AWS EC2 vs Scaleway
AWS EC2 and Scaleway Instances are both general cloud VMs you set up yourself. EC2 is a worldwide hyperscaler billed per second, with GPUs, Windows and macOS; Scaleway is a European cloud in Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw and Milan, billed per hour of uptime.
The companies and products
AWS EC2
AWS EC2 is Amazon's general-purpose cloud VM service, not a sandbox product: you rent virtual servers by the second and set them up yourself.
You pick an instance type (Intel, AMD, Graviton Arm, GPU or Mac), a machine image and a network, and EC2 boots a Nitro VM with its own kernel and root access. Disks are EBS volumes, inbound traffic goes through security groups, and anything agent-specific (agents, desktops, HTTPS URLs, key handling) is yours to build. It is built for every kind of server workload, from websites to GPU training, across AWS's worldwide regions.
Scaleway
Scaleway is a European cloud and AI provider, part of the iliad Group, that rents virtual machines, GPUs, storage and managed services.
Scaleway Instances are KVM virtual machines you pick from fixed shapes, from small shared-vCPU Development Instances to dedicated-vCPU and Arm64 types, running Linux or Windows Server. You get root, SSH, a public IP and security groups, and you install and run your own software next to Scaleway products like managed databases, Kubernetes, object storage and GPU Instances. It is general cloud infrastructure, not an agent sandbox, so this page compares the two where they overlap: giving an agent its own Linux machine.
Which use cases each one fits
For each use case, Battleships prices every sandbox provider on the same workload and sorts them from the cheapest monthly bill up. “5th cheapest of 364” means 4 of the other 363 providers run that workload, with every feature it needs, for less. “With limits” means the provider runs it but misses something, so it is listed after every full match. Open a use case for its whole ranking and what each provider misses.
| Use case and its workload | AWS EC2: price rank | Scaleway: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Both give a full Linux VM you build on, so the agent setup, preview URLs and copies are yours to make; boat ships them on every machine and ranks 3rd. | 87th of 367, with limits $775 a month | 49th of 367, with limits $322 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB | 114th of 366, with limits $646 a month | 90th of 366, with limits $208 a month | 5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month |
| Code interpreter bursts 100 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 200,000 sessions of 1 min a month EC2 bills short runs per second with a 60 second minimum, while Scaleway bills each CPU Instance for at least an hour, so EC2 handles one-minute bursts far better. | 102nd of 345, with limits $165 a month | 166th of 345, with limits $893 a month | 186th of 345, with limits $2,000 a month |
| Sandboxes for your users 300 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 23 min a month Sandboxes for your users fit boat fully, ranked 1st; on EC2 and Scaleway you build HTTPS access, per-user isolation and quota increases yourself. | 70th of 361, with limits $607 a month | 84th of 361, with limits $738 a month | Cheapest of 361 $209 a month |
| RL rollouts 1,000 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 1,000,000 sessions of 3 min a month EC2 ranks 13th for RL rollouts once your quota is raised; on Scaleway every short rollout pays a full hour, which puts it far down the list. | 13th of 360, with limits $830 a month | 176th of 360, with limits $18,254 a month | 34th of 360, with limits $2,000 a month |
| Agent evals 250 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 15,000 sessions of 20 min a month Agent evals fit all three; EC2 ranks 5th, boat ranks 10th and Scaleway ranks 42nd. | 5th cheapest of 364 $177 a month | 42nd cheapest of 364 $776 a month | 10th cheapest of 364 $200 a month |
| CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month Both run Docker builds on a full VM with a runner you install, but Scaleway's hourly billing makes short jobs pay for idle time; boat ranks 4th. | 21st cheapest of 377 $255 a month | 82nd cheapest of 377 $777 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB A 24/7 dev box suits both clouds, and Scaleway ranks 30th against EC2's 59th; boat ranks 18th and saves the disk every minute. | 59th cheapest of 368 $76 a month | 30th cheapest of 368 $41 a month | 18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month |
| Computer-use agents 50 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 20,000 sessions of 15 min a month | 103rd of 369, with limits $195 a month | 94th of 369, with limits $168 a month | 6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month |
| Browser-use agents 50 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 10 min a month | 165th of 367, with limits $101 a month | 173rd of 367, with limits $126 a month | 7th cheapest of 367 $200 a month |
| Scraping & bots (startup scale) 50 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 100,000 sessions of 3 min a month | 195th of 346, with limits $116 a month | 149th of 346, with limits $13 a month | 6th cheapest of 346 $90 a month |
| Mass scraping & bots (undetectable) 1,000 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 3,000,000 sessions of 2 min a month | 82nd of 338, with limits $2,046 a month | 34th of 338, with limits $253 a month | 71st of 338, with limits $1,800 a month |
| Parallel red teaming 200 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 5,000 sessions of 30 min a month | 108th of 360, with limits $45 a month | 103rd of 360, with limits $29 a month | 2nd cheapest of 360 $200 a month |
| GPU eval jobs 10 at once · 8 vCPU / 32 GB · 500 sessions of 30 min a month Only EC2 has a ranked fit for GPU eval jobs here; Scaleway rents GPU Instances by the minute too, and boat has no GPUs. | 25th cheapest of 98 $1,723 a month | Can't run it | Can't run it |
| macOS agents 5 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 1,000 sessions of 20 min a month | Can't run it | Can't run it | Can't run it |
Key features
| Feature | AWS EC2 | Scaleway | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | A general cloud VM from a hyperscaler; you install and wire everything else | A general cloud VM in a European cloud; you install and wire everything else | An agent sandbox: a full VM with agents, desktop, URLs and snapshots set up |
| Isolation | Every instance is a Nitro VM with its own kernel | Every Instance is a QEMU/KVM VM with its own kernel | Every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Docker, root and systemd on any instance; /dev/kvm only on C8i, M8i, R8i and metal instances | Root and Docker on Linux images; nested virtualization is not documented | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine, documented |
| Billing and stopping | Per second with a 60 second minimum; a stopped instance still bills its EBS disk and public IPv4 | Per hour of uptime, including startup and standby; a powered-off Instance still bills its volumes and IPs | Per second from your plan credit; a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk |
| Snapshots | EBS snapshots made by hand or scheduled with Data Lifecycle Manager | Images and volume snapshots you create yourself; none automatic | Automatic snapshots every minute and on stop |
| Pause and fork | Hibernation keeps memory for the same instance; a copy means making an image and booting from it | No memory pause; a copy means making an image and booting new Instances from it | Fork a running sandbox in one call; resume reboots from disk (no memory snapshots) |
| Reaching the machine | Public IPv4 ($0.005 an hour) on any port through security groups; HTTPS needs your own domain, certificate and load balancer or web server | Public IPv4 and IPv6 on any port; HTTPS needs your own proxy, certificates and DNS | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; dedicated IPv6 or IPv4 |
| Desktop and computer use | Linux images have no desktop; Windows instances have Remote Desktop; no computer-use API | None built in; you install a desktop and browser yourself | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream |
| Coding agents | None preinstalled; you install agents and drive them over SSH or Systems Manager | None preinstalled; you install agents and drive them yourself, for example over SSH | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Keeping keys out of the machine | No credential proxy; IAM role credentials and secrets are read from inside the instance | No credential proxy; Secret Manager stores secrets that the machine fetches, so they end up on it | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; switch a credential to another account when credits run out |
| How many at once | 5 vCPUs of standard On-Demand instances per region by default; AWS raises it with usage or on request | Quotas per shape, for example 10 DEV1-L after identity checks; more through support | 100 to 2,000 sandboxes by plan, raised self-serve |
| Outbound network rules | Security group rules per instance; domain allowlists with AWS Network Firewall or DNS Firewall (paid) | Security groups with outbound rules by protocol, port and IP range; SMTP blocked by default | Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist |
| GPUs, operating systems and CPUs | Nvidia GPUs from L4 up to H100 and H200; Linux and Windows on Intel, AMD and Graviton Arm; macOS on Mac Dedicated Hosts | GPU Instances with Nvidia B300, H100, L4 and L40S, billed per minute; Linux, Windows Server and Arm64 Instances | No GPUs; Linux on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) hosts; Wine for Windows apps |
| Regions | 39 regions worldwide, including several in the EU | EU only: Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw and Milan | EU only: Germany, Finland and France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | AWS EC2 | Scaleway | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | No | Yes |
| Browser | No | No | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | No | Yes |
| SSH | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | Yes | No | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | Yes | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | No | Yes | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Memory fork | No | No | No |
| Custom image (Docker or snapshot) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | No | No | No |
| Wake on request | No | No | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | No | No | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | Yes | Yes | No |
| Egress allowlist | Yes | Yes | No |
| Secret proxy | No | No | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | No | No | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | No | No | Yes |
| Agent harness API | No | No | Yes |
| MCP server | No | No | No |
| GPU | Yes | Yes | No |
| Windows | Yes | Yes | No |
| Arm64 | Yes | Yes | No |
| Self-hosting | No | No | No |
| BYOC | No | No | No |
| Open source | No | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | Not published | No | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Yes | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | No | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | No | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for AWS EC2 or Scaleway: neither was part of the public StarSling benchmark run we use. In that run, on 2026-09-29, boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. Speed on both clouds depends on the instance family you pick, and Scaleway's Development types use shared vCPUs.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. AWS EC2 and Scaleway have no published run in this suite yet, so there is no like-for-like number to compare.
Pricing in five scenarios
Each bill is priced from the providers' public price lists by the open Battleships engine, with the cheapest plan that runs the scenario.
| Scenario | AWS EC2, a month | Scaleway, a month | boat, a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, 8 hours a day, 22 days a month, files kept between days | $21 · Pay-as-you-go (no platform fee) | $14 · Usage account | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $51 · Pay-as-you-go (no platform fee) · with limits | $41 · Usage account | $26 · $20/mo |
| 50 agents in parallel 50 machines of 4 vCPU / 8 GB at once, 8-hour sessions, 1,100 sessions a month, Docker inside | $944 · Pay-as-you-go (no platform fee) | $537 · Usage account | $317 · $20/mo × 3 seats |
| Sandboxes for your users 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 30,000 sessions of 10 minutes a month, up to 300 at once | $269 · Pay-as-you-go (no platform fee) | $734 · Usage account | $200 · $100/mo × 2 seats |
| 1,000 short jobs at once 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 1,000 at once, 3 minutes each, 200,000 jobs a month | $502 · Pay-as-you-go (no platform fee) | $4,892 · Usage account | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
AWS EC2: EC2 bills each instance per second (60 second minimum) at its list rate, here the Graviton c7g sizes on demand, with no platform fee. EBS disks and public IPv4 bill on top, also while stopped, and the lowest always-on rate needs a 3-year commitment.
Scaleway: Each Scaleway Instance shape has an hourly price, billed per hour of uptime including startup and standby, so a short job still pays a full hour. Disks and public IPv4 bill on top and keep billing while an Instance is powered off.
Scaleway: You pick a monthly plan from $20, and all of it becomes usage credit spent per second on running sandboxes. A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Limits in those scenarios
A new AWS account can run only 5 vCPUs of standard On-Demand instances per region, one 4 vCPU machine, so 50 agents or 300 user sandboxes need a quota raise first, and the always-on price shown needs a 3-year commitment. Scaleway sets quotas per shape, such as 10 DEV1-L and 15 DEV1-M after identity checks, so the larger scenarios also need a support request, and its hourly billing makes each 3-minute job in the burst pay a full hour. On boat, the 1,000-job burst is the one that does not fit: the $2,000 plan allows 90 starts a minute, 600 an hour and 2,400 a day, so the burst is queued.
| Scenario | AWS EC2 | Scaleway | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays | None that bite | None that bite | None that bite |
| One agent that never stops |
| None that bite | None that bite |
| 50 agents in parallel | None that bite | None that bite | None that bite |
| Sandboxes for your users | None that bite | None that bite | None that bite |
| 1,000 short jobs at once | None that bite | None that bite |
|
Which one should you use?
Use AWS EC2 when
you need regions outside Europe, macOS, per-second billing for big bursts of short jobs, or domain-level outbound rules, and you have the people to build agent tooling on top.
- Regions all over the world. Useful if your users or data sit outside Europe: EC2 runs in 39 regions, while Scaleway runs only in four European cities.
- Per-second billing for short jobs. Useful for bursts of short jobs: EC2 bills per second with a 60 second minimum, while Scaleway charges each CPU Instance a full hour.
- macOS hosts and domain allowlists. Useful if agents need macOS builds or must reach only chosen domains: EC2 has Mac hosts and Network Firewall or DNS Firewall.
Use Scaleway when
you want a European cloud for a few long-lived servers, GPUs by the minute, or Windows Server and Arm64 machines next to managed databases and Kubernetes.
- Lower prices for steady small VMs. Useful for a few long-lived machines: a 4 vCPU Scaleway Instance running all month costs less than EC2, with no commitment.
- A European company and cloud. Useful if you want an EU provider: Scaleway is part of the iliad Group and runs only in Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw and Milan.
- GPUs by the minute. Useful for model work in Europe: Scaleway rents Nvidia B300, H100, L4 and L40S GPU Instances billed per minute.
Where boat fits
EC2 and Scaleway rent empty servers for every kind of workload. If what you are really running is agents, boat gives each one a full VM in the EU that is already set up for them: coding agents with an API, a desktop, HTTPS URLs, snapshots every minute and forks. You skip the setup work that both clouds leave to you.
Coding agents driven from outside, keys kept out
On EC2 and Scaleway you install each agent and drive it over SSH, and IAM credentials or Secret Manager secrets land on the machine where any root process can read them. boat's agents take prompts through an API while a proxy holds the keys.
Disk saved every minute, free stops, fork while running
A stopped EC2 instance still bills its disk and IPv4, and on Scaleway an in-guest shutdown leaves it in standby, billed as running. Copies on both mean making an image and booting again. boat forks a running sandbox in one call.
Desktop, HTTPS ports and fleets without a ticket
Both clouds need your own domain, certificate and proxy per machine, and a desktop you install. New EC2 accounts start at 5 vCPUs per region and Scaleway at 10 DEV1-L, so 50 agents wait on support. boat plans run 100 to 2,000.
Use boat when the machines are for agents: each one a ready full VM in the EU with coding agents and an API, keys kept outside, a desktop, HTTPS ports, snapshots every minute, forks while running and stops that cost nothing. Compare it one to one: boat vs AWS EC2 and boat vs Scaleway.
Questions people ask
Is AWS EC2 cheaper than Scaleway?
For steady machines, no: one 4 vCPU agent that never stops comes to $41 a month on Scaleway, while EC2 reaches $51 only with a 3-year commitment, and 50 agents in parallel come to $537 against $944. For short work EC2 wins: 300 user sandboxes cost $269 against $734, and 1,000 short jobs $502 against $4,892, since Scaleway bills each job a full hour. boat comes to $26, $317 and $200 in the first three.
Which is faster, AWS EC2 or Scaleway?
We have no comparable measurement for either: neither was in the public benchmark run we use, where boat did 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. Results on both depend on the instance family, and Scaleway's Development types use shared vCPUs.
Can AWS EC2 and Scaleway run Docker and nested VMs?
Both run Docker, since each machine is a full VM with root. EC2 supports KVM inside virtual C8i, M8i and R8i instances since February 2026, and on metal instances; Scaleway does not document nested virtualization. On boat, Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm work on every machine.
Do I pay for a stopped machine on EC2 or Scaleway?
On both, a stopped machine still bills its disks and public IPv4. On Scaleway, running poweroff inside the machine only puts it in standby, which bills as running; only a console or API power-off stops compute. On boat, a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Where does my data run?
EC2 runs in 39 regions worldwide, including several in the EU, and you pick the region per instance. Scaleway runs only in Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw and Milan. boat runs only in the EU (Germany, Finland and France), with EU data residency.
Can I run Claude Code on EC2 or Scaleway?
Yes, on either: you launch a machine, install the agent, give it a key and drive it over SSH. boat does that work for you, with agents preinstalled, a prompt, steer and events API, and real keys kept outside the machine.
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