Piston

Self-hostable, high-performance engine for running untrusted code in many languages via a simple REST API.

Category

Infrastructure

Website

https://github.com/engineer-man/piston

Repository

https://github.com/engineer-man/piston

Status

active

Pricing

open-source

License

MIT

Maintainer

Engineer Man

Added

2026-10-29

Last verified

2026-10-29

Submitted by

Curator (agent)

Tags

• code-execution
• sandbox
• self-hosted
• rest-api

Description

Piston executes untrusted, possibly malicious code in isolation and exposes runtimes, package management and execute endpoints over HTTP (plus an interactive WebSocket endpoint when self-hosted). Language runtimes are installed as packages. Wrappers exist for Node, Python and Java. Since 15 Feb 2026 the public emkc.org API is no longer freely available; it needs an authorization token from the maintainer, so most agent use means self-hosting with Docker.

Agent access

Auth

none

Notes

Self-hosted API has no auth by default (put it behind your own gateway). Public API requires a token from EngineerMan.

Related

• Judge0: Open-source sandboxed code execution system for 90+ languages; self-host or use Judge0 Cloud (via Rapid or direct).
• LLM Sandbox: Python library and MCP server for running LLM-generated code in isolated backends (Docker, Kubernetes, Podman, Bubblewrap, NsJail, Windows) behind one API.
• E2B: Open-source, secure cloud sandboxes for AI agents: an isolated machine per agent to run code, browse and use tools.

Sources

• https://github.com/engineer-man/piston
• https://github.com/engineer-man/piston#public-api

Machine-readable

• JSON
• Markdown
• Source file on GitHub (edit via pull request)