Overview Sandstorm is a Rust sandbox manager that runs gVisor containers or Firecracker microVMs, each with its own network namespace. Idle sandboxes move through frozen, snapshot and detached tiers and are woken by a gateway when a request arrives, so one machine can hold more sandboxes than it can run at once. A single binary, sandstormd, acts as master, node and web console, with desired state in SQLite.
Who it is for: Teams self-hosting many agent sandboxes on few machines
Strengths Four-tier lifecycle: frozen wake about 0.1 s, snapshot restore about 0.2 s Two backends in one fleet; gVisor needs no KVM Single binary serves master, node and web console Published benchmark methodology and raw results against CubeSandbox, Kata, Docker Weaknesses Wakes that cannot start within 2 s are refused with a 503 Must be built from source with Rust and Node 22.12+ Linux with cgroup v2 only; Firecracker needs KVM or PVM Master capacity reservation on placement is still unchecked on the roadmap What it needs no GPU Docker Needs runsc (gVisor), Firecracker (optional backend), Linux cgroup v2, Rust, Node 22.12+, SQLite port 8080 Quick answers Is sandstorm open source? Yes. Its code is on GitHub under the Apache-2.0 license.
Can you run sandstorm with Docker? Yes. Its repository has a Docker setup: a Dockerfile, a Compose file or a published image.
Does sandstorm need a GPU? No, it runs without one.
Also in Sandboxes Rank Project Score 1 Lightpanda Headless browser written in Zig for agents and scraping, with CDP and MCP 93 out of 100 score 2 OpenShell Policy-enforced sandbox runtime for autonomous AI agents (opens in a new tab) 88 out of 100 score 3 Obscura Rust headless browser with V8 and CDP for scraping and agents 86 out of 100 score # 4NemoClaw Reference stack for running OpenClaw, Hermes and Deep Agents in OpenShell sandboxes 85 out of 100 score # 5opensandbox Sandbox API for running AI agent code, commands and browsers in isolation 85 out of 100 score
How to choose Isolation level (container, microVM, gVisor) sets the risk you accept when agents run code. Check startup time per sandbox; slow starts limit agent loops. Look at what is persisted between runs and how secrets are injected. Health
Releases 25 in the last 12 monthsLast one 10 days ago
Top contributor 80% of commits375 of 471 in the last 12 months
Security advisories NoneOn GitHub, in the last 12 months
OpenSSF Scorecard Not checked Read from GitHub, deps.dev and OpenSSF on 11 Nov 2026. Bots and coding-agent accounts are left out of the commit counts. Not part of the score: how we check .
License in plain words Apache-2.0 Permissive
Use it at work Yes
Change it and rebrand it Yes
Sell it or host it for others Yes Your part: Keep the notices and mark the files you change. It also grants you the contributors’ patent rights.
A plain summary, not legal advice. Read the license on GitHub ↗ (opens in a new tab)
Set it up Needs before it works: runsc (gVisor), Firecracker (optional backend), Linux cgroup v2, Rust, Node 22.12+, SQLite.
Bring in an engineer who knows sandstorm . By the hour for upkeep and fixes, or a fixed price for a build. Our own engineering service; it never changes a rank.
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Connector URL https://mcp.archestack.com/mcpCopy
Then ask: Compare sandstorm with its top alternatives on Archestack
Share this rank #12 of 14 in Sandboxes on Archestack, as of 11 Nov 2026.
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