E2B vs Modal (2026)

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 2026-09-22

Code on Modal reaches other systems through what the customer writes. OIDC tokens authenticate functions to external clouds, cloud buckets mount as filesystems, and secrets hold credentials. Slack notifications report on apps (beta), and examples connect Discord, Google Sheets and Tailscale. Modal has no catalog of connectors, OAuth actions or tool gateway of its own, so the tools are the customer's code.

Sourcemodal.com/llms.txtread 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 2026-09-22

Retries are first class on Modal. A Retries policy can sit on any function, alongside job queues, fan out with map and spawn, batch and dynamic batching, and gang scheduled clusters. A pipeline that mixes model calls with deterministic steps can be built on these pieces. Sequencing and branching live in the customer's Python. Modal has no multistep workflow primitive that records completed steps and resumes after failure.

Sourcemodal.com/docs/guide/retriesread 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 2026-09-22

Scheduled Functions run on a cron expression or a fixed period. Web functions and endpoints boot a container from zero when a request arrives, and job queues hand work to functions as it lands.

Sourcemodal.com/docs/guide/cronread 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 2026-09-22

Retrieval systems the customer builds can run on Modal, and its examples embed documents with TEI and run a RAG chatbot over PDFs. Modal does not maintain a retrieval structure over the customer's content that an agent queries. Volumes, Dicts and mounted buckets are storage, and the product itself cannot index, refresh or permission sources.

Sourcemodal.com/llms.txtread 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 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 2026-09-22

State carries across runs. Sandbox snapshots save and restore a sandbox's filesystem and memory, memory snapshots speed cold starts, volumes persist files, and Dicts and Queues hold data shared across function calls. The agent's code reads that state to carry on. Restored process state belongs to the machine, and the customer can resume or delete it but cannot review or edit it. Modal has no memory layer for agents.

Sourcemodal.com/docs/guide/sandbox-snapshotsread 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 2026-09-22

Work running on Modal has no approval step, consent checkpoint or escalation to a person. Restricted Functions stop untrusted code from touching Modal resources, calling other functions or reaching Modal's APIs. With sandbox networking controls, they give isolation the developer configures, and no person reviews an agent's action.

Sourcemodal.com/docs/guide/restricted-accessread 2026-09-22

SOC 2 Type II compliance is stated, with the report under NDA and a current bridge letter in the Trust Center at trust.e2b.dev, a penetration test report and DPA on request, and HIPAA Business Associate Agreements on Enterprise plans. Controls for customers sit beside it.

Every sandbox is its own Firecracker microVM with its own kernel, egress can be allowed or denied for each sandbox by IP, CIDR or domain, secrets resolve at egress so no response, log or sandbox holds them, and public sandbox URLs can require an access token for each sandbox. There is no SSO for the console, and workload identity is in private beta.

Sourcee2b.dev/securityread 2026-09-22

A SOC 2 Type II audit report is available through Modal's Security Portal at trust.modal.com, and Modal supports HIPAA and has external penetration testing. Identity runs through SSO with Okta, Microsoft Entra or custom SAML, with SCIM provisioning (beta). Access is managed with role based access control, user groups and service users, and an append only audit log records sensitive actions on Enterprise. Secrets, Restricted Functions that cannot touch Modal resources, and sandbox networking controls round out the controls.

Sourcemodal.com/docs/guide/securityread 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 2026-09-22

The workload itself is recorded in detail. Modal keeps real time logs and metrics per function and container, GPU metrics, function stats, and an append only audit log of sensitive workspace actions on Enterprise. Audit logs, function logs and container metrics export to any OpenTelemetry provider or Datadog. Audit stays separate from runtime. Prompts, tool calls, retrieved knowledge and outputs can be inspected step by step only as far as the customer's own code logs them. There is no tracing of each call an agent makes.

Sourcemodal.com/docs/guide/otel-integrationread 2026-09-22

Three deployment modes share the same SDK, CLI and API. E2B Cloud runs on Google Cloud in US, EU and APAC regions, with the regions available varying by plan. With BYOC on AWS or Google Cloud, the data plane runs in the customer's VPC, and sandbox traffic, template sources, snapshots and logs never reach E2B Cloud. Self hosting is possible because the runtime, control plane and Firecracker layer are Apache-2.0, with Terraform deployment. Azure is not yet supported.

Sourcee2b.dev/enterpriseread 2026-09-22

Workloads can be pinned to a region. Functions and Sandboxes take a region argument for the container region, dedicated Endpoints set both container and routing regions, and a data residency guide sets out per service what can be pinned and when customer data may leave the region. Region selection carries a price multiplier (1.15x broad, 1.75x narrow). Modal is a managed cloud with no self hosted option, and shared Endpoints do not take a region.

Sourcemodal.com/docs/guide/data-residencyread 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 2026-09-22

Ready made starting points come as a gallery of runnable examples and a Library of models deployable as Shared or Dedicated Endpoints. The agent examples include Cursor cloud agents, a background coding agent with OpenCode, a coding platform, a Claude Agent SDK Slack bot, a LangGraph agent in a GPU sandbox, a computer use agent over VNC and parallel evals. Developers build from these examples and models, and there is no browsable catalog of agents for a customer to adopt.

Sourcemodal.com/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 2026-09-22

Model choice is the customer's throughout. Modal serves models from its Library on Shared Endpoints billed per token or Dedicated Endpoints with the customer's capacity and region. The customer can deploy any open model on GPUs with vLLM or SGLang, as its examples show for DeepSeek, Nemotron and others.

Sourcemodal.com/docs/guide/shared-endpointsread 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 2026-09-22

Official SDKs in Python, JavaScript/TypeScript and Go (the latter two in beta) let outside code call Modal, alongside a full CLI that includes a skills command for coding agents. Web functions and endpoints expose the customer's code as HTTP APIs, and a gRPC API sits behind the open source client.

Sourcemodal.com/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 2026-09-22

Evaluations run on Modal, but scoring them is left to other tools. Its example runs massively parallel evals with Harbor in Modal Sandboxes, and its reinforcement learning examples use verl and TRL, with the datasets, graders and scoring belonging to those frameworks. Modal has no fixtures, scoring, quality gates or comparison of agent runs of its own.

Sourcemodal.com/llms.txtread 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 2026-09-22

Computer use agents can run on Modal's machines. In one example, a Browser Use agent drives Chromium inside a Modal Sandbox, watched over VNC, with the model served from a Modal Endpoint. VM Sandboxes are in beta. Control of the browser comes from Browser Use, a separate library. Modal has no API for screenshots, clicks or typing, so it supplies the environment but not the control.

Sourcemodal.com/docs/examples/computer_use_vncread 2026-09-22