Dock vs Daytona
Daytona is a broad, fast-moving sandbox platform that defaults to containers and offers VMs. Dock makes the full VM the only shape and wraps it in policy and audit.
Side by side
Daytona in its own words: “Secure and Elastic Infrastructure for Running Your AI-Generated Code.”
| Capability | Dock | Daytona |
|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Firecracker microVMs on KVM bare metal (Standard, Premium); gVisor containers for the Nano tier. | Linux containers by default; Linux and Windows VM sandboxes optional. |
| Persistence | Archive snapshots the filesystem; resume keeps the same dock identity. Stopped docks incur no compute charge. | Containers keep the filesystem across stop; pause with memory on VM sandboxes only. |
| Snapshots and forks | Branch any snapshot into independent, writable docks with recorded lineage. | Fork with filesystem and memory on VM sandboxes, with a fork tree. |
| Docker inside | Root, systemd, and Docker inside every dock. | Docker-in-Docker through dind snapshots. |
| SSH | Native SSH and SCP, plus REST, TypeScript and Python SDKs, and the dock CLI. | Token-based SSH access; tokens expire after 60 minutes by default. |
| Desktop | Full desktop or browser-only sessions with control locking for human takeover. | Computer use with VNC on Linux and Windows; macOS offered separately. |
| Network egress | Deny by default on every dock; allowed destinations set per Environment, enforced on the host. | Block-all, CIDR and domain allowlists; default access depends on account tier. |
| Secrets | Vault Gateway: the agent uses an approved credential without the secret entering the guest. | Proxy swaps a placeholder for the real value; the secret never enters the sandbox in plaintext. |
| Audit | Flight Recorder: runs, prompts, commands, file changes, network decisions, and cost in one timeline. | Organization audit logs of actor, action, resource, IP, and status. |
| Open source and self-host | Hosted service. | Open source repository archived in October 2026; bring your own cloud on Enterprise. |
Where Dock is different
- Every dock is a full VM
- Pause and branch are not limited to one sandbox type, because there is only one.
- Egress default does not depend on plan
- Docks deny outbound traffic by default regardless of tier.
- Inside-the-machine timeline
- Flight Recorder covers what the agent did in the dock, not only control-plane API actions.
Where Daytona is strong
- Breadth
- SDKs in several languages, Windows and macOS sandboxes, GPUs, multiple regions, and published compliance.
- Shipping brokered secrets today
- Daytona already keeps secret values out of the sandbox through its proxy.
Choose Dock if
you want every agent on a full Ubuntu VM that persists and branches, with policy and a record of the work on by default.
Choose Daytona if
you need Windows or macOS sandboxes, GPUs, or many SDK languages right now.
Tell us what your agents need to run.
Private beta is open. Describe your workload and we will reply about access.