The best agent sandboxes, according to hackers
17 agent sandboxes were recommended on Hacker News between November 2025 and November 2026. We rank them by how many separate people recommend each one, and 4 earn the Hacker Approved badge.
Top picks
The three most recommended agent sandboxes with the badge. Each figure is 2 people. RecommendsCriticizes One comment
Classic Windows Start menu replacement
Recommended as a free NVIDIA-backed sandbox for AI agents, with policy controls and isolation beyond plain Docker. Critics say it still warns against production use and collects default telemetry.
Preferred over other open-source sandboxes
Open-source microVM sandbox for AI agents, praised for fast startup and fine-grained network policies. Caveats: early-stage and no GPU support.
Useful for development and testing
Open-source local sandbox that lets AI agents run safely, aiming for VM-level security with container-like speed and less overhead than full VMs.
All 17 agent sandboxes, ranked
Select a column heading to sort. Approval share is recommenders out of everyone who gave an opinion; the tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs. Months counts the months, out of 13, in which someone recommended it.
| Rank | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Docker Sandboxes | 50 | 39 | 56% | 9 | — | — |
| 2 | NVIDIA OpenShell | 36 | 8 | 82% | 9 | — | Approved |
| 3 | Claude Code sandbox | 16 | 18 | 47% | 6 | — | — |
| 4 | MXC (Microsoft Execution Containers) | 15 | 17 | 47% | 1 | — | — |
| Tied 5 | microsandbox | 13 | 2 | 87% | 6 | — | Approved |
| Tied 5 | Era | 13 | 3 | 81% | 5 | — | Approved |
| 7 | Tilde.run Agent Sandbox | 12 | 7 | 63% | 1 | — | — |
| 8 | Anthropic sandbox-runtime | 11 | 5 | 69% | 6 | — | Approved |
| 9 | Docker sbx | 10 | 6 | 63% | 5 | — | — |
| Tied 10 | Gondolin | 9 | 3 | 75% | 7 | — | — |
| Tied 10 | Runtime | 9 | 1 | 90% | 4 | — | — |
| Tied 12 | pi-sandbox | 7 | 2 | 78% | 5 | — | — |
| Tied 12 | Yolobox | 7 | 2 | 78% | 3 | — | — |
| Tied 12 | Shuru | 7 | 0 | 100% | 3 | — | — |
| Tied 15 | Clawk | 6 | 2 | 75% | 3 | — | — |
| Tied 15 | yolo-cage | 6 | 4 | 60% | 1 | — | — |
| 17 | Leash by StrongDM | 5 | 1 | 83% | 5 | — | — |
How we rank
Rank is the number of separate people who recommend a product in a Hacker News comment over the past year. Someone who praises the same agent sandbox in five threads counts once.
The badge goes to agent sandboxes that at least 10 people recommend, with recommenders outnumbering critics at least 2 to 1, recommended in at least 4 of the 13 months.
Rankings are never for sale. We may earn a commission when you buy through our links. It never changes the order.