Agentic Index
boxd vs Vercel Sandbox (2026)
Both vendors last verified
Both run agent code in microVMs with their own kernel, and they keep different amounts of state. boxd machines keep files, memory and running processes between sessions, fork with memory in under 200ms and wake from hibernation on the next request, with coding agents, 128 integrations whose credentials stay outside the machine and a live desktop browser. That verdict is the Agentic Index coverage score, graded from each vendor's own published materials.
Vercel Sandbox runs Firecracker microVMs inside Vercel's plans, keeps the filesystem when a sandbox stops and restores it on the next SDK call, brokers credentials into outbound requests through its firewall, and bills CPU only while code is using it, in 19 regions. Vercel Sandbox holds Vercel's SOC 2 Type II and follows Vercel's team roles, while boxd runs in Frankfurt or New York or self hosted. Choose boxd when agents need a long lived machine with processes kept and integrations ready, and Vercel Sandbox when you build on Vercel and want isolated runs billed only while the CPU works.
This comparison is published by Agentic Index, an independent agentic AI vendor research platform. boxd and Vercel Sandbox are each graded against the same 14 capability Agentic Index taxonomy, from the vendor's own public materials under the Agentic Index verification standard, alongside 1,140 researched vendors. No vendor pays for placement and no vendor has reviewed this page. How this evidence is graded
Choose boxd if
- Running processes and memory should survive a pause, not only the filesystem.
- Agents should wake on an incoming request after hibernating, without your code calling an SDK first.
- A browser should come with the machine, on a live desktop a person can take over.
- Agents should act through 128 integrations, from GitHub to Salesforce, with the credentials kept outside the machine.
- You want to run machines in your own cloud account or self host them.
Choose Vercel Sandbox if
- Your apps already run on Vercel or use the AI SDK, and sandboxes should sit in the same team, roles and bill.
- Billing should count CPU only while code is using it, skipping time spent waiting on model calls.
- Sandboxes should run in any of 19 regions, chosen per sandbox, with static IPs and VPC peering through Secure Compute.
- Your security review needs a SOC 2 Type II report today.
- A free monthly allowance on Hobby, 5 CPU hours and 5,000 sandboxes, should cover early experiments.
| Feature | b boxd |
V Vercel Sandbox |
|---|---|---|
| Action & orchestration | ||
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Integrations & Tool Calling Ability to connect agents to real systems through native integrations, OAuth-authenticated actions, custom tools, APIs, webhooks, or MCP-compatible tools. |
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boxdIntegrations & Tool Calling 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 |
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Vercel SandboxIntegrations & Tool Calling Credentials reach outside services without entering the sandbox. The firewall's credentials brokering adds an authorization header to outbound requests for named domains, with matchers on path, method, query and headers, request proxying sends chosen traffic through a proxy the customer runs, and Box Mount presents Box content to the agent as local files. The tools an agent calls with those credentials are the customer's own code, and the product carries no integration catalog or tool framework. Sourcevercel.com/docs/sandbox/concepts/firewallread 2026-11-05 |
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Workflow Orchestration Ability to sequence, branch, retry, route, and combine deterministic workflow nodes with autonomous agent steps. |
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boxdWorkflow Orchestration 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 |
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Vercel SandboxWorkflow Orchestration There is no workflow logic in the product. Commands run blocking or detached from the customer's code, and lifecycle hooks run setup when a sandbox is created or resumed. Multi agent sandboxes give each agent its own Linux user and private home directory and share files through groups, which separates agents inside one machine without sequencing, routing or retrying their work. Sourcevercel.com/docs/sandbox/concepts/persistent-sandboxesread 2026-11-05 |
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Triggers & Channel Coverage How agents wake up and where they work: schedules, webhooks, message events, CRM events, inbox events, chat, email, voice, and collaboration tools. |
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boxdTriggers & Channel Coverage 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 |
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Vercel SandboxTriggers & Channel Coverage Work reaches a sandbox only when the customer's code or the CLI calls it. A stopped persistent sandbox resumes on the next SDK call that needs a running machine, and exposed ports serve traffic at a public URL while a session runs, but no schedule, webhook or inbound event starts or wakes a sandbox on its own. Sourcevercel.com/docs/sandbox/concepts/persistent-sandboxesread 2026-11-05 |
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| Knowledge & context | ||
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Knowledge Grounding & RAG Ability to ground agent behavior in company data through document ingestion, retrieval, external knowledge APIs, semantic search, or RAG layers. |
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boxdKnowledge Grounding & RAG 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 |
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Vercel SandboxKnowledge Grounding & RAG No retrieval index or knowledge base over the customer's content comes with Sandbox. Files on the sandbox disk, Vercel Drives and S3 buckets mounted through FUSE are storage the agent's code reads, and any search or embedding layer runs as the customer's own code inside the microVM. Sourcevercel.com/docs/sandboxread 2026-11-05 |
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Memory & State Persistence Ability to persist context across a run, conversation, workflow, user, team, or longer-term memory layer. |
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boxdMemory & State Persistence 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 |
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Vercel SandboxMemory & State Persistence Sandboxes are persistent by default. When a session stops, its filesystem is snapshotted automatically and the next SDK call resumes from it, snapshots can be kept for a set period or indefinitely, and Vercel Drives, in public beta, keep files across sandbox runs and can be shared between agents. The product does not remember anything for the agent. An agent keeps notes on a drive only when the application gives it file tools and instructions to do so, and running processes restart on resume. Sourcevercel.com/docs/sandbox/concepts/persistent-sandboxesread 2026-11-05 |
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| Control & trust | ||
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Human Oversight & Guardrails Approval steps, consent checkpoints, escalation rules, structured guardrails, policy constraints, and pause/resume controls. |
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boxdHuman Oversight & Guardrails 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 |
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Vercel SandboxHuman Oversight & Guardrails Sandbox has no approval step, review queue or escalation to a person. The firewall can switch a running sandbox to deny all or narrow its allowed domains without a restart, which limits what an agent's code can reach but does not hold an action until someone reviews it. Sourcevercel.com/docs/sandbox/concepts/firewallread 2026-11-05 |
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Security, Identity & Governance RBAC, SSO, auditability, encryption, least-privilege tool access, compliance posture, and data handling policy. |
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boxdSecurity, Identity & Governance 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 |
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Vercel SandboxSecurity, Identity & Governance Vercel's infrastructure holds SOC 2 Type II. Access to sandboxes follows Vercel's team roles (Owner, Member, Developer, Security, Billing, Viewer and Contributor) and, on Enterprise, project roles for administrators, developers and viewers, with permission groups for finer grants, and the SDK authenticates with project scoped OIDC tokens or access tokens. Each sandbox runs in its own Firecracker microVM with a dedicated kernel, and the firewall restricts egress by domain or address range and injects credentials so code inside never holds them. Sourcevercel.com/docs/rbac/access-rolesread 2026-11-05 |
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Observability & Auditability Traces, logs, execution histories, metrics, audit events, and debugging detail for production agent behavior. |
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boxdObservability & Auditability 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 |
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Vercel SandboxObservability & Auditability Each sandbox has a dashboard page with its configuration, an activity log of lifecycle events and its snapshots, the CLI lists every session a sandbox has run, and the Observability tab charts CPU and memory per sandbox, with alert monitors on Observability Plus. Command output streams through the SDK, and request proxying can route chosen traffic through a customer proxy for logging. What an agent decided between commands is not recorded, since the agent's loop runs in the customer's code. Sourcevercel.com/docs/sandbox/concepts/persistent-sandboxesread 2026-11-05 |
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Deployment & Data Residency Deployment modes and options, including SaaS, dedicated cloud, VPC, on-prem, hybrid, local runtime, and self-hosting. |
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boxdDeployment & Data Residency 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 |
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Vercel SandboxDeployment & Data Residency Sandboxes run in 19 regions, chosen per sandbox or set as a project default, with iad1 as the default, and snapshots and drives stay in the region they were created in. Secure Compute sends a sandbox's internet traffic through static IPs and reaches the customer's own AWS VPC over VPC peering. Sandboxes run only on Vercel's infrastructure. Sourcevercel.com/docs/sandbox/pricingread 2026-11-05 |
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| Solution readiness | ||
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Prebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Ready-made workflows, packaged employees, templates, blueprints, industry solutions, and role-specific agents that reduce time-to-value. |
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boxdPrebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs 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 |
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Vercel SandboxPrebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs The default universal image ships Node.js, Python and coding agents, rebuilt nightly from open source definitions, and one CLI command starts OpenCode, Pi, Claude Code or Codex inside a sandbox. Integrations cover Cursor Cloud Agents, Devin Outposts, Herdr, Hermes and Paseo, frameworks such as the AI SDK, LangChain, Mastra, Flue and TanStack AI, and the OpenAI Agents API. These are configured third party agents and building blocks, not prebuilt agents of Vercel's own. Sourcevercel.com/docs/sandbox/ecosystemread 2026-11-05 |
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| Platform extensibility | ||
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Model Flexibility & Routing Ability to work across multiple foundation models, route tasks to different models, or let buyers bring their own providers and keys. |
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boxdModel Flexibility & Routing 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 |
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Vercel SandboxModel Flexibility & Routing The customer chooses the agents and models that run in a sandbox. Any coding agent or framework can run inside it and model calls happen in the customer's code, and Vercel's examples route them through its optional AI Gateway with many providers or the customer's own keys. Sandbox itself imposes no model. Sourcevercel.com/docs/sandbox/ecosystemread 2026-11-05 |
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APIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Composability layer: stable APIs, SDKs, MCP tool consumption/serving, custom tools, and integration into internal systems. |
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boxdAPIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility 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 |
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Vercel SandboxAPIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Outside code drives sandboxes through the open source @vercel/sandbox JavaScript and TypeScript SDK, the Python SDK in the vercel package and the sandbox CLI, covering creation from images or snapshots, commands, files, network policy updates, snapshots, drives, tags and listing. Authentication uses Vercel OIDC tokens or access tokens, so sandboxes can be driven from Vercel Functions, other clouds or CI systems. Sourcevercel.com/docs/sandbox/sdk-referenceread 2026-11-05 |
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Testing, Debugging & Optimization Testing, debugging, scoring, retries, fallbacks, quality gates, and optimization loops for improving agent workflows before and after deployment. |
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boxdTesting, Debugging & Optimization 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 |
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Vercel SandboxTesting, Debugging & Optimization There are no test cases, scoring or quality gates of the product's own. Harbor runs Terminal Bench and other benchmark trials in sandbox microVMs, and Scale AI's AgentEnv evaluates agents in separate environment and agent sandboxes, but those harnesses do the scoring, not Sandbox. Sourcevercel.com/docs/sandbox/ecosystemread 2026-11-05 |
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| Specialist automation | ||
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Browser & Computer Use Browser, desktop, or remote/local computer control for workflows that cannot be handled through stable APIs alone. |
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boxdBrowser & Computer Use 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 |
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Vercel SandboxBrowser & Computer Use No browser or desktop for an agent to drive comes with the product. The managed images carry language runtimes, coding agents and utilities, and an agent that needs a browser has to install and run one itself inside the microVM. Sourcevercel.com/docs/sandbox/concepts/imagesread 2026-11-05 |
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Pricing snapshot
Sourced from the Index pricing dataset · open each vendor's profile for full detail.
| Pricing | b boxd |
V Vercel Sandbox |
|---|---|---|
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Entry price Lowest public entry point |
Pay as you go with €30 of free credit, at €0.039 per active vCPU hour and €0.012 per GiB hour of memory in use. | Free allotment on Hobby, then $0.128 per active CPU hour and $0.0212 per GB hour of memory on Pro. |
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Pricing confidence How public the numbers are |
Public, exact | Public, exact |
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Billing Primary billing axis |
Per second active vCPU, memory in use and disk written | Active CPU hours, provisioned memory GB hours and sandbox creations |
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Variable cost Workload / overage exposure |
High variable cost | High variable cost |
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Free tier / trial Try before you buy |
Free tier
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Free tier
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Buying motion Self-serve vs sales call |
Mixed | Mixed |
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Pricing verified When this pricing was last checked |
Vercel Sandbox is a product of Vercel, Inc., sold inside Vercel's Hobby, Pro and Enterprise plans. boxd's SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certifications are still in progress, and boxd gives conflicting accounts of its US region. boxd prices in euros.
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