You can try it out for yourself over at or by clicking one of the starter projects below.īoot a Node.js project in your browser in milliseconds (don’t blink!):Īs of today’s launch, WebContainers are now in public beta. That’s right: the Node.js runtime itself is running natively, inside the browser, for the first time ever.

Instead, each environment is completely contained within your web browser. “That’s right: the Node.js runtime itself is running natively, inside the browser, for the first time ever.”Īgain, these environments are not running on remote servers. All code execution happens inside the browser’s security sandbox, not on remote VMs or local binaries. Seamless integration with Chrome DevTools enables native back-end debugging, no installs or extensions required. Builds complete up to 20% faster and package installs complete >= 5x faster than yarn/npm. It also runs entirely inside your browser, which yields some key benefits: The environment loads with VS Code’s powerful editing experience, a full terminal, npm and more. WebContainers allow you to create fullstack Node.js environments that boot in milliseconds and are immediately online & link shareable-in just one click. Today we’re excited to announce WebContainers. Two years later (time flies 😅), the result has shaped up to be unexpectedly phenomenal.

We hoped for the best, and expected the worst. But if the web now runs full environments for graphic designers, video editors, and rich document editing, we wondered: is it finally possible for developers to use the web to build the web?

We envisioned a superior development environment that was faster, more secure and consistent than local environments, to enable seamless code collaboration without ever having to set up a local environment. The advent of WebAssembly and new capabilities APIs made it seem possible to write a WebAssembly-based operating system powerful enough to run Node.js, entirely inside your browser. Update: Since the publication of this blog post in May 2021, WebContainers became stable and available on Firefox but most importantly, we released a WebContainer API for you all to enjoy!Ī few years ago we realized that the web was heading towards a key inflection point.

Free browser sandbox