns. Tools such as Notion, Confluence or Google Drive are searched through their own integrations, and any grounding layer is something the customer installs on the machine.

Sourcedocs.boxd.sh/llms.txtread 2026-11-05

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

Machines keep their working state between sessions. A machine on standby resumes in under a millisecond and a hibernated one wakes with its memory and processes intact, and coding agent sessions live on the persistent disk, so a job delegated in the morning can be resumed interactively later. Forks, checkpoints and snapshots copy or rewind that state.

Automations also get object(name), a named JSON store written on every assignment and restored on the next run, meant for cursors, dedup sets and counters. All of it is machine and script state the developer manages, with no memory layer of stated scope and lifetime that a buyer can review, edit or delete as memory.

Sourcedocs.boxd.sh/guides/automations/scriptsread 2026-11-05

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

A person can step into an agent's work while it runs. Every machine has a live desktop in the browser where its owner watches the agent's browser, takes over the keyboard to enter a password, solve a captcha or fix a form, and hands control back without stopping the agent. The preinstalled coding agents are told to share that desktop link whenever they need someone, so a login or approval happens in the browser the agent already opened. There is no approval gate, pause primitive or policy that holds an agent's action until a person reviews it.

Sourcedocs.boxd.sh/guides/desktopread 2026-11-05

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

Organizations have three roles. Members use shared machines and create org billed ones, admins also invite and remove members, change roles, set defaults, create teams and revoke org API keys, and the single owner can demote admins. Admin invites need an interactive login, so an API key or a token minted inside a machine cannot send one.

People sign in with GitHub or Google, with SAML single sign on offered to enterprise customers on request. A DPA is available, and SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 are both in progress, not held. Each machine is a KVM microVM with its own kernel, and egress allowlists and host bound secrets are enforced on the host, outside the machine.

Sourcedocs.boxd.sh/guides/organizationsread 2026-11-05

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

Automations are visible and the agent's own steps are not. The console's Automations page lists every background job with its triggers in plain English, the integrations it uses, its state, last run and last error, plus a generated write up and flow diagram for each script, and run logs prints or follows a job's log from inside the machine. Regional uptime and incidents appear on a public status page. A coding agent's prompts, tool calls and outputs are not traced by the platform, and no audit trail of member actions is offered.

Sourcedocs.boxd.sh/guides/automations/jobsread 2026-11-05

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

Each machine runs in Frankfurt or New York, picked per machine from the CLI, console or SDK or set as an organization default, and its disk, memory, snapshots, checkpoints and backups stay in that region on Latitude.sh bare metal. Scale customers can have boxd operate the cluster inside their own cloud account, and the same release self hosts on AWS, Google Cloud or any KVM host, free up to 16 worker vCPUs and licensed above that, with air gapped installs supported. boxd gives conflicting accounts of its US region, with New York live in some places and coming soon with a waitlist in others.

Sourcedocs.boxd.sh/guides/regionsread 2026-11-05

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

Machines arrive with Claude Code, Codex and OpenCode installed and configured through an instructions file that teaches each agent the platform, plus three preinstalled skills covering the in machine CLI, automations and the desktop, and a CLI skill for the laptop.

Guides walk through development workspaces, preview environments, CI runners, personal assistants, sandboxes, agentic SaaS, RL environments and agent swarms, and connectors exist for open source tools such as TanStack AI, Pydantic AI, Harbor and Scale AI AgentEnv. These are configured third party agents and recipes a developer builds from, not prebuilt agents of boxd's own.

Sourcedocs.boxd.sh/use-cases/coding-agentsread 2026-11-05

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

The customer decides which agents and models run. Claude Code and Codex use the customer's own subscription, signed in once and served to every private machine in the organization, or an API key stored as a secret, OpenCode signs in on each machine, and any other agent or model that runs on Linux can be installed. boxd adds no model of its own and does not route between providers, and it does not use customer data to train or improve any model.

Sourcedocs.boxd.sh/use-cases/coding-agentsread 2026-11-05

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 code drives the platform through TypeScript and Python SDKs, a gRPC API whose full api.proto service definition is public for generating stubs in any language, and a CLI that returns JSON from its commands. Each region has its own API endpoint, and organization API keys keep working after the person who created them leaves. The SDKs cover machines, forks, snapshots, checkpoints, disks, egress, secrets, domains, organizations and teams, and a filesystem API reads and writes files inside a machine from code.

Sourcedocs.boxd.sh/reference/grpc-apiread 2026-11-05

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

There are no test cases, scoring or quality gates for an agent's behavior. The platform is where evaluations run, not how they are scored. Forks give every reinforcement learning rollout or benchmark trial a byte identical starting state, Moyai ran 279,577 Harbor benchmark machines on it, and a reproducibility check compares two forks run with the same seed, but rewards, datasets and scoring belong to the customer's own framework.

Sourcedocs.boxd.sh/use-cases/reproducible-rl-environmentsread 2026-11-05

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

Agents drive a real browser on the machine's own desktop. Every machine ships a browser automation CLI built for agents, backed by Chromium with anti bot fingerprinting and a persistent profile so logins stick, and scripts get the same browser through Playwright. A machine can also drive a Chrome window on the user's laptop over the DevTools protocol, for sites that only accept the user's own network, and the preinstalled agents get a browser tool for it automatically. Any GUI app installed on the machine opens on the same desktop.

Sourcedocs.boxd.sh/guides/launch-a-browserread 2026-11-05

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