Azure Virtual Machines vs OVHcloud

Both rent you plain Linux or Windows VMs that you set up yourself. Azure is Microsoft's hyperscaler, with Arm sizes, 77 regions, hibernation and Spot VMs; OVHcloud is a French OpenStack cloud that bills by the second and has a smaller, simpler range.

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

OVHcloud

OVHcloud is a French cloud provider; its Public Cloud rents OpenStack virtual machines, storage and networking by the second.

A Public Cloud instance is a Linux or Windows VM picked from families such as General Purpose (B3), Compute (C3), Memory (R3), GPU and the shared-resource Discovery range (D2). You run your own software on it, next to OVHcloud products like private networks, gateways, load balancers, Kubernetes and object storage, through a Control Panel, an API or OpenStack tools. It is general infrastructure, not an agent sandbox, so this page compares the two where they overlap: giving an agent its own Linux machine.

Product: OpenStack instances: fully isolated VMs on shared physical hosts, with Linux and Windows Server images
Billing: Every second is billed after a 1-minute minimum; instances bill until you delete them
Pricing change: Since 2026-10-01, local storage and public IPv4 are billed on top of B3, C3 and R3 instances
Regions: Europe, North America (Canada and the US) and Asia-Pacific (Singapore, Sydney), plus Local Zones
Quotas: Raised in steps of 20, 50, 100 and 200 VMs by buying prepaid credit; more through support
GPUs: Nvidia L4 and L40S instances by the hour, among others
Certifications: Lists ISO 27001/27017/27018, SOC 1, 2 and 3, HDS, PCI DSS and HIPAA in its US datacentres

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	OVHcloud: price rank	boat: price rank
Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month	83rd of 367, with limits $730 a month	90th of 367, with limits $814 a month	3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month
Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB	113th of 366, with limits $644 a month	136th of 366, with limits $934 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 OVHcloud suits short code runs better than Azure because it bills by the second after a 1-minute minimum; boat's start limits make big bursts a compromise.	114th of 345, with limits $222 a month	56th of 345, with limits $43 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 Neither cloud has a sandbox layer for your users, and 300 at once needs a quota raise on OVHcloud; boat gives each user a sandbox through its API.	63rd of 361, with limits $500 a month	43rd of 361, with limits $299 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 Both clouds rank above boat for RL rollouts, and Azure Spot VMs help if rollouts can survive eviction with 30 seconds of notice.	19th of 360, with limits $1,039 a month	27th of 360, with limits $1,280 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 fits agent evals fully and ranks near the top, while OVHcloud is a compromise here; boat also fits fully.	3rd cheapest of 364 $173 a month	99th of 364, with limits $231 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, but on either cloud you run the runner software, images and clean-up yourself.	35th cheapest of 377 $335 a month	29th cheapest of 377 $300 a month	4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month
24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB OVHcloud is the cheaper classic always-on server of the two for a 24/7 dev box, and boat keeps the disk with snapshots every minute.	72nd cheapest of 368 $94 a month	23rd cheapest of 368 $34 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 cloud has a desktop stream or computer-use API built in; boat ships a 60fps desktop with Chromium on every machine.	100th of 369, with limits $192 a month	108th of 369, with limits $231 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	174th of 367, with limits $128 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	159th of 346, with limits $65 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 OVHcloud ranks above both boat and Azure for mass scraping in our table, mostly on price.	81st of 338, with limits $2,044 a month	47th of 338, with limits $1,290 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	120th of 360, with limits $64 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	OVHcloud	boat
What you get	A general Hyper-V VM; images, networking and tooling are yours to set up	A general OpenStack VM you set up and run yourself	A sandbox API for agents, on full VMs
Isolation	Full Hyper-V VM with its own kernel	Fully isolated VM with its own kernel	Full VM with its own kernel
Billing unit	Per full minute while running; a VM shut down from inside the OS keeps billing	Per second after a 1-minute minimum, until you delete the instance	Per second from a monthly plan that becomes usage credit
Stopping	Deallocate ends compute billing; disks and static IPs keep billing	Turn off and pause bill at the same rate; shelve frees compute and bills a disk snapshot	A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk
Snapshots	On-demand disk snapshots; scheduled ones need the paid Azure Backup service	On-demand instance backups, or a schedule such as daily backups	Automatic snapshots every minute and on stop
Pause with memory	Hibernation saves memory on supported sizes up to 64 GB of RAM	Pause keeps the instance but bills at the same rate	Resume reboots from disk (no memory snapshots)
Fork and clone	Capture an image or snapshot, then boot new VMs cold; image capture needs the VM stopped	Take an instance backup, then create a new instance from it	Fork a running sandbox in one call
Docker and nested virtualization	Root and Docker; nested virtualization on Intel and AMD D and F sizes, not on Arm or B-series	Root and Docker; vmx is passed, but a live migration can make the guest kernel panic	Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine
Desktop and computer use	None built in; you install a VNC or RDP server	None built in; you install a desktop and connect over SSH or RDP	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	None built in; secrets live on the instance	Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode preinstalled with a prompt, steer and events API; AI credentials proxy keeps keys outside
Reaching the machine	Public IPv4 and any port; HTTPS is yours to run, or add a gateway	Public IPv4 on any port; HTTPS needs your own certificates or a load balancer	HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; own IP
Outbound rules	Security groups by IP, plus domain allowlists with the paid Azure Firewall	Security groups by IP range, port and protocol	Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist
GPUs, Windows and Arm	GPU families with Nvidia H100 and A100; Windows; Arm on Cobalt 100 and Ampere Altra	Nvidia L4, L40S and V100S instances; Windows Server; no Arm	Linux on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts; no GPUs; Wine for Windows apps
Regions	77 regions worldwide, available or coming soon	Europe, Canada, the US, Singapore and Sydney, plus Local Zones	EU only: Germany, Finland, France

Every feature Battleships tracks (43)

Feature	Azure Virtual Machines	OVHcloud	boat
Full VM (own kernel)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Docker inside	Yes	Yes	Yes
Nested virtualization	Yes	Yes	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	Yes	Yes
Automatic snapshots	No	Yes	Yes
Fork/clone	Yes	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	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	Yes	No
SOC 2	Yes	Yes	No
HIPAA	Yes	Yes	No
EU data residency	Yes	Yes	Yes
Zero data retention	Not published	Not published	Yes

Performance

Azure Virtual MachinesNot measured

OVHcloudNot measured

boat26.69 runs/s

There is no comparable measurement for Azure Virtual Machines or OVHcloud: neither was part of the public StarSling benchmark we use. 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. Speed on either cloud depends on the family you pick, and OVHcloud's Discovery (D2) instances share their CPU.

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 OVHcloud 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	OVHcloud, 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)	$8 · 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	$34 · 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)	$406 · 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)	$128 · 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	$256 · 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 cost 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.

OVHcloud: OVHcloud bills every second an instance exists, after a 1-minute minimum, until you delete it, and turned-off instances bill at the same rate. The prices here use shared Discovery d2 instances; since October 2026, B3, C3 and R3 instances also bill local storage and public IPv4 on top.

OVHcloud: 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 ask for more. OVHcloud raises project quotas in steps of 20, 50, 100 and 200 VMs by buying prepaid credit, so 300 user sandboxes or 1,000 jobs at once need support first. For the 1,000-job burst, Azure's low figure uses B-series VMs that guarantee 30% of each vCPU, and OVHcloud's Discovery instances share their CPU. On boat the same burst is held back by starts per minute and per day, even on the $2,000 plan.

Scenario	Azure Virtual Machines	OVHcloud	boat
One coding agent, workdays	None that bite	None that bite	None that bite
One agent that never stops	3-year commitment	None that bite	None that bite
50 agents in parallel	None that bite	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)	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 (no guaranteed share of a core): heavy, sustained CPU use can be slowed by other tenants	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

you need Arm sizes, H100 or A100 GPUs, hibernation, Spot pricing, domain-level outbound rules or a region almost anywhere, or your company already runs on Azure.

Arm, big GPUs and regions everywhere. Useful if you need Arm machines, Nvidia H100 or A100 GPUs, or a region in one of 77 places worldwide.
Hibernation and Spot VMs. Useful if a machine must resume with its memory, or a big batch can survive eviction for a lower price.
Domain-level outbound rules. Useful if agent traffic must only reach listed domains: the paid Azure Firewall can limit outbound HTTPS that way.

Use OVHcloud when

you want a European provider with simple per-second billing, low prices on small instances, scheduled backups, GPUs by the hour and private networks next to managed services.

Per-second billing on simple instances. Useful for short runs and small budgets: OVHcloud bills by the second after a 1-minute minimum, with no plan fee.
Scheduled backups built in. Useful if you want automatic instance backups, such as daily ones, without adding a separate backup service.
A French cloud with GPUs by the hour. Useful if you want a European provider that also rents Nvidia L4 and L40S GPUs and has regions in North America and Asia.

Where boat fits

Azure and OVHcloud are general clouds, not agent sandboxes, so boat only overlaps where you give an agent its own Linux machine. If what you are really running is agents, boat gives each one a full VM that is ready to work, instead of an empty image you build a sandbox layer on top of.

Free stops with a disk saved every minute

Agents sit idle between tasks. On OVHcloud a turned-off instance bills at the full rate unless you shelve it; on Azure a deallocated VM still bills disks. A stopped boat sandbox costs nothing and keeps a disk saved every minute.

Fork and nested VMs you can rely on

boat forks a running sandbox in one call and has /dev/kvm on every machine. Azure copies need a stopped VM, an image and a cold boot, and lose nested virtualization on Arm and B-series; OVHcloud nested VMs can panic on live migration.

Agents, desktop and URLs built in

On both clouds you install agents, a desktop, TLS and a key store yourself, and the agent can read any key on the VM. boat ships coding agents you drive from outside, a 60fps desktop, HTTPS on 50 ports and a credentials proxy.

Use boat when what you are really running is agents: each gets a full VM with Docker and /dev/kvm, forks of running sandboxes, snapshots every minute, free stops, a desktop, HTTPS URLs and coding agents you drive by API. Compare it one to one: boat vs Azure Virtual Machines and boat vs OVHcloud.

Questions people ask

Is Azure cheaper than OVHcloud?

In the scenarios we priced, OVHcloud is cheaper: one coding agent on workdays is $8 a month on OVHcloud (if you delete the instance every night) against $26 on Azure, and 50 agents in parallel come to $406 against $1,168. One agent that never stops is $34 on OVHcloud and $48 on Azure, but Azure needs a 3-year reservation for that price. On boat those three come to $20, $317 and $26.

Which is faster, Azure or OVHcloud?

We have no comparable measurement for either: neither was in the public StarSling benchmark we use. Speed depends on the family you pick, and OVHcloud's cheap Discovery instances share their CPU. boat did 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in that benchmark.

Do I pay for a stopped VM on Azure or OVHcloud?

On Azure, a VM shut down from inside the OS keeps billing; a deallocate ends compute billing, but disks and static IPs still bill. On OVHcloud, turned-off and paused instances bill at the same rate until you delete them, and shelving bills only a disk snapshot. A stopped boat sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.

Can Azure VMs and OVHcloud instances run Docker and nested VMs?

Both run Docker, since each is a full VM with root. Azure supports nested virtualization on Intel and AMD D and F sizes but not on Arm or B-series, and OVHcloud passes the vmx flag but warns a live migration can make the guest kernel panic. On boat, Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm are on every machine.

Which has more regions?

Azure lists 77 regions worldwide, available or coming soon. OVHcloud runs in Europe, Canada, the US, Singapore and Sydney, plus Local Zones. boat runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France, with EU data residency.

Do Azure or OVHcloud have GPUs?

Yes, both do: Azure has GPU families with Nvidia H100 and A100, and OVHcloud rents Nvidia L4, L40S and V100S instances. boat has no GPUs, so model work belongs on one of them.

Try boat

Install the CLI, then run boat new.

7-day free trial