Beam vs Claude Managed Agents
Beam is a serverless cloud where you rent sandboxes, CPU VMs and GPUs and run your own code or agent in them. Claude Managed Agents is Anthropic's hosted agent: you send Claude a task, and it works in a small container that Anthropic runs for you.
The companies and products
Beam
Beam is a serverless cloud for GPU inference, sandboxes and background jobs, built on its open-source runtime Beta9.
Beam runs functions, REST endpoints, task queues, pods, sandboxes and VMs on CPUs and GPUs, all from a Python or TypeScript SDK. A sandbox is a container isolated with gVisor that starts in a second or two, lives until you terminate it or its time to live runs out, and can be saved as a filesystem image or a memory snapshot. Beam VMs are a separate CPU product: a microVM with its own kernel, systemd and a root disk that stays when it stops. Much of Beam is a GPU serverless platform for AI teams.
- Bring your own cloud
- Management fee per vCPU and GB of RAM, on top of your own cloud bill
Claude Managed Agents
Claude Managed Agents is Anthropic's ready-made agent harness: Claude runs as an autonomous agent in a cloud sandbox that Anthropic manages, and you talk to it through an events API.
This is an agent platform, not a sandbox you rent. You define an agent (model, prompt, tools, MCP servers, skills) and an environment, then start sessions, send messages as events and stream back what Claude does; the harness handles tool calls, prompt caching and compaction. Each session gets its own Ubuntu container, or runs its tools on a worker you host yourself. It is built for teams that want Claude doing long tasks without building their own agent loop or sandbox.
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. “8th cheapest of 345” means 7 of the other 344 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 | Beam: price rank | Claude Managed Agents: 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 needs Docker, systemd and a disk that lasts; Beam sandboxes end with their time to live, Managed Agents caps a sandbox at 8 GB of memory, and boat gives each agent a full VM. | 69th of 367, with limits $551 a month | 106th of 367, with limits $964 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB Managed Agents sessions sleep for free between messages but keep files only 30 days after the sandbox is created; a Beam VM or a boat sandbox keeps its disk while stopped. | 115th of 366, with limits $651 a month | 219th of 366, with limits $2,511 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 Beam ranks 8th here: its sandboxes start in a second or two, bill per second and go away when their timer ends, while Managed Agents only runs code inside a Claude session. | 8th cheapest of 345 $117 a month | 163rd of 345, with limits $756 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 boat ranks 1st and Beam ranks 3rd, both giving each user their own machine; a Managed Agents sandbox has no inbound ports, so your users cannot open what it runs. | 3rd cheapest of 361 $290 a month | 231st of 361, with limits $823 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 | 341st of 360, with limits $939 a month | 252nd of 360, with limits $3,978 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 | 13th cheapest of 364 $251 a month | 244th of 364, with limits $320 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 Beam runs Docker in its sandboxes, Managed Agents lists Docker only as limited availability, and only boat exposes /dev/kvm for Android and VM image builds. | 12th cheapest of 377 $171 a month | 227th of 377, with limits $96 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Beam VMs keep a 50 GiB root disk while stopped and boat saves its disk every minute, while Managed Agents has no SSH and reaches its sandbox only through the session API. | 13th cheapest of 368 $21 a month | 224th of 368, with limits $48 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 Managed Agents ships headless Chromium with Playwright and Beam has no browser product; boat streams a full Linux desktop at 60fps for computer use. | 111th of 369, with limits $237 a month | 127th of 369, with limits $288 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 | 195th of 367, with limits $176 a month | 126th of 367, with limits $288 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 | 200th of 346, with limits $131 a month | 127th of 346, with limits $390 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 | 42nd of 338, with limits $923 a month | 155th of 338, with limits $4,798 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 | 175th of 360, with limits $155 a month | 179th of 360, with limits $160 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 Beam ranks 1st for GPU work, with GPUs from RTX 4090 up to H100, H200 and B200; Managed Agents and boat have no GPUs. | Cheapest of 98 $458 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 | Beam | Claude Managed Agents | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isolation | gVisor container by default, with an opt-in microVM mode for CPU sandboxes; Beam VMs are separate CPU microVMs | Isolated Linux container per session on Anthropic-managed infrastructure | Full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts |
| Machine size | You request CPU cores and RAM per sandbox; the maximum sandbox size is not published | Up to 8 GB memory and 10 GB disk; vCPU count not published; not configurable | Up to 16 vCPU / 32 GB on the $100 plan and above |
| Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm | Docker inside sandboxes with docker_enabled; systemd only in Beam VMs; /dev/kvm not documented | Docker listed as limited availability; root, systemd and /dev/kvm not documented | Root, Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm for Android emulators and VMs |
| Lifetime | Default 10 minutes; set -1 to run until you terminate it | A session goes idle between messages and resumes from a checkpoint; state is kept 30 days after the sandbox is created | No session cap on paid plans; you set the time to live |
| Files between runs | A sandbox ends with its time to live unless you save an image or use a volume; a Beam VM keeps a 50 GiB root disk while stopped | Sandbox is checkpointed when a session goes idle, and deleted after 30 days | The whole disk, saved every minute and on stop, kept free while stopped for as long as you keep the sandbox |
| Snapshots and fork | Memory snapshot of a running sandbox with its processes, restored into new sandboxes | No fork or clone of a session or sandbox | Fork a running sandbox with its disk |
| Wake on next message | No; you start sandboxes from the SDK | Yes; an idle session resumes on the next message, and idle time is not billed | No; a stopped sandbox is started by API |
| GPUs | GPU sandboxes and serverless GPUs, from T4 and RTX 4090 up to H100, H200 and B200 | No | No, CPU only |
| Inbound access | A public HTTPS URL per exposed port with no built-in auth; no raw TCP or dedicated IP | No inbound ports or SSH; reached only through the sessions and events API | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected by default; raw TCP; SSH; dedicated IPv4 or IPv6 |
| Browser and desktop | No desktop or browser product | Headless Chromium with Playwright; no desktop or computer-use tool | Linux desktop streamed at 60fps, with Chromium and computer use |
| Agents | None preinstalled; you install and run them through process exec | Anthropic's harness with Claude models only, with steering, memory stores, multiagent threads and webhooks | Claude Code, Codex and five more preinstalled, driven from outside with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Keeping API keys out of the sandbox | Secrets are exposed as environment variables inside the sandbox | Vault secrets sit in the sandbox as placeholders and are swapped in at egress, per host | Credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; switch a credential to another account when credits run out |
| Outbound rules | Block all outbound traffic, or allow up to 10 CIDR ranges, changeable while running | Unrestricted, or limited to listed hosts plus optional package registries and MCP servers | Open internet, no provider-side allowlist |
| Self-hosting and regions | Beta9 runtime is AGPL-3.0 and free to self-host, or run in your own cloud for a fee; hosted in the US only | Self-hosted sandboxes run tools on your own workers; workspace geo is US only | No self-hosting; EU only (Germany, Finland, France) |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Beam | Claude Managed Agents | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | No | No | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | No | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Systemd | No | Not published | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | No | Yes |
| Browser | No | Yes | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | No | Yes |
| SSH | Yes | No | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | No | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | Yes | Yes |
| Fork/clone | Yes | No | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Memory fork | Yes | No | No |
| Custom image (Docker or snapshot) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | No | Yes | No |
| Wake on request | No | Yes | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | Yes | No | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | No | No | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | No | No | No |
| Egress allowlist | Yes | Yes | No |
| Secret proxy | No | Yes | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | No | Yes | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | No | Yes | Yes |
| Agent harness API | No | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes | Yes | No |
| GPU | Yes | No | No |
| Windows | No | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | No | No |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes | No |
| BYOC | Yes | Yes | No |
| Open source | Yes | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | Not published | Yes | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Not published | No |
| SSO | No | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | No | No |
| EU data residency | Not published | No | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | No | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for either: neither Beam nor Claude Managed Agents has a result on the StarSling hpc-sandbox-benchmarks CPU test, and Anthropic does not publish how many vCPUs a sandbox gets. boat did 26.69 runs per second on that test at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. Beam's own guide says its sandboxes cold-boot in 1 to 3 seconds, and on Managed Agents much of a session is spent waiting on the model.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Beam and Claude Managed Agents 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 | Beam, a month | Claude Managed Agents, 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 | $5 · Developer | $13 · Claude API (pay-as-you-go, usage tiers) · with limits | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $22 · Developer | $53 · Claude API (pay-as-you-go, usage tiers) · with limits | $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 | $410 · Team | $634 · Claude API (pay-as-you-go, usage tiers) · with limits | $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 | $191 · Team | $360 · Claude API (pay-as-you-go, usage tiers) · 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 | $259 · Team | $796 · Claude API (pay-as-you-go, usage tiers) · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Beam: Beam sandboxes bill per second for each CPU core (two vCPU) and each GiB of RAM you request, until you terminate them or their time to live ends, so an idle tail is billed too. Developer has no fee; Team costs $89 a month plus usage, and there are no egress fees.
Claude Managed Agents: Managed Agents bills model tokens at API rates plus a flat session runtime fee, metered only while the session is running, including time spent waiting on the model. The tables show runtime only; tokens come on top and usually cost more.
Claude Managed Agents: Plans start at $20 a month, and the whole fee is usage credit. You pay per second while a sandbox runs, and a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Limits in those scenarios
Beam's Developer plan allows 30 CPU containers at once, so 50 parallel agents or 300 user sandboxes need the Team plan, and Beam publishes no price for extra disk, so none is counted. A Managed Agents sandbox has up to 8 GB of memory and 10 GB of disk with Docker in limited availability, so no scenario counts as a clean fit; Anthropic publishes no concurrent-session cap, only 300 creates per minute and usage-tier spend limits that pause all API use. For 1,000 short jobs at once, Beam's Team plan fits the burst while boat's $2,000 plan queues starts above 90 per minute.
| Scenario | Beam | Claude Managed Agents | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays |
|
| None that bite |
| One agent that never stops |
|
| None that bite |
| 50 agents in parallel |
|
| None that bite |
| Sandboxes for your users |
|
| None that bite |
| 1,000 short jobs at once |
|
|
|
Which one should you use?
Use Beam when
you need GPUs, quick per-second sandboxes for short code runs, low-cost CPU VMs in the US, or a runtime you can self-host, and you are happy to bring your own agent.
- GPUs in the same platform. For agents or jobs that need a GPU, Beam offers GPU sandboxes and serverless GPUs from RTX 4090 up to H100, H200 and B200.
- Quick sandboxes for short code runs. Sandboxes start in a second or two, bill per second and end on their own, which suits code interpreter bursts.
- Open source and your own cloud. Teams that must self-host can run the AGPL-3.0 Beta9 runtime for free, or run Beam in their own cloud for a fee.
Use Claude Managed Agents when
you want Claude itself to do long text and code tasks with no harness to build, idle time that costs nothing, and the option to run tools on your own workers.
- No agent loop to build. Teams that want Claude doing long tasks get the harness, caching, compaction, memory and webhooks ready to use.
- Idle sessions sleep for free. Agents that wait a long time between messages pay runtime only while working, and wake on the next message.
- Host allowlists and your own workers. Teams with strict network rules can limit sandboxes to listed hosts, or run every tool call on their own workers.
Where boat fits
Beam gives you a fast container and leaves the agent to you, and Managed Agents gives you Claude in a small container you cannot open. If your agents do real work over hours or days, boat gives each one a full VM with Docker, a desktop, open ports and a disk that lasts, with Claude Code, Codex and other agents already inside.
A whole machine, not a container
Builds that need systemd or an Android emulator fail in a Beam gVisor sandbox, and Managed Agents stops at 8 GB of memory with Docker in limited availability. A boat VM has root, Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm, up to 16 vCPU / 32 GB.
A disk that is still there
A Beam sandbox loses its files when its timer ends unless you save an image, and a Managed Agents sandbox is gone 30 days after it is created. boat saves the disk every minute, keeps it free while stopped and can fork a running sandbox.
Open and watch what the agent builds
Beam preview URLs are public with no auth and Managed Agents has no inbound ports at all. boat serves token-protected HTTPS on up to 50 ports, raw TCP and SSH, plus a 60fps desktop where you can watch the agent work.
Use boat when your agents need a real machine: Docker, emulators, a desktop and browser, ports you can open, a disk that lasts, and the choice of Claude Code, Codex or other agents. Compare it one to one: boat vs Beam and boat vs Claude Managed Agents.
Questions people ask
Is Beam cheaper than Claude Managed Agents?
For machine time, Beam costs less in all five scenarios on this page, such as $410 against $634 a month for 50 agents in parallel and $259 against $796 a month for 1,000 short jobs. Managed Agents also bills model tokens on top of runtime, which neither table includes.
Which is faster, Beam or Claude Managed Agents?
We cannot say. Neither has a result on the CPU benchmark we use, and Anthropic does not publish a sandbox's vCPU count. boat did 26.69 runs per second on that test.
Can Beam and Claude Managed Agents run Docker?
Beam runs Docker inside a sandbox when you set docker_enabled. Managed Agents lists Docker only as limited availability. boat runs Docker in a full VM, with systemd and /dev/kvm too.
Can I run Claude Code on Beam or Claude Managed Agents?
On Beam you install it yourself and run it through process exec. Managed Agents runs Anthropic's own harness with Claude models, not Claude Code. On boat, Claude Code, Codex and five other agents come preinstalled.
How long do files last on Beam and Claude Managed Agents?
A Beam sandbox ends with its time to live, 10 minutes by default, unless you save an image or use a volume; a Beam VM keeps its root disk while stopped. Managed Agents keeps sandbox state 30 days after the sandbox is created. boat keeps the whole disk until you delete the sandbox.
Do Beam or Claude Managed Agents have GPUs?
Beam does, from T4 and RTX 4090 up to H100, H200 and B200. Managed Agents does not, and boat is CPU only, so pick Beam for GPU work.
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