# Do coding agents recommend Daytona?

> Daytona was chosen in 16% of 299 judged code sandboxes sessions, ranking third. Measured with Claude Code, Codex and Cursor.

Source: https://armature.tech/library/do-coding-agents-recommend-daytona
Published: 2026-09-03
Publisher: Armature, Inc. (https://armature.tech)

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> Daytona was chosen in 16% of 299 judged code sandboxes sessions, ranking third. It was also raised as a candidate in 240 further sessions without being chosen.

This page reports what happened when Claude Code, Codex and Cursor had to solve a problem in code sandboxes inside a realistic codebase. Not what a chat assistant says about Daytona. What an agent actually installed.

## The numbers

| | |
| --- | --- |
| Category | Code sandboxes |
| Sessions in the category | 299 |
| Sessions where Daytona was chosen | 47 |
| Install share | 16% |
| Rank in category | 3 of 7 |
| Codebases it won in | 5 |
| Raised as a candidate, not chosen | 240 |
| Chosen when considered | 16% |
| Site | daytona.io |

## By agent

The three agents treat Daytona very differently. Codex chose it in 37% of its sessions in this category and Claude Code in 1%, a spread of 36 points.

| Agent | Sessions | Chose Daytona | Share |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Claude Code | 95 | 1 | 1% |
| Codex | 102 | 38 | 37% |
| Cursor | 102 | 8 | 8% |

A single blended install share would report the midpoint and hide both ends. If most of your users run Claude Code, your real position here is 1%, not 16%.

## By who was asking

Daytona does much better with one kind of buyer than another. It won 60% of sessions asked as enterprise team and 11% of those asked as senior engineer.

| Who is asking | Sessions | Chose Daytona | Share |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Senior engineer | 269 | 29 | 11% |
| Enterprise team | 30 | 18 | 60% |

## What Daytona was up against

The full ranking in code sandboxes, from the same sessions:

| # | Product | Runs won | Share |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | E2B | 127 | 42% |
| 2 | Modal | 74 | 25% |
| 3 | Daytona **(this page)** | 47 | 16% |
| 4 | Vercel Sandbox | 43 | 14% |
| 5 | Anthropic Code Execution | 3 | 1% |
| 6 | Runloop Devboxes | 3 | 1% |
| 7 | Cloudflare Workers | 2 | 1% |

## What this means

A solid second or third position in a category means the agent is genuinely choosing rather than reaching automatically. That is a winnable position, because the inputs it uses can be changed.

The fastest gains are usually in the sessions that were nearly won: read them, find the step where the agent moved on, and fix that step.

## Where these numbers come from

The 299 sessions in code sandboxes are part of a published set of 5,292, run with real coding agents inside realistic codebases and judged blind. The full method is on one page: [how we measured this](/library/how-we-measured-this).

Every code sandboxes run can be replayed on [the board](/leaderboards/sandboxes).

If you work on Daytona: the judge recorded a reason for every session where it was raised and passed over. Those reasons are in the transcripts.

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## Common questions

### Do coding agents recommend Daytona?

Yes. Daytona was chosen in 47 of the 299 judged sessions in code sandboxes, a 16% install share, ranking third in its category.

### Does Claude Code recommend Daytona?

In 1 of the 95 sessions in code sandboxes run with Claude Code, which is 1%.

### Do different coding agents treat Daytona differently?

Yes, and by a wide margin. Codex chose it in 37% of its runs and Claude Code in 1%.

### How was this measured?

Real coding agents at pinned versions were run in sandboxes inside 51 realistic codebases and asked to solve real tasks. A simulated project owner approved or questioned each recommendation before any code was written, and a judge from a model family that builds none of the agents read every session blind.

### How often is Daytona considered but not chosen?

It was raised as a candidate in 240 sessions without being chosen, and chosen in 47. That is a 16% conversion from considered to chosen.

## Read next

- [How to get picked for code sandboxes by coding agents](https://armature.tech/library/sandboxes-coding-agents-playbook) (Markdown: https://armature.tech/library/sandboxes-coding-agents-playbook.md)
- [Do coding agents recommend E2B?](https://armature.tech/library/do-coding-agents-recommend-e2b) (Markdown: https://armature.tech/library/do-coding-agents-recommend-e2b.md)
- [Do coding agents recommend Modal?](https://armature.tech/library/do-coding-agents-recommend-modal) (Markdown: https://armature.tech/library/do-coding-agents-recommend-modal.md)
- [Do Claude Code, Codex and Cursor pick the same tools?](https://armature.tech/library/do-claude-code-and-codex-agree) (Markdown: https://armature.tech/library/do-claude-code-and-codex-agree.md)

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Service: https://armature.tech/discoverability · Results: https://armature.tech/leaderboards/sectors · Contact: contact@armature.tech
