Sprites.dev vs ellul
Sandbox infrastructure, or the product on top of it.
Sprites.dev provides stateful sandboxes other companies build on. Ellul is the product an engineer signs up for. Both have a place; they live at different layers.
Updated
The fundamental difference
Sprites is infrastructure. Ellul is a product. If you're building an AI coding tool and need stateful sandboxes as a primitive, Sprites is the right call. If you're a senior engineer who wants an always-on workstation for your agent, Ellul is what you sign up for. The two are complementary.
Where Sprites.dev is strong
Firecracker microVMs with checkpoint and rollback on fast NVMe. Genuine 'unlimited persistence.' Strong primitive for builders who need sandbox-as-a-service. Their docs are clean and their pricing is honest.
Where ellul is stronger
We are the assembled experience. Chat surface. File browser. Live preview. Passkey gates. Composition primitive. GitHub/Vercel/Neon/Supabase integrations. A senior engineer can sign up for Ellul and have an agent running in five minutes. They don't have to assemble it themselves.
Feature comparison
| Capability | Sprites.dev | ellul | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Layer of stack | Sandbox infrastructure (B2B SDK) | End-user product | |
| Stateful persistence | Yes (unlimited) | Yes (unlimited) | |
| Checkpoint / rollback | Yes (NVMe-backed) | Volume snapshots | |
| Built-in agent UX (chat, files, preview)Sprites: you build it. Ellul: ships with it. | no | yes | |
| Passkey gating (FIDO2, server-enforced) | no | yes | |
| Multi-agent peering | no | Read-only snapshot peering | |
| GitHub / Vercel / Neon integrations | no | yes | |
| Time to first agent run | Hours-days (build the product) | 5 minutes (sign up) |
Pricing
| Tier | Sprites.dev | ellul |
|---|---|---|
| Hobby / individual | Per-sandbox usage | $20/mo flat |
| Pro | Per-sandbox usage | $50/mo flat |
| High-volume | Per-second pricing wins for thousands of short-lived sandboxes | Custom |
Verdict
Different layers of the stack: Sprites is infrastructure, Ellul is the product.
Use Sprites if you're building a coding-agent product and need sandbox primitives. Use Ellul if you're a senior engineer who wants to use an agent today, not assemble one over six months.
When to use each
Use Sprites.dev when
- You're building a coding agent product and need stateful sandboxes as infrastructure.
- You want to own the entire user experience from scratch.
- You need granular per-second pricing for a high-volume sandbox workload.
Use ellul when
- You're a senior engineer who wants to use an agent, not build one.
- You want chat, files, preview, and integrations out of the box.
- You want passkey-gated privileged actions without writing the gate yourself.
- You want a flat monthly price.
Common questions
Could Sprites.dev be used to build something like Ellul?
In principle, yes. Sprites is infrastructure. The full product (chat, files, gates, peering, integrations) is roughly 18 months of engineering on top. We've already built it.
Does Ellul use Sprites under the hood?
No. Our sandboxes are built on a different stack with a custom security model. Passkey gating is enforced by a separate process the agent cannot read or attach to, which requires more than what an off-the-shelf sandbox provides.
Is Sprites cheaper for high-volume agent runs?
If you're spinning up thousands of short-lived sandboxes per day, Sprites' per-second pricing wins. If you're a senior engineer running a few persistent workstations, our flat monthly is usually cheaper.
Does Sprites have passkey gating?
No. Sprites provides sandbox primitives. Gating is something you build on top, and getting it right is hard, because the gate has to be enforced outside the agent process to be meaningful.
What about the composition primitive?
Read-only peering between agents (letting one agent see another's source without writing) is a property of the orchestration layer, not the sandbox layer. Sprites doesn't ship it. Ellul does.
Topics
Try it
Move your agent off your laptop.
Hobby is $20/month. Pro is $50/month. Bring any agent: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode.