Azure Virtual Machines vs Contabo

Azure Virtual Machines bills full Hyper-V machines per minute, with hundreds of sizes and quotas you raise by request. Contabo rents a KVM server by the month with shared cores, and you keep it until you cancel.

The companies and products

Azure Virtual Machines

Azure Virtual Machines is Microsoft's general-purpose cloud VM service: you rent Linux or Windows machines by the minute in Azure regions worldwide.

It is a hyperscaler IaaS product, not a sandbox API. Each VM runs on Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor with its own kernel, root and SSH, and you pick from hundreds of sizes, including Arm, burstable and GPU families. Networking, disks, images, firewalls and any agent tooling are separate pieces you set up yourself, so it suits teams that already run on Azure and want full control.

Kind of product: Plain IaaS virtual machines; no sandbox or agent API
Isolation: Full Hyper-V VM with its own kernel
Billing: Per full minute while running; a VM shut down from inside the OS stays allocated and keeps billing
Regions: 77 regions listed as available or coming soon across more than 30 countries
Machines: Intel, AMD and Arm (Cobalt 100, Ampere Altra) sizes, burstable B-series, and GPU families such as NC with Nvidia H100 and A100
Limits: vCPU quotas per region and per VM family, plus a separate Spot quota; stopped VMs still count
Compliance: Lists SOC 1, SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, FedRAMP and many more offerings

Contabo

Contabo is a German hosting company, founded in Munich in 2003, that rents VPS, dedicated-core VDS, GPU and dedicated servers by the month.

A Contabo Cloud VPS is a KVM virtual machine with shared vCPU cores, a fixed RAM allocation, a static IPv4 and root access, which you order, pay for and then manage yourself. It is a VPS host, not a sandbox product: there is no per-second billing, no agent tooling and no managed HTTPS in front of the server. It fits people who want one cheap server that runs all month in a region of their choice.

Founded: 2003, in Munich, Germany (Contabo GmbH)
Isolation: KVM virtual servers; Cloud VPS shares vCPU cores at the hypervisor, Cloud VDS has dedicated cores
Billing: Monthly rent, minimum first term of one month; listed prices assume a 24-month term
Regions: 11 locations in 9 regions: EU, UK, three US sites, Singapore, Japan, India, Australia
Network: 1 static IPv4 and a /64 IPv6 subnet per server
GPUs: GPU VPS with an Nvidia RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell, in Europe and US Central
Provisioning: A few minutes after payment clears; orders can need identity checks

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. “3rd cheapest of 364” means 2 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	Azure Virtual Machines: price rank	Contabo: price rank	boat: price rank
Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month A software factory starts and stops many machines a day, which Azure handles per minute and Contabo only by renting each server for a month; boat does it per second by API.	83rd of 367, with limits $730 a month	79th of 367, with limits $660 a month	3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month
Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB Both can keep an assistant running for months; Contabo's flat rent is lower, and boat adds snapshots every minute, a desktop and an agent API.	113th of 366, with limits $644 a month	95th of 366, with limits $330 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	114th of 345, with limits $222 a month	159th of 345, with limits $660 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 Azure can start a VM per user and bill it per minute, but you build the sandbox layer yourself; Contabo would need hundreds of servers rented for the month, and boat gives you the layer through its API.	63rd of 361, with limits $500 a month	153rd of 361, with limits $1,980 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 Azure Spot VMs make large RL fleets cheap if rollouts survive eviction with 30 seconds of notice; Contabo bills every parallel machine for a full month.	19th of 360, with limits $1,039 a month	108th of 360, with limits $6,600 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 Azure's per-minute billing fits eval batches well, and boat fits too; on Contabo each parallel machine is a month of rent.	3rd cheapest of 364 $173 a month	177th of 364, with limits $1,650 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 Azure and boat bill only while runners are up, while a Contabo runner is rented for the month whether it is busy or not.	35th cheapest of 377 $335 a month	133rd cheapest of 377 $2,980 a month	4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month
24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Contabo is the cheapest fit of all for one box that runs all month, while Azure needs a long reservation to get close; boat sits between them per second.	72nd cheapest of 368 $94 a month	Cheapest of 368 $6.6 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 Neither Azure nor Contabo has a built-in desktop stream, so you install VNC or RDP yourself; boat ships a 60fps desktop with Chromium.	100th of 369, with limits $192 a month	140th of 369, with limits $330 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	168th of 367, with limits $107 a month	232nd of 367, with limits $330 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	194th of 346, with limits $116 a month	258th of 346, with limits $330 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	81st of 338, with limits $2,044 a month	184th of 338, with limits $6,600 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	110th of 360, with limits $46 a month	321st of 360, with limits $1,320 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	Can't run it	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	Azure Virtual Machines	Contabo	boat
What you get	A general cloud VM per minute; images, networking and tooling are yours to set up	A monthly-rented VPS or VDS server you set up yourself	An agent sandbox: a full VM per sandbox, created and driven by API
Isolation	Full Hyper-V VM with its own kernel	KVM VM; Cloud VPS shares vCPU cores, Cloud VDS has dedicated cores	Full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts
Billing	Per full minute while running; disks and static IPs bill while deallocated	Flat monthly rent, minimum first term of one month; listed prices assume a 24-month term	Monthly plan from $20 that becomes usage credit, spent per second; a stopped sandbox costs nothing
Starting a machine	Create by API or CLI within your per-region, per-family vCPU quota	Order and pay, then provisioning takes a few minutes; orders can need identity checks	A new sandbox from the API in seconds
Nested virtualization	On Intel and AMD D and F sizes, not on Arm or B-series burstable sizes	Not supported on any VPS plan; supported on Cloud VDS	/dev/kvm on every machine, with Docker, root and systemd ready
Saved state	Manual disk snapshots; scheduled ones need Azure Backup, a separate paid service	1 to 5 manual disk snapshots by plan, kept 30 days, restored in place; none on Cloud VDS	Snapshots every minute and on stop
Pause with memory	Hibernation on supported sizes up to 64 GB of RAM, triggered by API	None	Resume reboots from disk (no memory snapshots)
Fork and clone	Capture an image or disk snapshot, then boot new VMs cold; image capture needs the VM stopped	No fork; custom images upload as ISO or QCOW2	Fork a running sandbox in one call; named snapshots as templates
Desktop and computer use	None built in; you install your own VNC or RDP server	Headless server; a VNC console for setup and rescue	60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream
Coding agents and keys	None built in; Key Vault secrets are fetched into the VM where code can read them	None built in; secrets live inside the server	Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled with a prompt, steer and events API; AI credentials proxy keeps keys out
Reaching the machine	Public IPv4 and any port through security group rules; HTTPS is yours to run	Static public IPv4 and /64 IPv6, all ports; domains and TLS are yours to set up	HTTPS URLs with TLS for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; dedicated IP
Outbound rules	Security group rules by IP, and domain allowlists with the paid Azure Firewall	Firewall rules by IP and port; no domain allowlist	Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist
GPUs, Windows and Arm	GPU families such as NC with Nvidia H100 and A100, Windows guests, Arm Cobalt 100 and Ampere Altra	GPU VPS with an Nvidia RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell; Windows Server as a licensed add-on; no Arm	Linux on x86 only, no GPUs; Wine for Windows apps
Regions	77 regions worldwide, available or coming soon	11 locations: EU, UK, three US sites, Singapore, Japan, India, Australia	EU only: Germany, Finland, France, with EU data residency

Every feature Battleships tracks (43)

Feature	Azure Virtual Machines	Contabo	boat
Full VM (own kernel)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Docker inside	Yes	Yes	Yes
Nested virtualization	Yes	No	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	No	No	Yes
Fork/clone	Yes	No	Yes
Live fork (no pause)	No	No	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	No	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	Yes	No	No
GPU	Yes	Yes	No
Windows	Yes	Yes	No
Arm64	Yes	No	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	No	Not published	Yes
Usage per sandbox (API)	Yes	No	Yes
Audit logs	Yes	Not published	No
SSO	Yes	No	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

Azure Virtual MachinesNot measured

ContaboNot measured

boat26.69 runs/s

Neither Azure Virtual Machines nor Contabo is in the hpc-sandbox-benchmarks run, so there is no comparable CPU measurement for either. boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in StarSling's run of 2026-09-29. Azure's speed depends on which CPU family you pick, and Contabo's Cloud VPS shares vCPU cores; we don't guess how either would score.

Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Azure Virtual Machines and Contabo 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	Azure Virtual Machines, a month	Contabo, 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	$26 · Pay-as-you-go subscription (no plan fee)	$7 · Usage account	$20 · $20/mo
One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month	$48 · Pay-as-you-go subscription (no plan fee) · with limits	$7 · 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	$1,168 · Pay-as-you-go subscription (no plan fee)	$330 · 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	$225 · Pay-as-you-go subscription (no plan fee)	$1,980 · Usage account · with limits	$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	$483 · Pay-as-you-go subscription (no plan fee) · with limits	$6,600 · Usage account · with limits	$2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits

Azure Virtual Machines: Azure bills each VM per full minute while it runs, with no plan fee; disks, public IPv4 and egress are extra, and disks keep billing while the VM is deallocated. The cheapest always-on price needs a 3-year reservation billed whether the VM runs or not.

Contabo: Contabo charges a flat monthly rent per server, busy or idle, with a one-month minimum and lower rates for longer terms. Each machine you need at the same time is a full month of rent.

Contabo: 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

Azure caps vCPUs per region and per VM family, stopped VMs still count, and new subscriptions start low until you request more. Its always-on price only works with a 3-year commitment, and its cheap burst figure uses B-series VMs that guarantee 30% of each vCPU. Contabo publishes no limit on how many servers you can run, and 300 user sandboxes or 1,000 short jobs at once mean renting that many servers for a month on shared cores. On boat the 1,000-job burst is held back by start limits, even on the $2,000 plan.

Scenario	Azure Virtual Machines	Contabo	boat
One coding agent, workdays	None that bite	monthly cap reached	None that bite
One agent that never stops	3-year commitment	None that bite	None that bite
50 agents in parallel	None that bite	monthly cap reached how many machines can run at once: limit not published, probably fine at 50 (the typical published limit is 50)	None that bite
Sandboxes for your users	None that bite	not confirmed: how many machines can run at once (you need 300; the typical published limit is 50) monthly cap reached	None that bite
1,000 short jobs at once	burstable CPU: 30% of each vCPU guaranteed, throttled above that	not confirmed: how many machines can run at once (you need 1,000; the typical published limit is 50) shared vCPUs on this tier: heavy, sustained CPU use can be slowed by other tenants monthly cap reached	max 2,400 starts/day (needs ~6,667) max 600 starts/hour (needs ~1,000) bursts above 90 starts/min are queued (a burst of 333 takes ~4 min to start)

Which one should you use?

Use Azure Virtual Machines when

machines come and go during the day, you need GPUs, Windows, Arm or Spot pricing, or your company already runs on Azure.

Per-minute billing and Spot. Useful if machines run in bursts: Azure bills per minute, and Spot VMs sell spare capacity cheaply with 30 seconds of eviction notice.
GPUs, Windows and Arm. Useful if agents train models or need Windows or Arm: Azure rents H100 and A100 GPUs, Windows guests and Cobalt 100 sizes.
Regions and network controls. Useful if data must stay in a given country, or outbound traffic must follow a domain allowlist through Azure Firewall.

Use Contabo when

you want one cheap server that runs all month with a flat bill, a monthly GPU box, or a server near users outside Europe.

One server that runs all month. Useful for one always-on box: a flat monthly rent buys a 4 vCPU / 8 GB VPS with a static IPv4.
Simple, flat bills. Useful if you want no meters: Contabo charges one rent per server with unmetered inbound traffic, busy or idle.
A GPU server by the month. Useful if you need one GPU box all month: Contabo rents an RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell VPS in Europe and US Central.

Where boat fits

Azure and Contabo both rent plain servers, not agent sandboxes. If what you are really running is agents that start, stop and fork machines all day, boat gives each one a full VM by API in seconds, already set up with Docker, /dev/kvm, a desktop, HTTPS URLs and coding agents you drive from outside.

State saved every minute, and forks

Agents break installs. Azure has only manual snapshots unless you add paid Azure Backup, and copies boot cold from a captured image; Contabo has 1 manual snapshot slot on Cloud VPS 4 and no fork. boat saves every minute and forks a running sandbox.

Coding agents and keys handled for you

On both, you install agents, write the code that prompts and watches them over SSH, and the API keys sit inside the machine. boat preinstalls Claude Code, Codex and OpenCode with an API, and its credentials proxy keeps real keys out.

Desktop, KVM and HTTPS ready

Neither ships a desktop stream or managed HTTPS, so you set up VNC and TLS per image. Contabo VPS has no nested virtualization, and Azure lacks it on Arm and B-series. Every boat sandbox has a 60fps desktop, /dev/kvm and HTTPS on 50 ports.

Use boat when agents start, stop and fork machines all day: each sandbox is a full VM from an API in seconds, saved every minute, with Docker, /dev/kvm, a desktop, HTTPS URLs and coding agents you drive from outside. Compare it one to one: boat vs Azure Virtual Machines and boat vs Contabo.

Questions people ask

Is Azure cheaper than Contabo?

For machines that run all the time, no: one 4 vCPU / 8 GB agent on workdays is $7 a month on Contabo against $26 on Azure, and one that never stops is $7 against $48 with a 3-year reservation. For work that starts and stops, Azure wins: 300 sandboxes for your users come to $225 on Azure against $1,980 on Contabo. On boat those are $20, $26 and $200.

Which is faster, Azure or Contabo?

We have no comparable CPU measurement for either; neither is in the benchmark run we use. Azure lets you pick from many CPU families, while Contabo's Cloud VPS shares vCPU cores and only Cloud VDS gives dedicated cores. boat scored 26.69 runs per second on that benchmark.

Does Contabo have hourly billing like Azure?

No. Contabo rents servers by the month with a minimum first term of one month. Azure bills per full minute while a VM runs, and boat bills per second, with nothing charged while a sandbox is stopped.

Can Azure VMs and Contabo servers run Docker?

Yes, both give you root, so you install Docker yourself. Nested virtualization is different: Azure supports it on Intel and AMD D and F sizes, Contabo only on Cloud VDS, not on any VPS plan. Every boat sandbox has Docker and /dev/kvm ready.

Can I run coding agents like Claude Code on them?

Yes on both, by installing them and running them over SSH with your API key on the machine. boat preinstalls Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and others, drives them through an API, and keeps real keys out of the sandbox with its credentials proxy.

Where do Azure, Contabo and boat run?

Azure lists 77 regions worldwide. Contabo has 11 locations in the EU, the UK, the US, Singapore, Japan, India and Australia. boat runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France, with EU data residency.

Try boat

Install the CLI, then run boat new.

7-day free trial