Azure Container Apps Express goes generally available with Sandbox layer

Microsoft says the new setup cuts the setup step for isolated containers and is now available in more than 40 Azure regions.

Microsoft has made Azure Container Apps Express generally available, pairing it with the new Azure Container Apps Sandboxes layer to give developers and agent workloads a faster, lower-friction way to run isolated containers. Express removes environment provisioning, uses consumption-based billing with scale-to-zero behavior, and targets use cases where Microsoft wants AI-assisted workflows and secure code execution to start quickly and manage themselves. The tradeoff is a tighter feature set: no custom domains, Key Vault secret references, Dapr, jobs, GPU workloads, multiple revisions, or service discovery, so teams that need more control are still pointed toward standard Container Apps environments. Existing customers can migrate by archiving and restoring an environment, which Microsoft says takes about 15 minutes and preserves configuration, and the service is now available in more than 40 Azure regions. The release also positions Microsoft against Google’s similar GKE setup for agent sandboxes and snapshot-based isolation.