Notes from the EU cloud

The orkestr blog

Engineering notes and product decisions from the people building EU-hosted deploys - in plain words, with real numbers.

Latest sandboxesgdpr

AWS Lambda MicroVMs alternative: agent sandboxes in the EU

AWS Lambda MicroVMs shipped with one EU region. orkestr runs sandboxes in three - the same Firecracker isolation, EU-operated, at a third of the vCPU price.

S Stefan 11 min read
functionsannouncements

European Serverless Functions With Lambda-Class Speed

orkestr Functions runs on a new engine now: ~500ms cold starts, ~100ms warm, deploys in about a second. Fully EU-hosted, no US cloud in the path.

S 7 min read
engineeringinfrastructure

Faster, isolated builds: a Firecracker microVM per build

Every orkestr build now runs in its own Firecracker microVM - hardware-isolated, its own memory, and warm builds in the low tens of seconds.

S 6 min read
announcementssandboxes

Sandboxes get persistent volumes, plus a new region in France

orkestr sandboxes can now mount a persistent volume that survives termination, choose which EU region it lives in, and move it later. The fleet also just picked up a third region: Roubaix, France.

S 7 min read
announcementssandboxes

Sandboxes get pay-as-you-go and a bigger free tier

orkestr sandboxes now run on their own pay-as-you-go tiers, the default small box doubled to 1 GB of RAM, and the free tier runs two at once.

S 2 min read
sandboxesengineering

Custom sandbox templates for AI agents, tools preinstalled

EU-hosted sandboxes for AI agents now bake custom templates, so your tools are preinstalled every run instead of reinstalled. Pick a base, give it a recipe, ship.

S 6 min read
sandboxesgdpr

A Vercel Sandbox alternative that runs in the EU

Vercel Sandbox only provisions in US-East. Here's an EU Vercel Sandbox alternative - the same microVM isolation and snapshots, hosted in Germany and Finland.

S 11 min read
sandboxesgdpr

An EU E2B alternative: agent sandboxes that stay in the EU

Looking for an E2B alternative hosted in the EU? Here's an EU-native agent sandbox - GDPR DPA on the operating entity, snapshots and data that never leave Europe.

S 12 min read
functionsengineering

A serverless QR code API in 30 lines

An homage to the tiny single-purpose function: building a serverless QR code API in 30 lines of Python, EU-hosted, no Dockerfile, no repo, one URL.

S 5 min read
sandboxesengineering

What are managed sandboxes for AI agents?

Your AI agent shouldn't run untrusted commands on your laptop. Here's what a managed sandbox actually is, in plain terms, with real code examples.

S 8 min read
securitygdpr

A self-hosted Google reCAPTCHA alternative (we ship it)

Why we chose self-hosted Altcha as our Google reCAPTCHA alternative: proof-of-work, no third-party JS, no behavioral tracking, no GDPR sub-processor headache.

S 8 min read
announcementssandboxes

EU managed sandboxes for AI agents, in private beta

An EU-native managed sandbox for AI agents. Drop-in for Claude Code, Cursor, MCP clients, and Claude Managed Agents. Private beta open.

S 4 min read
featuresteams

Team workspaces on orkestr, and the ownership-transfer problem

Team plan has improved on orkestr: explicit team workspaces, shared project budgets across personal and team contexts, and a real ownership-transfer flow.

S 6 min read
featuresdeployment

Zero downtime deployment is now the default on orkestr

Every deploy runs alongside the old one. Traffic only cuts over once health and app checks pass. Bad deploy? The previous version keeps serving. No downtime.

S 2 min read
announcementsfunctions

Functions on orkestr, now with pip and npm

Dependencies, more runtimes, live build progress, friendlier failures: what changed in orkestr Functions since the beta. EU-hosted serverless, no DevOps tax.

S 4 min read
securityvercel

Vercel's April 2026 breach: your Monday checklist

The April 2026 Vercel breach started at a third-party AI tool and exposed environment variables. If you deploy on Vercel, here's what to rotate today.

S 3 min read
announcementsfunctions

Functions on orkestr, in beta

Write HTTP handlers in Node or Python, get a public URL in under a minute. No Dockerfile, no repo. EU-hosted. orkestr Functions is in beta.

S 3 min read
announcements

Hi

Starting a blog. A short note on why orkestr exists and what you'll find here.

S 1 min read