Gibil vs E2B
Full VMs vs Firecracker sandboxes — which is right for your agent?
E2B ($21M funded) is a strong product for lightweight agent sandboxes. Gibil serves a different niche — heavy workloads that need real infrastructure.
At a glance
| Gibil | E2B | |
|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Full VM (own kernel) | Firecracker microVM |
| Docker-in-Docker | Yes | No |
| SSH access | Yes | No |
| Own public IP | Yes | No |
| Root access | Full | Limited |
| Max resources | Unlimited (any Hetzner size) | 4 vCPU / 8GB |
| MCP server | Yes | Yes |
| Price/hr | $0.03 | $0.10+ |
| BYOC | Yes (bring your own Hetzner) | No |
When to choose Gibil
- Your agent needs Docker to run integration tests with real services (Postgres, Redis, Elasticsearch)
- You need SSH access for interactive debugging
- Your workload is heavy — full builds, large repos, multi-service stacks
- You want to bring your own cloud and control costs
- You need unlimited resources — 32 vCPU / 128GB RAM if needed
When to choose E2B
- You need sub-second boot times for rapid iteration
- Your workload is lightweight — run a script, check output, done
- You're building a code interpreter or REPL-style agent
- You need hundreds of sandboxes running simultaneously
The difference
E2B gives you a sandbox. Gibil gives you a server. If your agent needs to docker compose up a stack of five services and run a full E2E test suite — that's Gibil. If your agent needs to execute a Python snippet quickly — that's E2B.
Next steps
- Gibil vs Daytona — another comparison
- Quick Start — try Gibil in 5 minutes