Secure, elastic dev environments for AI agents and humans.

Daytona is the execution layer for AI coding agents. Where most 'AI code runner' products either spin up too slowly (Lambda cold-starts) or lack isolation (running untrusted code in your CI), Daytona threads the needle: sub-90ms spin-up, hard sandboxing, stateful snapshots. It's the infrastructure layer under agents like Cursor, Bolt, Lovable, and dozens of vertical AI coding products.

Who it's for: Engineers building AI coding agents that need a sandbox to run code, plus dev teams that want ephemeral preview environments per PR. The go-to execution layer for Cursor, Bolt, Lovable, and similar agent products.

Key features

Sandbox Sub-90ms spin-up

Start a fully-configured dev environment (any language, any OS) in under 90ms. The fast spin-up is the secret sauce — agents can run hundreds of executions without latency becoming the bottleneck.

Isolated Hard sandbox

Each execution runs in an isolated VM with strict resource limits. No way for an untrusted prompt to escape to your network or filesystem. Built for running untrusted code safely.

Snapshots Stateful sessions

Filesystem snapshots persist across executions. Your agent can install dependencies, write files, run a server, and come back later to find the state intact.

API Drop-in SDK

Python, TypeScript, Go, and CLI SDKs. daytona.create({language: 'python'}).run('pip install requests && python script.py'). Returns stdout, stderr, exit code, and file diffs.

The honest take

✓ What works

Sub-100ms spin-up — fast enough for tight agent loops
Hard isolation makes it the safe default for running untrusted agent code
Snapshots mean agents can iterate without re-installing dependencies every step
Self-hostable for security-conscious teams (enterprise tier)
Excellent docs and a real SDK for every major language

✗ What doesn't

Free tier limits (150 hours/mo) disappear fast if you're running agents in production
Pricing is per-hour-of-execution, which is harder to budget than per-request APIs
Resource limits on the free tier can be tight for ML workloads (GPU not available)
Smaller community than Docker or Kubernetes (though that's the point — it's purpose-built)

Verdict

Daytona is what every AI coding agent should be running on. The spin-up time and isolation story are unmatched in 2026, and the SDK makes it a 10-line integration. If you're building an agent that runs code, use Daytona — don't try to roll your own Docker wrapper.

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