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CodePen VS Sandpack by CodeSandbox

Compare CodePen VS Sandpack by CodeSandbox and see what are their differences

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Contents:
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CodePen logo CodePen

A front end web development playground.

Sandpack by CodeSandbox logo Sandpack by CodeSandbox

Sandpack is a toolkit for building live coding experiences that run fully in the browser.
  • CodePen Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-30
  • Sandpack by CodeSandbox Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-03

CodePen features and specs

  • Real-time Collaboration
    Developers can collaborate with others in real-time, making it easy to work on projects with teammates or seek help from the community.
  • Immediate Visual Feedback
    CodePen allows you to see the results of your code as you write it, which is highly beneficial for learning and debugging.
  • Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
    CodePen provides a comfortable and feature-rich online IDE environment with syntax highlighting, autocomplete, and more.
  • Community-Driven
    Users can share their work with the CodePen community, receive feedback, and explore a wide range of projects created by others.
  • Extensive Resources
    CodePen offers a wealth of examples and templates for various web development tasks, making it a useful resource for learning and inspiration.
  • Cross-Device Accessibility
    Being an online platform, CodePen can be accessed from any device with an internet connection, making it convenient for developers on the move.

Possible disadvantages of CodePen

  • Limited Offline Functionality
    Since CodePen is primarily an online tool, it requires an internet connection for most of its features to work, limiting its usefulness in offline environments.
  • Performance Constraints
    Complex or resource-intensive projects may not perform as well on CodePen as they would in a full-fledged local development environment.
  • Subscription Costs
    While many features are free, advanced functionalities and additional storage options require a paid subscription, which may not be ideal for all users.
  • Limited Backend Capabilities
    CodePen is primarily designed for front-end development, so it offers limited support for backend technologies, making it less suitable for full-stack or server-side development.
  • Dependency Management
    Managing dependencies and libraries can be cumbersome compared to local development environments which have better tools for this purpose, like npm.
  • Security Concerns
    Sharing projects with the public can expose your code and assets to unauthorized use, posing potential intellectual property and security risks.

Sandpack by CodeSandbox features and specs

  • Real-time Collaboration
    Sandpack allows developers to collaborate in real-time, enabling teams to work together efficiently without dealing with latency or desynchronization issues.
  • Easy to Embed
    Sandpack makes it easy to embed live code examples in documentation, blog posts, or tutorials, enhancing the learning and sharing experience.
  • Customizable Environment
    Developers can customize their development environment to suit their specific needs by choosing different bundlers, editors, and themes.
  • Integration with CodeSandbox
    Sandpack seamlessly integrates with CodeSandbox, allowing users to switch between simplified live previews and full-featured development environments.
  • Open Source
    Being open source, Sandpack encourages community contributions, ensuring continuous improvement and support from a broader group of developers.

Possible disadvantages of Sandpack by CodeSandbox

  • Limited Language Support
    Sandpack might support fewer programming languages compared to other development platforms, potentially limiting its usability for some projects.
  • Performance Constraints
    The performance of Sandpack might be constrained by browser limitations, affecting the speed and responsiveness of larger projects or complex applications.
  • Learning Curve
    New users may face a learning curve when adapting to Sandpack's environment and features, especially if they are used to other development tools.
  • Dependency on Internet Connection
    As a web-based tool, Sandpack requires a stable internet connection for optimal performance, which could be a drawback in areas with unreliable connectivity.

CodePen videos

+ Add

What Is Codepen?

More videos:

  • Review - Learn to use CodePen from a co-founder of CodePen
  • Review - Using CodePen For Inspiration & Learning

Sandpack by CodeSandbox videos

No Sandpack by CodeSandbox videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to CodePen and Sandpack by CodeSandbox)

CodePen

Sandpack by CodeSandbox

Text Editors
98 98%
Text Editors
2% 2
Developer Tools
0 0%
Developer Tools
100% 100
Programming
100 100%
Programming
0% 0
Open Source
0 0%
Open Source
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using CodePen and Sandpack by CodeSandbox. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare CodePen and Sandpack by CodeSandbox

CodePen Reviews

Best Forums for Developers to Join in 2025
Codepen is a social network for developers to show off their work, ask and answer questions, and exchange ideas. It's like a Reddit for coding and design, with a large community of talented web developers.
Source: www.notchup.com
Top 10 Developer Communities You Should Explore
Codepen is a social development environment that allows developers to showcase their work and experiment with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in a collaborative space. Codepen’s focus on visual and interactive development makes it an excellent community for front-end developers and designers.
Source: www.qodo.ai
8 Best Replit Alternatives & Competitors in 2022 (Free & Paid) - Software Discover
Codepen is a social development environment for front-end designers and developers. Build and deploy a website, show off your work, build test cases to learn.
Source: www.softwarediscover.com
Best Online Code Editors For Web Developers
Probably the most popular online code editor. CodePen is fast, easy to use, and allows a web developer to write and share HTML/CSS/JS code online.
Source: techarge.in
Top 25 websites for coding challenge and competition [Updated for 2021]
CodePen is a cool online IDE that allows you to write code in your browser and see the result just as you build it. CodePen challenges is a place for leveling up your skills by building things. Each week, new challenges appear for you to tackle, and the best “Pens” get picked.
Source: towardsdatascience.com

Sandpack by CodeSandbox Reviews

We have no reviews of Sandpack by CodeSandbox yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, CodePen seems to be a lot more popular than Sandpack by CodeSandbox. While we know about 503 links to CodePen, we've tracked only 8 mentions of Sandpack by CodeSandbox. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

CodePen mentions (503)

View more

Sandpack by CodeSandbox mentions (8)

  • Inside the Box: August Community Update
    Sandpack static file support 🖼️ — You can now serve static files inside a Sandpack instance! This beta feature allows serving SVGs, fonts, images, and much more, which helps take isolated, interactive code examples to a new level! - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • This weird IFRAME thing wasted my 2 days (and counting...)
    But as soon as I wrote the first iteration, I got to know that it wasn't a cakewalk. The page I was trying to capture screenshot of did not render the preview as soon as it loaded. I am using Sandpack by codesandbox to render react/nextjs components and it takes around 35-40 seconds to load up the preview(it runs every thing on machine[WASM baby], such a 😎 cool tech). - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Celebrating Hacktoberfest With Tips for Open-Source
    For us at CodeSandbox, we stand by it as a company but also as individuals. We released our browser editor, Sandpack, and parts of Nodebox as open source and we want to give back any time we can! - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • I spent 5 months building a free leetcode for React/Frontend 🎉
    As for the portal itself then I was thinking of making another post that explains how the site is built. But sandpack by codebox is the standard solution for live code execution. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Creating fluffy trees with Three.js
    Https://sandpack.codesandbox.io/ Sandpack is what they're using. Go check out the docs, and I'm sure there's plenty of tutorials if you search it up. Source: over 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing CodePen and Sandpack by CodeSandbox, you can also consider the following products

JSFiddle - Test your JavaScript, CSS, HTML or CoffeeScript online with JSFiddle code editor.

replit - Code, create, andlearn together. Use our free, collaborative, in-browser IDE to code in 50+ languages — without spending a second on setup.

CodeSandbox - Online playground for React

Runops - Run one-off scripts as production-ready automations

GitHub - Originally founded as a project to simplify sharing code, GitHub has grown into an application used by over a million people to store over two million code repositories, making GitHub the largest code host in the world.

IBM Swift Sandbox - Write & test Swift code in your browser

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