boxlite

Boxlite gives AI agents their own sandboxed VMs with actual hardware isolation — not containers, not namespaces, but real separate kernels. Each "Box" is persistent, stateful, and snapshot-able, so your agent can install packages, modify files, and pick up where it left off. Run it locally first, scale out when ready.

If you're building AI agents that execute code and need isolation stronger than Docker, Boxlite is the self-hosted option. E2B is the market leader with Firecracker microVMs and half the Fortune 500 as customers. Modal handles GPU workloads and serverless compute that Boxlite doesn't touch. Daytona offers development environments as a service.

The catch: Boxlite is nascent — 1,600 stars, early-stage project. E2B has years of production hardening and a massive SDK ecosystem. Boxlite's persistence model is a differentiator but also means you're managing stateful VMs, not ephemeral sandboxes. The project runs on your infrastructure, so you own the scaling, security, and maintenance. For production agent workloads, E2B is the safer bet today.