Vercel Sandbox Now Runs on Vercel Managed Images

Vercel has launched Vercel Managed Images (VMI), version-controlled open-source-based images, replacing the existing runtime for Sandbox. Starting with Sandbox SDK v3, new sandboxes use the Ubuntu-based vercel/sandbox/universal:latest image by default.

The Universal image includes Node.js 24, Python 3.14 with uv, coding agents such as opencode, claude-code, codex, and pi, as well as standard utilities like Git, Vim, tmux, ripgrep, and jq. The default operating system has also changed from Amazon Linux to the more widely used Ubuntu.

Managed Images release new versions daily, with the latest and major version tags automatically reflecting OS, dependency, and security patches. For reproducible environments, you can specify an image digest (SHA) to disable automatic updates.

Key image options are as follows:

• universal:latest: Ubuntu 26.04, Node.js 24, Python 3.14, and coding agents included
• node:22, node:24, node:26: Node.js environments by version
• python:3.14: Python-based environment
• ubuntu:latest: Base Ubuntu 26.04 image without additional tools
• arch:latest: Arch Linux image suitable for installing tools at runtime

Images can be pulled from project-internal repositories, team-shared repositories, or public repositories. The existing runtime property remains deprecated, so existing code continues to work, and teams requiring an Amazon Linux-based AL2023 environment can still use the existing runtime. In Managed Images, the default user is ubuntu or arch instead of vercel-sandbox, with passwordless sudo provided.