daytona vs mirage
daytona is much bigger: 71.7k stars against 3.6k. Over the days we have tracked them daytona moved -0.8% and mirage +14.4%, so mirage is growing faster right now.
mirage leads on customization and privacy and model freedom. daytona does not take any axis by a clear margin.
Stars and commit dates come from our own daily tracking. The six axes are read off each project's documentation by our review pipeline, so they describe what a project says about itself, not what we measured in its code.
Where they stand today
Provides fast, stateful, OCI-compatible isolated sandboxes with dedicated kernels and persistent snapshots for running AI-generated code.
- Stars
- 71.7k
- Tracked growth
- -0.8%
- Maturity
- ●●●●●
- Last commit
- 51d ago
- Language
- mixed
- License
- none declared
- Cost to run
- Hosted service — account + API key
Mounts dozens of services (S3, Slack, Gmail, databases, etc.) side-by-side as a single POSIX-like virtual filesystem so agents can use bash-native pipelines across backends.
- Stars
- 3.6k
- Tracked growth
- +14.4%
- Maturity
- ●●●●●
- Last commit
- 3h ago
- Language
- TypeScript
- License
- Apache-2.0
- Cost to run
- Free, self-hosted; external API costs apply
Six axes, head to head
Each axis runs 0 to 5. The label under a score is what that project's own docs claim, not a category average.
| Axis | daytona | mirage |
|---|---|---|
Context depth How much of your codebase it sees before it answers: the open diff, the diff plus related files, or the whole repository. | ●●●●● Whole-repo access | ●●●●● Whole workspace |
Noise control How it keeps output volume down — severity thresholds, deduplication, incremental runs over new commits only. | ●●●●● Governance controls | ●●●●● Basic filters/config |
Customization How far it bends to your team: custom rules, prompts, style guides, per-path config. | ●●●●● Configurable builder | ●●●●● Extensible commands |
Privacy Whether your code stays on your own infrastructure: fully local, self-hostable, or cloud API only. | ●●●●● Hosted cloud (API key) | ●●●●● Self-hostable |
Model freedom Whether you can point it at any provider, or it is wired to one. | ●●●●● No model freedom | ●●●●● Multiple adapters |
Setup ease What it takes to get a first useful run out of it. | ●●●●● API key + quick start | ●●●●● CLI / SDK quickstart |
Which one to pick
Pick daytona if…
Secure, stateful sandboxing — choose Daytona when you need isolated, persistent execution environments and APIs/SDKs to run AI-generated code reliably.
Pick mirage if…
Unified VFS — pick Mirage when you want agents to access remote services and local files through one POSIX-style filesystem, enabling cross-backend commands, portable workspaces, and embeddable runtimes.
- Customization: Extensible commands (5/5 against 3/5)
- Privacy: Self-hostable (4/5 against 2/5)
- Model freedom: Multiple adapters (3/5 against 1/5)
What people want from each one
daytonaio/daytona
Hacker News: Show HN: Daytona – Open-source dev env manager from a 15-year journey drew 73 points and 24 comments.
strukto-ai/mirage
Hacker News: Mirage – A programming framework for building type-safe, modular systems drew 317 points and 88 comments.
Questions people ask
Is daytona better than mirage?
mirage leads on customization and privacy and model freedom. daytona does not take any axis by a clear margin. daytona is worth picking when secure, stateful sandboxing — choose Daytona when you need isolated, persistent execution environments and APIs/SDKs to run AI-generated code reliably.
Which of daytona and mirage keeps my code private?
daytona: Hosted cloud (API key) (2/5). mirage: Self-hostable (4/5).
What does each one cost to run?
daytona: Hosted service — account + API key. mirage: Free, self-hosted; external API costs apply.
Full profiles: daytonaio/daytona and strukto-ai/mirage. Everything else in Runtimes & sandboxes.