Overview

Each sandbox runs in its own hypervisor-isolated microVM, with a separate filesystem, network stack and process tree. That boundary is a practical advantage for user-supplied code and other jobs that should not share an ordinary process environment; it is not a general-purpose application hosting service.

Developers can create and manage sandboxes with SDKs or the REST API. The JavaScript SDK is distributed through npm and JSR, and the Python SDK through PyPI. The SDK is tested and supported on Deno latest stable, Node.js 24+ and Python 3.10 or later, so teams using those runtimes have a direct integration path.

Key features

Outbound networking is unrestricted by default, which is convenient for jobs that need broad access but is a security choice teams must make deliberately. An allowlist can restrict connections to specified hosts. Secrets remain placeholders inside the sandbox and are substituted only for outbound requests to approved hosts, reducing direct credential exposure while still allowing controlled service access.

Sandbox files are ephemeral unless a volume is mounted. The VM is destroyed and its disk wiped when its last reference is dropped or it is killed, a clean fit for disposable work but a reason to plan mounted storage for data that must persist. Each sandbox supports up to 2 vCPU, 10 GB of ephemeral disk and configurable memory from 768 MB to 4096 MB, with a maximum 30-minute lifetime. Those caps suit bounded jobs better than long-running workloads.

Sandboxes can expose an HTTP development server, provide SSH access and offer an on-demand VS Code editor. Commands, HTTP requests and SSH sessions can be traced in the Deno Deploy dashboard, which gives teams a way to inspect activity across these access paths. Amsterdam and Chicago are the supported regions. The default prerelease cap is five concurrent sandboxes per organization; teams needing more must contact Deno.

Pricing

The Free plan costs 0.00 USD per month, billed $0 /month, and does not include Sandbox. It includes 1M requests/month and 10 hr active CPU, making it useful for the underlying service but not a way to run Sandbox workloads without paying.

Deno Sandbox usage costs 0.20 USD per month, billed at $0.20/GiB-month for CPU time, memory and persistent volume usage. Because usage is the billed unit, teams should account for resource consumption rather than treating the rate as a flat monthly subscription.

Pro costs 20.00 USD per month, billed $20 /month, and includes Sandbox, three concurrent sandboxes per region and 5 GiB of volume storage. It is the entry paid tier for small workloads, but its concurrency and storage ceilings may constrain parallel jobs or persistent data. Builder costs 200.00 USD per month, billed $200 /month, and raises those allowances to 20 concurrent sandboxes per region and 50 GiB of volume storage, better suited to teams with higher parallelism or storage needs.

Enterprise has custom pricing, custom sandbox concurrency and volume storage, and requires contacting sales. Community support is included on every listed plan; Pro, Builder and Enterprise add email support, while Enterprise also includes an email support SLA. The pricing page's 200 GB/mo bandwidth limit and 5,000,000 included requests/mo are relevant to deployment planning, but do not replace checking Sandbox's separate resource, lifetime and concurrency caps.

Platforms

Deno Sandbox is available through API and web access, with edge deployment. The surrounding Deno Deploy platform supports JavaScript, TypeScript, Deno and Node.js, request processing, response streaming and cron triggers. Deployment methods include GitHub integration, dashboard and CLI. Its two edge locations are Amsterdam and Chicago, so teams needing regions beyond those locations should look elsewhere.

Deno Deploy is SOC2 and ISO27001 certified, and HIPAA BAAs are available for enterprise contracts. That makes the enterprise option relevant for teams with those compliance requirements, while the BAA availability is specifically tied to enterprise contracts.

Who it's for

Deno Sandbox is a strong fit for teams building AI agents, copilots, plugin systems, collaborative IDEs, ephemeral CI runners, smoke tests, user-code execution or preview environments. Its short lifetime, disposable disk and isolation model align with temporary execution. Teams running persistent services, needing long sessions, or requiring a higher default concurrency ceiling should evaluate those constraints before committing.

Pros and cons

Pros: Hypervisor-level isolation gives each sandbox its own filesystem, network stack and process tree, a useful boundary for untrusted or separate execution.
Pros: Host allowlisting and outbound-only secret substitution enable controlled access to services without placing raw secrets directly in the sandbox.
Pros: SDKs for JavaScript and Python plus a REST API cover common integration routes across the supported runtimes.
Cons: Sandbox is excluded from Free, so teams must take a paid plan to use the central capability.
Cons: A 30-minute maximum lifetime, 10 GB ephemeral disk and default prerelease cap of five concurrent sandboxes per organization limit its fit for longer or high-volume jobs.
Cons: Networking is unrestricted by default, so teams with a default-deny posture must configure an allowlist.
Cons: Only Amsterdam and Chicago are supported sandbox regions, limiting regional placement choices.

Alternatives

For teams evaluating developer tooling alongside their execution platform, the JavaScript Package Managers directory provides a broader category view. Pick JSPM instead when the need is open-source import-map package management tools rather than isolated compute. Choose npm for public package publishing and registry access, not sandboxed execution. vlt is an alternative for package storage and delivery with upstream proxy and user and token management. Pantry is a package-oriented option with public packages, analytics and build-queue features. Rush is a free, open-source JavaScript monorepo manager installable through npm. Textadept is a free, MIT-licensed open-source text editor. Yarn is a free open-source package manager. Bower is a free command-line utility.

Verdict

Choose Deno Sandbox when your team needs short-lived, isolated environments for code execution and values host controls and secret substitution alongside SDK and API access. The main reasons to look elsewhere are the Free plan's lack of Sandbox, tight per-sandbox lifetime and resource bounds, or regional and concurrency needs beyond its current limits.

	Bower	Deno Sandbox
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Free trial	No	No
Paid from	Free	$0.20/mo
Open source	No	No
Platforms	Linux, macOS, Windows	api, Web
Package publishing	No	—
Offline package cache	Yes	—
Free plan	—	Yes
Paid from	—	20 /mo

Bower vs Deno Sandbox

Bower

Deno Sandbox