E2B now describes its core product as a full machine per agent session: an isolated Firecracker microVM with shell, filesystem, browser, network, pause/resume, snapshots, forks, persistent files, observability, and a secrets vault.12 AgentVM also gives agents full Linux machines, but its control plane starts from bounded multi-cloud VM provisioning, provider-backed lifecycle, SSH plus guest-native operations, durable data routing, and machine-paid acquisition.34

The useful distinction is no longer “machine versus sandbox.” Both products expose machine-like environments. The difference is which control-plane problems they choose to own.

Both are machines

E2B runs each sandbox in its own Firecracker microVM with its own kernel, filesystem, and memory boundary. Its current product surface includes command execution, PTY and desktop access, network controls, persistent storage, pause/resume, snapshots, forks, metrics, signed webhooks, and secrets that workloads can use without reading directly.12

AgentVM provisions Linux machines across supported cloud providers and exposes SSH, native command execution with streaming and cancellation, filesystem and background-process operations, named HTTPS/WebSocket services, provider telemetry, snapshots where supported, runtime/network policy, and hard runtime and spend boundaries.3

E2B owns the session

E2B is optimized around a session-oriented agent cloud. The microVM is the programmable unit, and the SDK wraps execution, files, terminal, network, storage, observability, secrets, and lifecycle in one sandbox object.1

That model is a strong fit for coding agents, computer-use agents, evaluations, reinforcement-learning rollouts, and products that want a purpose-built agent runtime with fast lifecycle primitives.

AgentVM owns the lease

AgentVM keeps the cloud-machine lease visible. A caller selects approved provider capacity, region, image, and runtime boundary, then can operate the machine through the CLI, Node SDK, Python SDK, SSH, or the authenticated guest-operation channel.3

The control plane also keeps provider credentials away from the agent and can meter provider-backed persistent volumes independently from compute. Machine Payment Protocol flows add a bounded purchase path for agents that need to acquire compute without receiving a raw cloud-provider key.4

Data is different

AgentVM has a durable Data Relay beside the machine abstraction. HTTP, OTLP, and persistent MQTT sources can feed normal retry/replay routes, with managed HTTP, OTLP, S3-compatible, PostgreSQL, and Kafka REST-compatible destinations plus filters and JSON transforms.3

Machine-scoped Connections solve a separate problem: an agent can call approved HTTPS APIs through a loopback proxy while the external bearer or API-header secret remains in the AgentVM control plane. That is a different integration surface from simply placing a secret inside the machine.

Pick the boundary

Choose E2B when you want a polished agent-session runtime with microVM isolation, fast pause/fork primitives, PTY and desktop tooling, persistent files, and a unified sandbox SDK.12

Choose AgentVM when you want bounded cloud-machine acquisition across providers, durable ingress and fan-out, credential-injecting external API access, provider-backed workspace volumes, explicit spend/runtime limits, normal SSH, and machine-payment semantics. The products overlap substantially; the deciding question is which control plane best matches the job.