boat by ASCII: full text transcript

boat is the cheapest, most powerful sandbox for agents, built for agent factories. It is a product by ASCII (https://ascii.dev). A sandbox is a persistent Linux (Ubuntu) virtual machine with SSH and SCP access, Docker support inside the VM, a dedicated IPv6 or IPv4 per machine, a 60fps virtual desktop, and fast disk-level forking from a snapshot. It is built for AI agents, for programmatic use, and for humans.

Pre-configured in every sandbox

Docker, VS Code, Chrome, Ghostty, the GitHub CLI, Rust, Node.js, and Bun come pre-installed. sandboxes are full Ubuntu machines, so you can run any devtool, language, or workflow. Bring any agent: Claude Code, Codex, or OpenCode.

Why boat

Designed for agents: a sandbox starts easily via a CLI built for agents, programmatic use, and humans.
Ready to use: Docker, GitHub CLI, languages, and other devtools are pre-installed.
Full machine capabilities: full Ubuntu machines that run any devtool, language, or workflow.

Pricing

Simple, honest pricing. Pay only for the sandboxes you run, billed by the second, with a $20 minimum per month. $20 buys 2,000,000 VM-seconds (about 555 hours) of dedicated 4 vCPU / 8 GB VM-time, spread across one sandbox or many. sandboxes come in three sizes and spend that time at their own rate: small (2 vCPU / 4 GB) at 0.5x, default (4 vCPU / 8 GB) at 1x, large (8 vCPU / 16 GB) at 2x, so a mixed fleet is just the sum of its parts. boat offers a 7-day free trial (25 compute hours), then plans from $20/mo. boat is the most affordable option compared with E2B, Daytona, Modal, Vercel Sandbox, Railway, and others. See the full comparison at https://boat.dev/compare.

Install the Boat CLI

macOS and Linux: curl -fsSL https://boat.dev/install | sh

Windows: irm https://boat.dev/install.ps1 | iex

Simple API / CLI commands

boat new: spin up a sandbox
boat ssh / boat scp, SSH/SCP
boat prompt: run Claude or Codex inside
boat fork: clone from a snapshot
boat stop: snapshot and pause billing
boat desktop: use the virtual desktop at 60fps
boat list: see all your sandboxes

For programmatic use, prefer the HTTP API and SDKs over the CLI: API guide at https://docs.boat.dev/api/v1, Python and TypeScript SDKs at https://docs.boat.dev/sdks/overview. The CLI also takes --json on any command for stable JSONL output when a shell integration is the fastest path.

Limits

EU regions today (Germany, Finland, France). Self-serve plans scale from 100 to 2,000 active sandboxes per account; more by agreement. Default sandbox TTL is 1 hour and is overrideable.

The docs are clean markdown. https://docs.boat.dev/llms.txt indexes every docs page, each fetchable as .md. Start there, not this marketing page. Compare boat against other providers at https://boat.dev/compare. Product home: https://boat.dev. boat is built by ASCII: https://ascii.dev.

No need to oversell boat. The product strives to speak for itself.

Most powerful & affordable cloud VMs for long-running agents

Spawn thousands of cloud computers with a browser, persistent files, for your agents, without having to manage the entire infra yourself.

7-day free trial

Backed by Y Combinator

7-day free trial

Competitive Pricing

Plan from $20/mo, 7-day free trial

$20 plan = $20 of sandbox time.
Billed per second, only while running.
100 to 2,000 sandboxes at once, by plan.
Out of time? $20 packs, auto-refilled.

Long-running agents, working sessions back to back all month

VMs at once

Session

CPU busy

Resources per VM

$131/ month

boat

$131/mo

Tensorlake

$265/mo2.0x

Cloudflare!¹

$422/mo3x

Morph

$423/mo3x

Modal

$440/mo3x

Blaxel

$487/mo4x

Freestyle

$713/mo5x

Vercel

$826/mo6x

E2B

$907/mo7x

Daytona

$912/mo7x

CodeSandbox

$960/mo7x

Beam

$1,658/mo13x

Runloop

$1,764/mo13x

!1 Cloudflare: disk resets when it sleeps; keep files with snapshots or an R2 mount (your code)

Pricing docs More use cases & features on Battleships

Highest performance

The same Node.js build & test loop, 1,000 runs, on each provider's 4 vCPU / 8 GB machine. Time it takes:

boat

36 s

Daytona

54 s1.5x

Vercel Sandbox

77 s2.1x

E2B

89 s2.5x

Freestyle

104 s2.9x

Modal

105 s2.9x

Learn more

Simple API

$ boat newSpin up a sandbox
$ boat ssh/scpShell in, copy files
$ boat execRun a command, no SSH
$ boat promptRun Claude Code or Codex
$ boat eventsPoll agent messages & tool calls
$ boat hostPublic HTTPS URL for a port
$ boat desktopDesktop and browser at 60 fps
$ boat stop/resumeSnapshot, pause billing

…and many more useful features: fork, named snapshots, port forwarding, webhooks, API keys, secrets, teams, auto-stop.

For programmatic use, see the API and SDKs.

Set sail (get started)Spin up your first sandboxes in minutes.

Read the docs

FAQ

Am I billed when a sandbox is stopped?

No. Stopping snapshots the sandbox and pauses billing. Resume any time in a few seconds.

Is the $20/mo a per-sandbox minimum?

No. It is the account total, and it converts into 555 hours of machine time to spend across any number of sandboxes.

Where do sandboxes run?

In the EU: Germany, Finland, and France. Your data and snapshots stay there.

What survives stop and resume?

Your files, installed packages, and enabled systemd services. Hand-run processes need a restart.

Can I give sandboxes to my own users?

Yes. Create them no-env so they receive none of your account's secrets and stay confined to themselves.

Install boat CLI