Sandboxes look a bit commoditized. You cannot 10x on basically what's just a VM with a few agent-friendly features in 2026. Hence competing on purely price as a new startup is a bad idea imo. As you mentioned hyperscalers have insane margins, but if this turns out to be a real market, they will lower cost, even just eat the loss if they want and take you out of business. Without any hardware innovation, it's tough for me to see this working. If you are going with a customization angle, again, no moat and plenty of competitors
There's a talk from Travis Kalanick recently on a podcast about this. It talks about the advantages of a startup vs an incumbent. My read is if a startup competes on price, the incumbent has no choice but to first let them gain a bunch of market share. It's too expensive for the incumbents to compete on price because a no-name startup is doing it. So they'd have to let you get relevant enough for it to make sense to compete on that axis.
I view it as a wedge to gain market share and later compete on something else.
I've been looking at offloading local work from my MacBook Pro (M1 Pro / 32 GB) specifically because I've been working with a lot of Android apps and emulation is killing me on top of everything else that I'm running.
Got a bunch of Daytona credits which are close to useless given their restrictions until you hit tier 3.
You seem like you're actually slightly cheaper than https://boat.dev/ but with less storage? That's the closest to your pricing unless I'm mistaken. Any other insight as to differences between you two?
Also I'll add you to a list I've been maintaining of sandbox providers, congrats on the launch!
You guys are operating in a very competitive space. This stuff is fun to build, so a lot of engineers will end up building it. Not to discourage you, but I suspect it will be difficult to capture much value selling this offering as its going to be race to the bottom against very well funded alternatives that can sell these features at a loss in order to get you to use their databases and other offerings that are higher margin and stickier.
As you guys learn more about how to take this sort of technology to market, you may consider trying to get closer to the actual work that people actually need these agents to do. What can you do better because you have this technology? For example, I work in healthcare administration and we have built our own agent sandbox infrastructure on top of firecracker microvms that solve similar use cases as Agent37. We will never sell it. It's part of our competitive advantage for doing healthcare tasks.
Pretty cool, trying it out. What LLM is it using in the free tier? I was surprised that it worked without supplying an API key. The model doesn't seem to know either: "This run is labeled agent37/default. That’s the configured model name I can see; it doesn’t reveal which underlying model/provider it maps to.".
We use OpenAI Luna for the agent37/default model for that.
Yeah in addition to sandbox we also have managed MCPs and our own LLM gateway to make building hosting agent harnesses easier. Most of our customers host hermes, opencode, claude code etc. and needed an easier setup so we ended up offering our own LLM gateway for it, ready to use with the sandbox
I have been using your service for a few months… super easy to set up and use. I signed up after my bank would not let me process a payment to Hetzner :)
My use case was to play around with hermes. I was using it for a while but I didn’t like how it ended up (the whole set up became overran with files and was a mess, my fault).
I still haven’t 100% figured out how I may want to use the service again, but I thought it was super easy to set up.
My only feedback is that some connectors for google’s integration were kind of privacy nightmare the last time I checked.
Google’s API for using AI has abominable UI and set up.
It would be nice to be able to bridge the gap of simplifying Google’s AI/Service integration while not having to hand over access to every Google service I use.
For connectors we do offer managed MCPs like Composio, BraveSearch, and even an LLM gateway (which routes to openrouter). So what we have is simply a pass through for now and we're not looking to do more there. Since most of our early customers were just launching personal agents like Hermes, OpenClaw, Claude Code and wanted an easy white label setup.
Although now it's expanded to just sandbox usecases.
This is cool; pricing is certainly appealing. At the same time, there are a ton of sandboxing providers.
> When you look at agent harnesses, ... CPU/RAM utilization we could lower the cost.
How does it work today? Is the harness (assuming it means the agentic loop) located in a separate VM and each loop-run invokes a separate sandboxing VM?
Similar to Sprites in capability, so if you can use sprites you can use agent37. We're also about 94% lower cost than them.
Fly certainly has great branding since they've been around for a while now. So they have a distribution advantage. But I think at some point they will also need to own some niche rather than just being a generic sandbox company, given how competitive the space is.
I'd be curious to see stats on overlap among startups by batch historically. My impression is that this has always been a thing. Based on where the market/technology horizon currently is, there are some buckets that are very "startup shaped". Founders who are iterating on ideas using similar criteria will often end up in the same proximity, especially in an accelerator environment. But it would be extremely interesting to see if this has become more prevalent over time, or at least since the explosion in the AI market.
Bruh, that's lack of understanding and insight as well as naivety. It is not a race to the bottom. LLM is the winner-takes-all market. Competitors are pricing against each other to come out on top.
Once there is a winner, there will be a price correction.
In your case, positioning yourself as a cheap provider is inherently a bad idea.
> Once there is a winner, there will be a price correction.
Only if there is some form of lock in or the others go out of business. Both of those are low probability.
I'd put a friendly wager on the (lack of) increase of token costs in the next 2 years.
Yeah, this seems like a niche where multiple startups are coming in. But if I remember correctly, we're about 3X cheaper than boat. We did a detailed comparison of all sandbox companies and where we stand across vendors here
Sandboxes look a bit commoditized. You cannot 10x on basically what's just a VM with a few agent-friendly features in 2026. Hence competing on purely price as a new startup is a bad idea imo. As you mentioned hyperscalers have insane margins, but if this turns out to be a real market, they will lower cost, even just eat the loss if they want and take you out of business. Without any hardware innovation, it's tough for me to see this working. If you are going with a customization angle, again, no moat and plenty of competitors
There's a talk from Travis Kalanick recently on a podcast about this. It talks about the advantages of a startup vs an incumbent. My read is if a startup competes on price, the incumbent has no choice but to first let them gain a bunch of market share. It's too expensive for the incumbents to compete on price because a no-name startup is doing it. So they'd have to let you get relevant enough for it to make sense to compete on that axis.
I view it as a wedge to gain market share and later compete on something else.
I've been looking at offloading local work from my MacBook Pro (M1 Pro / 32 GB) specifically because I've been working with a lot of Android apps and emulation is killing me on top of everything else that I'm running.
Got a bunch of Daytona credits which are close to useless given their restrictions until you hit tier 3.
You seem like you're actually slightly cheaper than https://boat.dev/ but with less storage? That's the closest to your pricing unless I'm mistaken. Any other insight as to differences between you two?
Also I'll add you to a list I've been maintaining of sandbox providers, congrats on the launch!
https://engine.build/lab/agent-sandboxes
Boat is a great company too! As far as pricing goes our default sandboxes are about 2.8X cheaper than boat.
We did some detailed pricing analysis here https://www.agent37.com/pricing#sources
For storage you can request more storage if your use case needs it. And yes would appreciate it if you can include us.
Congrats on the launch! Very exciting!
You guys are operating in a very competitive space. This stuff is fun to build, so a lot of engineers will end up building it. Not to discourage you, but I suspect it will be difficult to capture much value selling this offering as its going to be race to the bottom against very well funded alternatives that can sell these features at a loss in order to get you to use their databases and other offerings that are higher margin and stickier.
As you guys learn more about how to take this sort of technology to market, you may consider trying to get closer to the actual work that people actually need these agents to do. What can you do better because you have this technology? For example, I work in healthcare administration and we have built our own agent sandbox infrastructure on top of firecracker microvms that solve similar use cases as Agent37. We will never sell it. It's part of our competitive advantage for doing healthcare tasks.
Food for thought! Good luck!
Pretty cool, trying it out. What LLM is it using in the free tier? I was surprised that it worked without supplying an API key. The model doesn't seem to know either: "This run is labeled agent37/default. That’s the configured model name I can see; it doesn’t reveal which underlying model/provider it maps to.".
We use OpenAI Luna for the agent37/default model for that.
Yeah in addition to sandbox we also have managed MCPs and our own LLM gateway to make building hosting agent harnesses easier. Most of our customers host hermes, opencode, claude code etc. and needed an easier setup so we ended up offering our own LLM gateway for it, ready to use with the sandbox
I have been using your service for a few months… super easy to set up and use. I signed up after my bank would not let me process a payment to Hetzner :)
My use case was to play around with hermes. I was using it for a while but I didn’t like how it ended up (the whole set up became overran with files and was a mess, my fault).
I still haven’t 100% figured out how I may want to use the service again, but I thought it was super easy to set up.
My only feedback is that some connectors for google’s integration were kind of privacy nightmare the last time I checked.
Google’s API for using AI has abominable UI and set up.
It would be nice to be able to bridge the gap of simplifying Google’s AI/Service integration while not having to hand over access to every Google service I use.
Thank you, that's so great to hear !
For connectors we do offer managed MCPs like Composio, BraveSearch, and even an LLM gateway (which routes to openrouter). So what we have is simply a pass through for now and we're not looking to do more there. Since most of our early customers were just launching personal agents like Hermes, OpenClaw, Claude Code and wanted an easy white label setup.
Although now it's expanded to just sandbox usecases.
This is cool; pricing is certainly appealing. At the same time, there are a ton of sandboxing providers.
> When you look at agent harnesses, ... CPU/RAM utilization we could lower the cost.
How does it work today? Is the harness (assuming it means the agentic loop) located in a separate VM and each loop-run invokes a separate sandboxing VM?
I have yet to use sandboxes though have some experimentation planned for a new gig I'm starting in a week.
How would you compare what you do to fly.io's Sprites (which is currently atop my To Try list)?
Similar to Sprites in capability, so if you can use sprites you can use agent37. We're also about 94% lower cost than them.
Fly certainly has great branding since they've been around for a while now. So they have a distribution advantage. But I think at some point they will also need to own some niche rather than just being a generic sandbox company, given how competitive the space is.
This is freaking great. Thank you for posting!
glad to hear it, thank you!
I had ran into another yc startup from the same batch doing the same thing recently. I think it was called maritime.
YC batch are becoming more like hunger games.
I know a few companies where this is just a feature like digitalocean it is just a feature.
I'd be curious to see stats on overlap among startups by batch historically. My impression is that this has always been a thing. Based on where the market/technology horizon currently is, there are some buckets that are very "startup shaped". Founders who are iterating on ideas using similar criteria will often end up in the same proximity, especially in an accelerator environment. But it would be extremely interesting to see if this has become more prevalent over time, or at least since the explosion in the AI market.
It is also funny to see folks and friends of the startup commenting and trying to boost this post which is against the guidelines, but thats ok.
Yeah its a race to the bottom as ai can vibe code any infra now
hahaha, I think it's the same thing as what's happening with LLMs and token cost.
Bruh, that's lack of understanding and insight as well as naivety. It is not a race to the bottom. LLM is the winner-takes-all market. Competitors are pricing against each other to come out on top.
Once there is a winner, there will be a price correction.
In your case, positioning yourself as a cheap provider is inherently a bad idea.
> Once there is a winner, there will be a price correction.
Only if there is some form of lock in or the others go out of business. Both of those are low probability. I'd put a friendly wager on the (lack of) increase of token costs in the next 2 years.
Hi, Vishnu, congrats on the launch.
There is another even cheaper sandbox which is in YC (boat.dev)
How do you compare to them and how are you cheaper then they are?
Thank you!
Yeah, this seems like a niche where multiple startups are coming in. But if I remember correctly, we're about 3X cheaper than boat. We did a detailed comparison of all sandbox companies and where we stand across vendors here
https://www.agent37.com/pricing#sources
What about Maritime.sh (which is also in YC)? I swear everybody in SF is building the same stuff. Lol
Funny I just asked that too but in my quick check boat was slightly more expensive albeit with more storage space.