smolvm is a lightweight, embeddable, and portable microVM runtime that boots OCI images as isolated Linux virtual machines.
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It is designed to provide secure, hardware-isolated sandboxes for coding agents, untrusted code execution, and development environments without requiring a Docker daemon.
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Sub-second microVM boot times and elastic memory allocation
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Branchable VMs using copy-on-write snapshots for rapid state replication
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Hardware-isolated environments with granular network and credential control
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Portable.smolmachine artifacts for consistent local and cloud execution
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Integrated GPU support for CUDA and Vulkan workloads
Open Source
The smolvm CLI and engine are free and open-source. The company also offers a managed service, smol cloud, which uses usage-based pricing for compute, memory, and disk resources.
Best for
Running isolated coding agent sandboxes, untrusted code, and persistent local development environments that require a real Linux kernel boundary.
Not ideal for
Applications requiring traditional Docker container behavior without the overhead of a dedicated guest kernel or those needing workloads that bypass hardware isolation.
smolvm is a high-performance, developer-focused tool that effectively bridges the gap between local sandboxing and managed cloud execution through a consistent API.
The latest version, v1.32.4, released on 2026-10-28, includes updates to DMA-BUF heap exposure for Android, improvements to private registry credential seeding, dependency updates for security, and refinements to CI processes.
As of
Is smolvm free?+
Yes - smolvm is Open Source. The smolvm CLI and engine are free and open-source. The company also offers a managed service, smol cloud, which uses usage-based pricing for compute, memory, and disk resources.
Is smolvm open source?+
Yes - smolvm is open source. The smolvm CLI and engine are free and open-source. The company also offers a managed service, smol cloud, which uses usage-based pricing for compute, memory, and disk resources.
Who is smolvm best for?+
Running isolated coding agent sandboxes, untrusted code, and persistent local development environments that require a real Linux kernel boundary.
Who is smolvm not ideal for?+
Applications requiring traditional Docker container behavior without the overhead of a dedicated guest kernel or those needing workloads that bypass hardware isolation.
What are the best smolvm alternatives?+
The closest smolvm alternatives on ai.dosa.dev are Pieces for Developers, agenttrace, Vibe Kanban - all listed under Developer Productivity & Workflow.
Who makes smolvm?+
smolvm is developed by smol machines. It is listed in the Developer Productivity & Workflow category on ai.dosa.dev.
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