Intro to Render Sandboxes

Render Sandboxes is in public beta.

APIs, defaults, and limits might change during the beta period.

Render Sandboxes provides managed, ephemeral environments for executing untrusted code. Use sandboxes for AI agents, code interpreters, builds, tests, and other workloads that need an isolated OS environment.

At a glance

1. You create a sandbox with the Render CLI or SDK.
2. Inside the sandbox, you (and your agents) can execute commands and manage files.
3. When you're finished with the sandbox, terminate it.
   • A sandbox also terminates automatically when its configured runtime timeout expires.
   • You can disable a sandbox's timeouts so it runs indefinitely.

Termination permanently deletes the sandbox's filesystem. Before terminating, you can download any files you need or capture a snapshot to reuse state in a new sandbox.

Core features

• Isolated execution

  Execute commands and agent-generated code in a contained environment with its own filesystem.

• Reusable snapshots

  Capture sandbox state to reuse a prepared filesystem or resume a process in a new sandbox.

• File transfers

  Upload any code and files, then download the output your sandbox produces.

• Automatic idle suspension

  Sandboxes can suspend when idle and resume automatically when you next interact.

• Configurable compute

  Choose a compute plan with the CPU and RAM each workload needs.

• Network controls

  Configure access to allow outbound traffic to a specific set of destinations (or none at all).

Quickstart

1. Install the CLI or SDK

2. Set up credentials

1. Create an API key from your Account Settings page in the Render Dashboard.

2. Set the following environment variables wherever the CLI or SDK will run, replacing values as indicated:

   • Replace rnd_abc123 with your API key.
   • Replace tea-def456 with your workspace's ID, available at the top of its Settings page in the Render Dashboard.

3. For the CLI, also set your active workspace:

   • Replace tea-abc123 with your workspace's ID.

3. Create a sandbox and execute a command

The following example creates a sandbox with a five-minute runtime timeout, waits until it's running, executes a basic echo command, then terminates the sandbox:

Next steps

After creating your first sandbox, explore how to:

• Execute commands, process their output, and handle command failures.
• Upload and download files, including entire directories.
• Capture snapshots and restore from them to reuse files, installed packages, and running processes in new sandboxes.
• Configure sandbox behavior, including compute, timeouts, environment variables, and network access.
• Manage sandbox groups to organize workloads and set separate concurrency limits.

References

For detailed command and SDK reference material, see:

• Sandboxes CLI reference
• Sandboxes SDK for TypeScript
• Sandboxes SDK for Python

Limits

For available compute plans, sandbox runtime timeouts, concurrency, and API rate limits, see Limits for Render Sandboxes.

Beta limitations

We'll address these limitations during the beta period:

• Sandboxes do not yet support private networking to connect to your other Render services and datastores.
• Sandboxes do not yet provide public URLs for accessing applications running inside them.
• Credential brokering is not yet generally available.
• Scoped API keys are not yet generally available.

Interested in early access to some of these additions?

Reach out with details about your use case:

Talk to our team