CLI

Use the E2B CLI to create, connect, manage, and debug sandboxes from your terminal.

The E2B CLI lets you create, connect to, and manage sandboxes directly from your terminal. It’s also used to manage templates.

Installation

Using Homebrew (on macOS)

brew install e2b

Using NPM

npm i -g @e2b/cli

Authentication

There are two ways to authenticate with the E2B CLI:

Browser authentication

This option requires an interactive browser environment.

Run the following command to sign in through your browser:

e2b auth login

This will open your default browser and prompt you to authenticate with your E2B account.

Environment variables

Set your environment variables:

export E2B_API_KEY=your_api_key_here
export E2B_ACCESS_TOKEN=your_access_token_here

Learn more about obtaining and managing your API key and access token on the API Key page.

Create a sandbox

Create a sandbox and connect an interactive terminal to it.

e2b sandbox create <template>

For example, to create a sandbox from the base template:

e2b sandbox create base

This will:

1. Create a new sandbox from the specified template
2. Connect your terminal to the sandbox
3. Keep the sandbox alive while you’re connected
4. Automatically kill the sandbox when you exit the terminal

Once connected, you can inspect the sandbox filesystem and processes to debug or experiment, or use it as a dedicated environment for running agents instead of your local computer.

Connect to a sandbox

Connect an interactive terminal to an already running sandbox.

e2b sandbox connect <sandbox-id>

Unlike the create command, connect does not kill the sandbox when you disconnect. When you exit the terminal, only your terminal session is closed — the sandbox continues running.

Execute commands

Execute commands in a running sandbox.

e2b sandbox exec <sandbox-id> <command>

Pipe from stdin

echo "foo" | e2b sandbox exec <sandbox-id> <command>

Run in background

Use the --background flag to run a command in the background and return immediately. The command will print the process ID (PID) to stderr:

e2b sandbox exec --background <sandbox-id> "sleep 60 && echo done"

Set working directory

e2b sandbox exec --cwd /home/user <sandbox-id> ls

Run as specific user

e2b sandbox exec --user root <sandbox-id> apt-get update

Set environment variables

Use the --env flag to set environment variables. This flag can be repeated for multiple variables:

e2b sandbox exec --env NODE_ENV=production --env DEBUG=true <sandbox-id> node app.js

List sandboxes

List all sandboxes:

e2b sandbox list

This returns running sandboxes by default. Use --state to filter by state.

Filter by state

e2b sandbox list --state running,paused

Filter by metadata

e2b sandbox list --metadata key1=value1,key2=value2

Limit results

e2b sandbox list --limit 10

Output format

# Pretty print (default)
e2b sandbox list --format pretty

# JSON
e2b sandbox list --format json

Shutdown sandboxes

Shutdown specific sandboxes

e2b sandbox kill <sandbox-id1> <sandbox-id2> <sandbox-id3>

Shutdown all sandboxes

e2b sandbox kill --all

You can filter which sandboxes to shut down by state, metadata, or both:

# By state
e2b sandbox kill --all --state=running,paused

# By metadata
e2b sandbox kill --all --metadata=key=value

# Both
e2b sandbox kill --all --state=running,paused --metadata=key=value