Code & AI agent sandboxes: read the guide

AWS Lambda MicroVMs

HostedSandbox

Isolated sandboxes. Near-instant launch and resume. Full lifecycle control.

Homepage Docs Pricing Repository

Scanned 12 Oct 2026 · Schema v5 · features v21

From: —
Usage-metered compute, snapshots and data transfer; suspended instances incur no compute charge
Free tier: Not documented
Card requirement unconfirmed.
Isolation: Firecracker microVM
shares only the hypervisor
Regions: 4
US East (N. Virginia) · US West (Oregon) · US East (Ohio) · Asia Pacific (Tokyo)
Capabilities: 16 / 61
9 partial · 36 fail · 0 not assessed
Agent readiness: 11/11 · 9/11
read · drive, pre-login surface

Advertised for

AI coding/agent sandboxes · Interactive development · Security scanning · Data analytics · Multi tenant CI/CD · Reinforcement learning environments · User script game servers

Built for

Developers, then technical

· Dockerfile+S3+IAM+API/CLI onboarding (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/microvms-getting-started.md)
· Tenant-isolated code, snapshots, networking, CPU/memory pricing (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/lambda-microvms-guide.md)

01 Pricing Usage-metered compute, snapshots and data transfer; suspended instances incur no compute charge

Tier	EntryOn demand — ARM, US East (N. Virginia)
Price	$0.0000276944/vCPU-second + $0.0000036667/GB-second; snapshot read $0.00155/GB, write $0.0038/GB, storage $0.08/GB-month
Storage overage	$0.08/GB
vCPU hours overage	$0.09969984/h
Memory gb hours overage	$0.01320012/h

Per-second baseline + actively consumed peak vCPU and memory; snapshot GB read/write and GB-month; standard AWS transfer·Card required: unconfirmed·aws.amazon.com

Overages: Standard AWS data transfer, including VPC transfer; snapshot image one-week minimum retention. S3, IAM-related orchestration, Secrets Manager, ALB and PrivateLink cost separately.

02 Runtime Each fact carries its source; dots show confidence. Open a row for the evidence.

Isolation & lifecycle

Isolation primitive

Firecracker microVMshares only the hypervisor

Persistence

Full memory and disk state across suspend/resume; maximum total session lifespan 8 hours, including suspended time. Termination releases resources.

Snapshots / forks

Pre-initialized memory+disk image snapshots; run many independent sessions from an image; suspend/resume full state. Arbitrary live fork API not advertised.

Resources & limits

Storage

Local disks: 8 GB at 0.5/1/2 GB memory baseline, 16 GB at 4 GB, 32 GB at 8 GB; state retained within session only. S3 is separate.

Limits & quotas

ARM64; baseline 0.5–8 GB memory / 0.25–4 vCPU; automatic peak up to 4x (32 GB/16 vCPU); lifespan 28,800s. Per-account/region memory: 400 GB, 1,024 GB in us-east-1/us-west-2/us-east-2/ap-northeast-1, adjustable and burstable 4x. 100 images, 50 versions, 5 image builds (10 in named regions). Run/Resume 5 TPS, Suspend 2 TPS, Terminate 10 TPS. Throughput 40 RPS at 4 vCPU/8 GB, 160 RPS at 16 vCPU/32 GB.

GPU

Access

Deploy interface

dockerfileclisdkapi

SDK languages

PythonJavaScript/TypeScript

Network & secrets

Egress controls

Public internet by default; choose VPC egress connectors at launch; outbound security groups/NACLs apply. Connectors immutable for running sessions.

Secrets

Image-level environment variables (max 50); per-run payload (max 16 KB); execution role/IMDSv2 short-lived AWS credentials support runtime Secrets Manager or Parameter Store access.

Bring your own cloud

Placement & use

Jurisdiction

Region selected in AWS; contract entity depends on customer account location

Advertised workloads

AI coding/agent sandboxesInteractive developmentSecurity scanningData analyticsMulti tenant CI/CDReinforcement learning environmentsUser script game servers

03 Capabilities 16 pass · 9 partial · 36 fail · 61 of 61 assessed

Supported — Documented on the public surface and verified.
Partially supported — Exists with caveats: gated, thin, or enterprise-only.
Not supported — Checked and not offered.
Not assessed — Scanned before this capability was tracked. Not a lack.

Compute & storage 5/11

Persistent diskStorage that survives restart/stop (not ephemeral-only).

Partially supported

Object storageManaged S3-compatible / blob object store the platform PROVIDES to a user's workloads (buckets, presigned URLs). DISTINCT from persistent-disk (block/volume attached to an instance) and from a self-host dependency (source.self_host.deps[]=["object-storage"] is an infra dep to RUN an OSS tool — the opposite direction). SCOPE varies and matters: native first-class (Railway Buckets, Cloudflare R2) vs a sibling SKU / extension (Fly Tigris, Bunny Storage, DigitalOcean Spaces) — record which in the evidence quote / note. Admitted v15.

Partially supported

Snapshots / forkingSnapshot or copy-on-write fork of a running instance (filesystem-only counts). Whether the snapshot also restores memory + running processes is recorded separately by memory-snapshot (v19).

Supported

Live-state (memory) snapshotsA snapshot / checkpoint / pause captures a running instance's MEMORY and PROCESS state and restores it, so running processes continue where they left off instead of a freshly booted instance with the same files. Counts whether user-triggered (snapshot, checkpoint, pause-to-storage) or used to restore pre-initialised state (memory snapshots for fast cold starts). Distinct from snapshots-forks (any snapshot or fork, including filesystem-only; a product passing that key may still fail this one) and from scale-to-zero (an idle-cost property; suspension may or may not keep memory). Actor multiplexing (see scale-to-zero) records its live-state half here — only when the suspended actor's MEMORY/process state is what comes back, not a freshly booted worker with the actor's files.

Supported

Scale to zeroIdle instances suspend at no / negligible cost. ACTOR MULTIPLEXING (many suspended stateful actors sharing a small pool of pre-warmed workers, woken on request — Agent Substrate, AX, kagent; Rivet's hibernating actors) has NO key of its own (proposal REJECTED v20) — score the idle-cost half HERE and the live-state half under memory-snapshot; the oversubscription ratio / density is a performance characteristic the registry does not key.

Supported

GPU computeGPU-backed instances available.

Not supported

Multi-regionCompute placeable in more than one geographic region.

Supported

Sandbox templates / custom imagesBuild reusable sandbox/VM images from an OCI image or Dockerfile (a base you fork instances from).

Supported

Cloud-init / ignition configCustomise a VM / microVM / instance at boot via cloud-init (or ignition) user-data — the same boot-metadata interface as AWS/Azure/GCP. Inject packages, users, SSH keys, files, and run-commands declaratively at launch. Distinct from sandbox-templates (a PREBUILT image you fork instances from) — this is PER-LAUNCH declarative customisation, not a baked image.

Not supported

Desktop / computer-use sandboxA virtual desktop (GUI) for LLM computer-use — browser + desktop automation, often via noVNC/VNC.

Not supported

Selectable isolation runtimeThe user chooses the isolation runtime per workload / environment / sandbox from more than one option (e.g. microVM vs gVisor vs plain container, native namespaces vs gVisor, gVisor vs VM). Records the CHOICE; the isolation_primitive facet still records the best-evidenced primary. A platform that switches runtime automatically without a user choice (e.g. gVisor forced for GPU) does not pass on that alone.

Not supported

Networking & delivery 4/9

Automatic HTTPSTLS endpoints provisioned automatically per workload.

Supported

Built-in reverse proxyPlatform routes external traffic to workload services.

Supported

Custom domainsBring-your-own domain via CNAME/DNS.

Partially supported

Public preview URLsShareable per-deploy / per-branch URLs.

Partially supported

Direct public IPv6Per-instance stable public IPv6 for raw TCP/UDP (beyond a managed HTTPS proxy) — e.g. mosh / raw sockets.

Not supported

Egress controlsConfigurable OUTBOUND network policy — egress firewall / allowlist / egress proxy on traffic LEAVING a workload. Scoped to OUTBOUND only (v15): private-network REACHABILITY between a user's own services is private-networking, not this. Static-egress-IP belongs here (an outbound concept).

Supported

Private networkingA platform-internal private network between a user's OWN services — service-to-service connectivity, VPC, service mesh, and/or service discovery, not exposed to the public internet. DISTINCT from egress-controls (OUTBOUND firewall/allowlist), reverse-proxy (PUBLIC inbound ingress), and direct-ipv6 (per-instance PUBLIC addressing). Admitted v15.

Supported

Email send / receiveSend and/or receive email from the workload.

Not supported

Edge KV storeA globally-replicated key-value store read from WITHIN an edge runtime at the PoP (low-latency, eventually-consistent) — Cloudflare Workers KV, Deno KV, Fastly KV Store, Akamai EdgeKV, Vercel Edge Config. Distinct from first-party-db (a managed DATABASE service you provision and connect to) and from http-query-api (HTTP access to an external store) — edge-kv is colocated with the edge compute and read at the edge.

Not supported

Developer access 3/10

Public APIDocumented programmatic API.

Supported

OpenAPI specMachine-readable OpenAPI / Swagger spec published.

Partially supported

CLIOfficial command-line tool.

Supported

SDKOfficial client library/libraries.

Supported

SSH accessDirect SSH into workloads.

Not supported

Filesystem APIRemote file operations over the API (list/read/write/watch/copy/upload) without SSH.

Partially supported

Git deployDeploy from a Git repo / push-to-deploy.

Not supported

Private container registryHosted private image registry.

Partially supported

E2B-compatible APIDrop-in compatibility with the E2B sandbox API/SDKs — existing E2B client code runs against this product by changing the endpoint/domain + key, with no business-code changes. E2B itself passes as the reference implementation. Distinct from public-api / sdk (the product has its own API — this key says it also speaks another vendor's) and from self-host-oss (a self-hosted E2B-compatible server is scored on both).

Not supported

HTTP data APIQuery / read / write the stored DATA over plain HTTP/REST (or GraphQL) WITHOUT the native protocol driver (Postgres wire / Redis RESP) — agent- and edge-friendly data access via fetch(). The DATA plane; distinct from public-api (a control-plane / management API). Auto-generated-from-schema REST/GraphQL (PostgREST, pg_graphql) is a flavour of this.

Not supported

AI & agents 0/12

Built-in coding agentShips a first-party AI coding agent in the product.

Not supported

Agent skillsInstallable / declarable agent skills or tools.

Not supported

AI app builderPrompt-to-app / vibe-coding generation surface.

Not supported

MCP serverExposes a Model Context Protocol server for agents.

Not supported

MCP clientActs as an MCP client / consumes MCP tools.

Not supported

MCP-server hostingRun/host MCP servers as a workload on the platform (distinct from exposing a first-party MCP control server — that is mcp-server).

Not supported

LLM gatewayRoutes LLM API calls through the platform (multi-provider).

Not supported

BYOK for LLMsBring-your-own LLM provider keys.

Not supported

Model inference API (first-party)A FIRST-PARTY hosted LLM/model inference API — the provider serves its OWN catalogue of (usually open-weight) models behind a (typically OpenAI-compatible) endpoint, billed per token. Distinct from llm-gateway (a multi-PROVIDER proxy/router for YOUR calls to external providers like OpenAI/Anthropic) and from byok-llm (bring your own provider keys) — here the platform IS the inference provider, serving its own models.

Not supported

Autonomous QA agentA first-party AUTONOMOUS AI agent that QA-TESTS a running app / implementation — exercising it like a real user (clicking through flows, checking behaviour) and reporting bugs/defects (often back to a coding agent, or before a human review). Distinct from built-in-agent (a code-AUTHORING agent — this one VERIFIES the result, it does not write the feature; a product can ship both), from ai-guided-code-review (organises a diff for a HUMAN to review — not an autonomous tester), and from observability (runtime metrics/logs, not active testing).

Not supported

Credential-injection proxyThe platform holds real secrets OUTSIDE the workload and injects them on the wire (an egress / broker proxy swaps a placeholder or phantom token for the real credential on matching outbound requests), so code running in the sandbox — e.g. an untrusted agent — never sees or can exfiltrate the real key. Distinct from secrets-management (storage + injection INTO the workload as env vars/files — the workload holds the secret) and from egress-controls (outbound allow/deny POLICY; a product can have an allowlist without injecting credentials, and vice versa).

Not supported

Preinstalled coding agentThe platform installs and launches a THIRD-PARTY coding agent (a harnesses.yml entry — Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Pi ...) inside a workspace/sandbox it provisions, with the agent's auth wired in (your own account or API key), so you start an agent session rather than an empty box. Distinct from built-in-agent (a FIRST-PARTY agent the vendor ships) and from harnesses[] (which records that a harness CAN target the product, not that the product runs it for you).

Partially supported

Data 0/4

First-party databasePlatform-provided managed database.

Not supported

Database branchingCopy-on-write branch of a DATABASE (schema + data) as a dev-lifecycle primitive — branch your data like code, usually instant via a metadata operation. Distinct from snapshots-forks (forks a running compute INSTANCE / VM state) and from preview-environments (a full per-PR environment that may USE a DB branch). For a data product a CoW branch maps HERE, not to snapshots-forks.

Not supported

Vector searchFirst-class storage, indexing, and similarity search of vector embeddings — a native vector type/index or a managed vector DB. The data-layer primitive for RAG / semantic retrieval.

Not supported

Ephemeral instant DB (no-signup)Provision a working, usable instance via a single command / HTTP call with NO account, signup, or card — typically time-boxed (expires unless claimed). A zero-onboarding path an agent can hit directly.

Not supported

Platform & operations 1/6

Scheduled tasksCron / scheduled job primitive.

Not supported

Durable workflowsDurable execution / long-running workflow primitive.

Not supported

Preview environmentsA full EPHEMERAL environment spun up per PR / branch — compute + addons + (often) a DB branch — torn down on merge. More than preview-urls (which is just a shareable URL for one deploy).

Not supported

Built-in observabilityFirst-party metrics / logs / tracing / APM / profiling included in the platform (no third-party stack required to see what a workload is doing).

Supported

Managed CI/CD runnersPlatform-hosted, drop-in CI/CD runner VMs (GitHub Actions / GitLab), typically faster and cheaper than the CI vendor's own hosted runners, billed per runner-minute; isolated + ephemeral per job. Distinct from git-deploy (push-to-deploy of an APP) and scheduled-tasks (cron) — this is managed CI COMPUTE you point your existing pipelines at.

Not supported

Project template marketplaceA marketplace / gallery of prebuilt PROJECT STARTER templates (apps or websites) a user clones or launches a new project from and then customises — the "start from a template" surface of a builder / PaaS. Distinct from sandbox-templates (a COMPUTE base IMAGE you fork runtime INSTANCES from — Dockerfile / OCI), from app-builder (the prompt-to-app GENERATION surface — a product can have both), and from one-click OSS-app catalogues / helm-addon-marketplace (deploy a FINISHED app as-is, not a starter you build on).

Not supported

Organisation & security 3/9

Built-in authPlatform-provided authentication / IAM for workloads.

Supported

SSO / SAMLEnterprise single sign-on.

Not supported

Secrets managementFirst-class secrets storage / injection.

Supported

TeamsMulti-user team accounts.

Not supported

SharingShare a running workload/resource via link (optionally gated).

Partially supported

BYOCRuns inside the customer's own cloud account.

Not supported

Deploy into customers' VPCsA SaaS vendor uses the platform to deploy and operate ITS software inside ITS CUSTOMERS' cloud accounts / VPCs (nested or "customer BYOC"), managed from the vendor's control plane. Distinct from byoc (your own workloads in your own cloud account).

Not supported

Workload identityThe platform gives each workload its own verifiable identity (OIDC token, SPIFFE SVID, cloud IAM federation) that it exchanges for short-lived credentials, so no long-lived static secret is stored or injected. Distinct from secrets-management (stores / injects static secrets) and credential-injection-proxy (swaps real secrets in on the wire).

Supported

Self-host / OSS coreOpen-source core that can be self-hosted.

Not supported

Proposed, not verified

Capabilities the scan saw but the registry does not track yet. A key is admitted only once two distinct products exhibit it. These are not scored.

Token-authenticated interactive shell accesstoken-authenticated-shell
“Generate a shell token with create-microvm-shell-auth-token, then use the token to establish a connection.” docs.aws.amazon.com

04 Agent readiness Pre-login surface · counts, not a grade

Can an agent read it?

parse-ability · docs, metadata, machine-readable surfaces

11/11

6 full · 5 partial · 100% of applicable checks

llms.txt
Supported
“https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/microvm-api/llms.txt and https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/llms.txt list substantive API and guide Markdown pages; guide links pricing.”
llms-full.txt
Partially supported
“Modular .md documentation covers images/lifecycle/networking/security/integrations; root full-text probes absent. No single complete SKU dump established.”
robots.txt AI policy
Partially supported
“https://aws.amazon.com/robots.txt is present and has no explicit GPTBot/ClaudeBot/PerplexityBot/Google-Extended rule; default allow is not an explicit AI policy.”
JSON-LD
Partially supported
“https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/lambda-microvms/ contains BreadcrumbList and FAQPage JSON-LD; no SoftwareApplication/Product offers schema.”
Sitemap
Supported
“https://aws.amazon.com/sitemaps/index/ is a nontrivial sitemap index found via robots.txt; guessed /sitemap.xml 404 is not absence.”
Meta tags
Supported
“https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/lambda-microvms/ has descriptive title, description and OpenGraph metadata.”
Markdown negotiation
Partially supported
“Landing Accept:text/markdown still returns text/html; docs .md variants serve clean text/markdown.”
Content efficiency
Partially supported
“Landing readable text / raw HTML = 14936/402084 = 3.71%, within 1–5% rubric band.”
Docs discoverable
Supported
“https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/lambda-microvms/ has first-class See the documentation link to SKU guide.”
Machine-readable pricing
Supported
“https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/pricing/ has parseable SKU examples and numeric compute/snapshot rates; dynamic grids omitted by reader but foxcrawl rendered successfully.”
No anti-bot wall
Supported
“curl public landing/docs/pricing/legal/robots and foxcrawl pricing all returned usable public content, no challenge observed.”

Can an agent drive it?

act-ability · APIs, SDKs, MCP, credentials, webhooks

9/11

6 full · 3 partial · 82% of applicable checks

Public API
Supported
“https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/microvm-api/Welcome.md and API_RunMicrovm.md document management actions.”
OpenAPI spec
Partially supported
“https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/microvms-launching.md embeds valid OpenAPI 3.0.2 for application hooks, not the management API; intro/auth/API index has no management OpenAPI link.”
MCP server
Not supported
“/.well-known/mcp returned HTTP 404; no MicroVM-specific first-party MCP server documented in SKU guide/API index.”
SDK packages
Supported
“https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/microvms-launching.md gives Python boto3 and JavaScript @aws-sdk/client-lambda-microvms examples.”
Auth documented
Supported
“https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/microvm-api/CommonParameters.md specifies SigV4; networking/security describe scoped JWE data-plane tokens and IAM roles.”
Self-serve credentials
Supported
“https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/microvms-security.md documents create-microvm-auth-token and create-microvm-shell-auth-token programmatic issuance; requires an existing configured AWS account, not autonomous signup.”
Webhooks
Partially supported
“https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/microvms-launching.md documents lifecycle HTTP POST hooks; not an advertised signed outbound event-webhook subscription API. Integration sample consumes Anthropic/OpenAI signed webhooks, not MicroVM event hooks.”
CLI tool
Supported
“https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/microvms-getting-started.md uses official aws lambda-microvms CLI; sample notes additional service-model install.”
Error model
Supported
“https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/microvm-api/API_RunMicrovm.md documents JSON REST request/response and typed API exceptions; CommonErrors.md gives named errors and status codes.”
Rate limits documented
Partially supported
“https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/gettingstarted-limits.md discloses operation TPS/burst and per-MicroVM throughput; rate-limit response headers are not documented in captured materials.”
Agent config files
Not supported
“No MicroVM-specific agents.md, well-known agent configuration, or installable agent skill was linked in captured landing/API/guide/integration sources.”

05 Coding harnesses Which agents and IDEs are documented to run here

Advertised integrations 2

Cursor Anysphere
Supported
“You can use AWS Lambda MicroVMs as self-hosted machines for your Cursor Cloud Agents.”
Source docs.aws.amazon.com
Cursor Enterprise + self-hosted machines + customer-built reference stack required.
Codex CLI OpenAI
Supported
“In this example, it runs codex exec-server, which executes the agent's tool calls and holds the session's workspace files.”
Source docs.aws.amazon.com
OpenAI Agents API executor integration, not evidence of every interactive Codex CLI workflow.

Plausible compatibility 0

Derived, not stored: the product passes SSH access, so any CLI coding agent is installable inside it. This is plausible compatibility, not a supported integration.

No general shell access documented, so nothing is derived. Absence is not unsupported.

06 Compliance & regions Standards held, with ordinal rigor; never a score

Certifications held 0

No attestations found on the public surface. Empty means nothing is advertised, after checking, not that nothing was checked.

Regions 4

US East (N. Virginia)us-east-1
US West (Oregon)us-west-2
US East (Ohio)us-east-2
Asia Pacific (Tokyo)ap-northeast-1

Confirmed named regions in MicroVM-specific quota table; partial lower-bound list, not an assertion of all Lambda regions or complete availability.

Legal

Privacy notice Terms of service

07 Company & presence Facts only, not scored

Company

Headquarters: Not disclosed
Founded: —
Team size: Not disclosed
Hiring: AWS careers portal available; not SKU-specific hiring

Activity

Last release: —
Last blog post: 2026-09-22 — Adding custom domains to AWS Lambda MicroVMs with Application Load Balancer aws.amazon.com

Presence 3

Links found on the public surface scanned; not an exhaustive search.

08 Sources & method How this entry was produced

Public surface only

Everything here was read from aws.amazon.com's unauthenticated pages, docs, pricing and repository on 12 Oct 2026. Nothing behind a login was used.

Statuses, not scores

Capabilities are pass, partial or fail against a written rubric (features v21). “Not assessed” means the scan predates the key.

Confidence is separate

Each fact carries its own confidence. Low-confidence facts are shown, never hidden, so you can weigh them.

Schema: scan v5
Features registry: v21
Keys tracked today: 61
Assessed on this entry: 61

Something wrong on this page?

Nearby in the atlas

All Sandbox products →