At a glance — Oct 2026
Updated 2026-10-27 · forward this page: /jtbds/code-interpreter#briefScores as of 2026-09-14 (43 days old; Depot marks scores stale after 30 days). The pick is still Depot's current editorial pick; it has not been re-reviewed since. Prices below carry their own dates.
- Depot Pick
- E2B · 8.56/10 for this job (curated estimate, high confidence)
dx + lockInRisk (prefer E2B) + isolation.
- Runner-up
- Modal · 8.44/10
Scores higher than the pick on: Price / performance, Developer & agent DX, Maturity / track record.
- When not to use the pick
- Happy inside one vendor's hosted interpreter and accept lock-in.
- Lock-in / migration
- The pick has lower stored lock-in risk than runner-up Modal (4 vs 4.5). Self-host fallback listed for this job: E2B SDK, Firecracker.
- Sourced price (no comparable unit)
Pick: no sourced price in this job's unit (no_matching_sourced_price).
No cheapest SKU (no_candidate_has_sourced_price_in_job_unit:vcpu_hour). No price was invented.
- Failure modes to watch
- Benchmark protocol mismatch: Store assisted-or-not, subset, and harness version beside every cited score. Refuse a ranking that mixes those fields.
- Collateral side effects: Snapshot the workspace or app state, then diff it against an allowlist. A passing check plus an unexpected diff is a failure.
- Context overflow: If the input exceeds the window, say so and retrieve a narrower slice. Do not answer from a truncated head as if it were the whole source.
- Eval contamination: Keep gold labels out of the agent prompt. Store the harness version beside the score. Do not compare a number across a benchmark revision without saying the revision changed.
- Hallucinated tool arguments: Reject a call that fails the current schema or names an unknown id, and do that before the tool runs a side effect.
- Instruction drift: Restate the stop condition in the trace. End the run when it is met. Review long traces for steps that do not serve the original task.
Cite: Agent Provider Depot, Depot Pick for code-interpreter: e2b, scores as of 2026-09-14. Agents: GET /api/decide?jtbd=code-interpreter
Free Code interpreter tool for LLMs options · for coding agents
E2B
dx + lockInRisk (prefer E2B) + isolation.
Pricing (directional): Firecracker microVM sandboxes billed per second; templates; code interpreter for agents.
Lock-in risk: higher = more lock-in (worse). Overall already inverts this dimension.
Depot default code sandbox for agents. Use for untrusted code; Daytona when you need persistent devworkspaces. Also the depot default Linux desktop sandbox for computer-use (e2b-desktop + VNC stream) when you already standardize on E2B.
Quote for Code interpreter tool for LLMs
Depot Pick stays E2B. Prices below are sourced SKU rows only (as of 2026-10-27). Input and output are not blended. GET /api/quote?jtbd=code-interpreter
Nothing was compared. no matching sourced usd_per_vcpu_hour among candidates; GPU-hour, GiB-hour, and vCPU-second were not converted; chat $/1M was not borrowed pickIsPriceWinner is null.
- 1 GiB memory usd_per_gib_second $0.0000045 source as of 2026-10-03
- 1 vCPU usd_per_vcpu_second $0.000014 source as of 2026-10-03
- 2 GiB memory usd_per_sandbox_second_ram_charge $0.000009 source as of 2026-10-03
- 2 vCPU usd_per_sandbox_second_vcpu_charge $0.000028 source as of 2026-10-03
- 4 GiB memory usd_per_sandbox_second_ram_charge $0.000018 source as of 2026-10-03
- 4 vCPU usd_per_sandbox_second_vcpu_charge $0.000056 source as of 2026-10-03
- 6 vCPU usd_per_sandbox_second_vcpu_charge $0.000084 source as of 2026-10-03
- 8 GiB memory usd_per_sandbox_second_ram_charge $0.000036 source as of 2026-10-03
- 8 vCPU usd_per_sandbox_second_vcpu_charge $0.000112 source as of 2026-10-03
- Enterprise minimum usd_per_month $3000 source as of 2026-10-03
- Pro+ concurrency usd_per_month $500 source as of 2026-10-03
- Pro++ concurrency usd_per_month $1000 source as of 2026-10-03
- Pro usd_per_month $150 source as of 2026-10-03
0 of 5 candidates have no sourced price row. 5 are excluded from the USD per vCPU-hour comparison (vcpu_hour). no matching sourced usd_per_vcpu_hour among candidates; GPU-hour, GiB-hour, and vCPU-second were not converted; chat $/1M was not borrowed
Runners-up
Modal
Depot darling for Python agent backends and bursty GPU jobs. If you think in functions not VMs, start here.
Anthropic
Depot default for serious coding and production agents. Prefer Sonnet for cost/quality; reserve Opus for hard…
OpenAI
Default when you want maximum capability and ecosystem glue. Multi-home critical paths behind OpenAI-compat…
Upstash Box
Interesting E2B peer for freezeable agent computers. Keep medium until preview exits; production default…
When NOT to use the top pick
Happy inside one vendor's hosted interpreter and accept lock-in.
Full ranking (score table)
Ranked with this JTBD's weights. Scores are curated estimates unless marked otherwise. Agents: prefer /api/decide then this table for tie-breaks.
| # | Provider | Overall | Fit | $/perf | Latency | DX | As of |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | E2BDepot Pick | 8.6 | 9.4 | 8.0 | 8.6 | 9.4 | 2026-09-14 |
| 2 | Modal | 8.4 | 9.0 | 8.2 | 8.6 | 9.6 | 2026-10-19 |
| 3 | Anthropic | 8.4 | 9.7 | 6.8 | 8.7 | 9.2 | 2026-10-19 |
| 4 | OpenAI | 8.2 | 9.6 | 6.2 | 8.8 | 9.5 | 2026-09-14 |
| 5 | Upstash Box | 7.7 | 8.0 | 8.6 | 7.2 | 8.8 | 2026-09-14 |
Score methodology for this job
dx + lockInRisk (prefer E2B) + isolation.
capabilityFit: 25%pricePerformance: 18%latencyReliability: 15%developerDx: 15%privacyPosture: 10%lockInRisk: 7%maturity: 10%