Obscura vs OpenShell
Two of the top sandboxes, side by side: score, setup, license, activity and what each review found.
Obscura
Rust headless browser with CDP, native rendering and stealth mode
OpenShell
Policy-enforced sandbox runtime for autonomous agents with credential brokering
| What we compare | Obscura | OpenShell |
|---|---|---|
| Score parts, out of 100 | ||
| Adoption | 72, popular | 44, known |
| Freshness | 100, active | 100, active |
| Maintenance | 91, healthy | 88, healthy |
| Easy to run | 50, easy | 50, easy |
| Agent-ready | 30, minimal | 85, ready |
| Facts from GitHub and the README | ||
| Stars | 28.8k | 15.8k |
| License | Apache-2.0 (permissive) | Apache-2.0 (permissive) |
| Last commit | Oct 2026 | Oct 2026 |
| Last release | Oct 2026 | Oct 2026 |
| Language | Not stated | Not stated |
| Docker | Yes | Yes |
| GPU | Not needed | Not needed |
| arm64 or Apple Silicon | Mentioned | Mentioned |
Obscura
Headless browser engine in Rust running V8 that speaks the Chrome DevTools Protocol, so Puppeteer and Playwright connect on port 9222 as if to Chrome. Ships its own layout and paint engine for screenshots, screencasts and PDF export, a stealth build with per-session fingerprint randomization, a parallel scrape command and an MCP server. Claims 30 MB memory and 85 ms page loads against 200+ MB and about 500 ms for Chrome.
Who it is for: Scrapers and agent builders replacing headless Chrome
Strengths
- Single binary around 70 MiB, no Chrome or Node.js; distroless Docker image about 57 MB
- Stealth build randomizes fingerprints per session and blocks 3,520 tracker domains
- SSRF protection blocks private IPs by default; CDP token on the Docker image
- Fetch.takeResponseBodyAsStream and IO.read stream large downloads in chunks
Weaknesses
- Independent rendering engine; long-tail CSS, media playback and fonts can differ from Chromium
- Stealth builds need CMake, Clang and libclang; first source build takes about 5 minutes
- README carries heavy proxy-vendor sponsorship and discount codes
- Linux binaries target glibc 2.35 or newer (Ubuntu 22.04)
- no GPU
- Docker
- port 9222
OpenShell
Runs each agent in a sandbox with kernel-enforced limits on file access and system calls; every outbound connection passes a policy check, and agents never see real credentials, which a gateway injects only for approved endpoints. Policy changes are checked with formal verification before approval. Installs via a shell script on Linux, Apple Silicon macOS or WSL 2; Helm for Kubernetes; SDKs for Python, TypeScript, Go and Rust.
Who it is for: Platform teams running fleets of autonomous agents
Strengths
- Credentials attached by the gateway only to approved endpoints; sandboxes never hold them
- Formal verification flags risky new access before a policy change is applied
- Kubernetes deployment via Helm; GPU use inside sandboxes documented
- Python, TypeScript, Go and Rust SDKs plus agent skills via npx skills add
Weaknesses
- Windows support is WSL 2 only and experimental
- Default sandbox image is minimal Ubuntu with no agent; running one follows the docs walkthrough
- Anonymous telemetry on by default; disable with OPENSHELL_TELEMETRY_ENABLED=false
- Kubernetes installs require a CNI that enforces NetworkPolicy
- no GPU
- Docker + Compose
- Needs Docker, Podman or host virtualization
- Models: any provider via routed inference credentials