# Deno Sandbox

21 Hacker News commenters recommended Deno Sandbox and 9 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Cloud sandboxes for running untrusted code, including AI agent code, that people find fast and easy to set up. Critics say it is expensive at scale and lacks some networking features.

## Why people recommend it

- Neat idea for agent sandboxes (3 comments): "Very neat idea! I implemented it into my self hosted remote coding agent" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46911148)) "i think the next best thing for sandboxes is, "vm as a library"" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46399718)) "Yeah, this is a really neat idea" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46874973))
- Secret placeholders hide real secrets (2 comments): "it does at least make it impossible for them to steal the secret permanently" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46877334)) "Secret placeholders seems like a good design decision." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46877993))
- Fast startup and snapshots (2 comments): "now that I've got a snapshot set up it's a nice experience" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46946224)) "it's much better to have something faster to start" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46398621))

## What people warn about

- Expensive, especially when scaling (3 comments): "It's about 10x what a normal VM would cost at a more affordable hoster." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46880957)) "It's always the exorbitant price with such offerings." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46881920)) "seems expensive when scaling out" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46875279))
- Does not solve local secrets (2 comments): "It seems safer and simpler to, as others have mentioned, have a proxy that knows more about the context add the secrets to the requests." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46877402)) "Not really a solution to the local secrets problem." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47139279))
- Not much faster than alternatives (2 comments): "it wasn't much better than doing the daytona container myself" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47320329)) "10 seconds is actually not that impressive" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46876945))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Sprites](https://hackerapproved.com/p/sprites.md): 58 recommend
- [E2B](https://hackerapproved.com/p/e2b.md): 23 recommend
- [Freestyle Sandboxes](https://hackerapproved.com/p/freestyle.md): 20 recommend
- [Agent37](https://hackerapproved.com/p/agent37.md): 15 recommend
- [Shellbox](https://hackerapproved.com/p/shellbox.md): 13 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://deno.com/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Deno Sandbox", https://hackerapproved.com/p/deno-sandbox/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).