Gibil vs Daytona
Ephemeral VMs vs managed dev environments
Daytona ($31M funded) provides managed development environments with fast boot times. Gibil takes a different approach — full VMs that are truly ephemeral.
At a glance
| Gibil | Daytona | |
|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Full VM (own kernel) | Container |
| Docker-in-Docker | Yes | Yes |
| SSH access | Yes | Yes |
| Own public IP | Yes | No |
| Root access | Full | Limited |
| Max resources | Unlimited | 4 vCPU / 8GB |
| MCP server | Yes | No |
| AI agent support | First-class (--json, MCP) | Limited |
| Price/hr | $0.03 | $0.36+ |
| BYOC | Yes | No |
| Ephemeral by design | Yes (TTL auto-destroy) | No (persistent) |
When to choose Gibil
- You want truly ephemeral servers that auto-destroy — not persistent environments
- You're building for AI agents —
--jsonoutput and MCP are first-class - You want servers that are 10x cheaper ($0.03/hr vs $0.36/hr)
- You need unlimited resources beyond 4 vCPU / 8GB
- You want to bring your own Hetzner and control infrastructure
When to choose Daytona
- You want persistent dev environments that survive reboots
- You need millisecond boot times
- You want a managed IDE experience with pre-configured editors
- You don't need AI agent integration
The difference
Daytona is a dev environment platform — it manages where you code. Gibil is ephemeral compute — it manages where your code runs. Daytona replaces your local setup. Gibil extends it.
Next steps
- Gibil vs E2B — sandbox comparison
- Gibil vs Raw Cloud — DIY comparison
- Quick Start — try Gibil in 5 minutes