Bitrise vs Ubicloud
Bitrise is a mobile CI/CD service that builds iOS and Android apps on Apple silicon Macs and Linux machines, and also rents remote dev environments. Ubicloud is an open source cloud that rents plain Linux VMs, managed Postgres, Kubernetes and GitHub Actions runners, which you set up and run yourself.
The companies and products
Bitrise
Bitrise is a mobile CI/CD platform that builds, tests and ships iOS and Android apps on its own Mac and Linux machines.
Bitrise is a different kind of product: a CI service. Each build runs in its own virtual machine from a Bitrise stack, and the machine is rolled back after the build. Since 2026 it also sells Remote Dev Environments, macOS and Linux sessions with a persistent disk where you can start Claude Code from a CLI or drive the machine through an MCP server. It is built for mobile teams.
- Funding
- $95M+ in total
Ubicloud
Ubicloud is an open source cloud that runs VMs, managed Postgres, Kubernetes and GitHub Actions runners on leased bare-metal servers.
You rent Linux VMs (Standard with dedicated CPU, or cheaper Burstable with shared CPU) from Ubicloud's managed service, or run the same AGPL code on your own servers. Around the VMs it offers private subnets, an inbound firewall, load balancers, managed PostgreSQL, Kubernetes, GPU VMs, inference endpoints and cheap GitHub Actions runners. It is general 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. “38th cheapest of 367” means 37 of the other 366 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 | Bitrise: price rank | Ubicloud: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Bitrise CI builds stop at a timeout and roll back, and a Ubicloud VM starts as an empty OS image that bills while stopped; boat gives each agent a full VM with agents, snapshots and free stops built in. | 38th of 367, with limits $3,403 a month | 126th of 367, with limits $1,136 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB | 73rd of 366, with limits $1,970 a month | 154th of 366, with limits $1,139 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 Ubicloud fits short bursts best of the three: its burstable VMs bill per minute with no plan fee, while Bitrise caps concurrency and boat's start limits queue big bursts. | 289th of 345, with limits $658 a month | 59th of 345, with limits $52 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 Bitrise runs at most 5 dev VMs or 10 CI builds at once on Pro, and Ubicloud's default 256 vCPU quota needs a raise for 300 sandboxes; boat allows 100 to 2,000 sandboxes by plan. | 269th of 361, with limits $1,604 a month | 53rd of 361, with limits $390 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 | 271st of 360, with limits $6,818 a month | 234th of 360, with limits $1,560 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 | 289th of 364, with limits $1,274 a month | 31st cheapest of 364 $624 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 Bitrise is the pick for iOS and Android pipelines, Ubicloud sells cheap managed GitHub Actions runners for x64 and arm64, and boat runs generic Linux jobs with Docker and /dev/kvm. | 181st of 377, with limits $859 a month | 28th 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 Ubicloud fits a 24/7 dev box on a Standard VM with dedicated CPU, Bitrise dev sessions stop after days of inactivity, and boat keeps snapshots every minute and costs less here. | 168th of 368, with limits $119 a month | 67th cheapest of 368 $91 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 Bitrise gives an agent a macOS desktop through its MCP server, Ubicloud has no desktop at all, and boat streams a 60fps Linux desktop with Chromium. | 68th of 369, with limits $1,186 a month | 132nd of 369, with limits $312 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 | 132nd of 367, with limits $746 a month | 188th of 367, with limits $156 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 | 131st of 346, with limits $862 a month | 165th of 346, with limits $78 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 | 256th of 338, with limits $13,088 a month | 60th of 338, with limits $1,573 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 | 73rd of 360, with limits $537 a month | 129th of 360, with limits $81 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 Ubicloud fits: it rents Nvidia GPU VMs on request, and neither Bitrise nor boat has GPUs. | Can't run it | 93rd of 98, with limits $795 a month | Can't run it |
| macOS agents 5 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 1,000 sessions of 20 min a month Only Bitrise fits: it rents Apple silicon Macs with iOS simulators, and neither Ubicloud nor boat has macOS. | 21st of 36, with limits $400 a month | Can't run it | Can't run it |
Key features
| Feature | Bitrise | Ubicloud | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kind of product | Mobile CI/CD service, plus Remote Dev Environments for developers and agents | A general open source cloud: VMs, managed Postgres, Kubernetes and GitHub Actions runners | Sandbox for AI agents: a Linux VM you create, run, stop and fork by API |
| Isolation | Every build or session is its own VM; CI VMs are rolled back after each build | Every VM is a full KVM guest (Cloud Hypervisor) with its own kernel | Every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel, on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) hosts |
| Operating systems | macOS on Apple silicon with iOS simulators, and Linux with Android emulators | Linux only, from Ubuntu, Debian or AlmaLinux images | Linux only; Wine for Windows apps |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Docker and nested virtualization on Linux machines; neither inside macOS sessions | Root over SSH, so Docker installs like on any Linux VM; nested virtualization is not documented | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine |
| How long a machine runs | CI builds time out at 210 minutes (up to 4 hours on Enterprise); dev sessions auto-terminate after 5 days idle by default | No time cap; a VM runs until you stop or delete it | No session cap on paid plans |
| Files and billing after a stop | Dev sessions keep one persistent disk, which is not backed up; CI machines keep nothing | A stopped VM keeps its resources reserved and billing continues as if it were running | Snapshots every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk |
| Fork | No fork; warm pools hand out fresh sessions booted from a template | Stop the VM, capture a machine image (single disk up to 40 GiB), then boot new VMs from it | Fork a running sandbox into an independent copy in one call |
| Coding agents | Claude Code started from the CLI and used interactively; other agents through warmup scripts | None; you install and drive agents yourself, for example over SSH | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, driven from outside with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Desktop and computer use | VNC desktop on macOS sessions only; an MCP server takes screenshots and controls it | None; you install a desktop and browser on the VM yourself | 60fps Linux desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream |
| Keeping keys out of the machine | Secrets are environment variables, so the value enters the machine | No credentials proxy; secrets live on the VM | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; real keys never enter the VM |
| Reaching the machine | SSH, VNC and a web terminal; no public URL for a port | Free public IPv6, public IPv4 for $3 a month; for HTTPS the VM runs TLS itself | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; dedicated IPv6 or IPv4 |
| CI | Full mobile CI/CD: workflows, code signing, build cache, release management and over-the-air updates | Managed GitHub Actions runners, x64 and arm64, billed per minute of job time | None built in; CI jobs run on general sandboxes with Docker and /dev/kvm |
| GPUs and managed services | No GPUs | Nvidia A100, B200 and RTX PRO 6000 VMs on request, plus managed Postgres and Kubernetes | No GPUs |
| Regions and self-hosting | US, Ireland, Frankfurt, Singapore and Sydney; your own AWS account or self-hosted Bitrise Runners | Germany, Finland and Virginia (US), GPUs in Istanbul; AGPL code you can run yourself | EU only: Germany, Finland, France; managed only |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Bitrise | Ubicloud | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | No | Not published | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | Yes | No | Yes |
| Browser | Yes | No | Yes |
| Computer-use API | Yes | No | Yes |
| SSH | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | Yes | No | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | No | Yes | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | No | No | Yes |
| Memory fork | No | No | No |
| Custom image (Docker or snapshot) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | No | Yes | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | Yes | No | No |
| Wake on request | No | No | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | No | No | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | No | Not published | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | No | Yes | No |
| Egress allowlist | No | No | No |
| Secret proxy | No | No | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | No | No | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | Yes | No | Yes |
| Agent harness API | Yes | No | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes | No | No |
| GPU | No | Yes | No |
| Windows | No | No | No |
| Arm64 | Yes | Yes | No |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes | No |
| BYOC | Yes | Yes | No |
| Open source | No | Yes | No |
| Scoped API keys | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | No | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Yes | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | No | No | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for Bitrise or Ubicloud: neither was part of the public StarSling benchmark run we use, so we do not compare speeds. 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. On Ubicloud results would also depend on the family, since Standard VMs have dedicated CPU and Burstable VMs get half of each vCPU.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Bitrise and Ubicloud 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 | Bitrise, a month | Ubicloud, 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 | $260 · Pro · with limits | $22 · Usage | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $119 · RDE Pro · with limits | $91 · Usage | $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 | $2,309 · Pro · with limits | $1,098 · Usage | $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 | $812 · Pro · with limits | $156 · Usage | $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 | $1,538 · Pro · with limits | $312 · Usage · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Bitrise: Bitrise CI is sold by plan: Starter is a flat fee with unlimited minutes on Medium machines, and Pro adds per-minute machine time and a build allowance to its fee. Remote Dev Environments charge a base fee with some included minutes, then per minute up to a monthly cap per OS.
Ubicloud: Ubicloud bills each VM per minute for as long as it exists, running or stopped, with no plan fee; a public IPv4 adds $3 a month. The workday price assumes you delete the VM each night and lose its disk.
Ubicloud: 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
Bitrise Pro caps CI builds at 3.5 hours and 10 at once, so the workday agent, 50 agents in parallel, 300 user sandboxes and 1,000 short jobs do not fit there, and its dev environments run only 1 to 5 VMs per tier. Ubicloud limits the vCPU a project can run: 32 for a new project and 256 once it has paid an invoice over $5, so 50 agents fit but 1,000 jobs at once need a raise, and its burstable shape guarantees only half of each vCPU. On boat the limit is a sandbox count (100 to 2,000 by plan) plus starts per minute, so the 1,000-job burst gets queued.
| Scenario | Bitrise | Ubicloud | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays |
| 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 |
| Sandboxes for your users |
| None that bite | None that bite |
| 1,000 short jobs at once |
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Which one should you use?
Use Bitrise when
you build and ship iOS or Android apps, need macOS on Apple silicon, or must run in Asia Pacific or your own AWS account.
- Macs and iOS simulators. Useful if you build or test iOS apps: Bitrise rents Apple silicon Macs with iOS simulators and a desktop.
- A full mobile CI/CD pipeline. Useful if you ship mobile apps: Bitrise handles builds, code signing, caching, store releases and over-the-air updates.
- Asia Pacific regions and your own AWS. Useful if your machines must run in Singapore or Sydney, or inside your own AWS account.
Use Ubicloud when
you want an open source cloud you can also run yourself, GPU VMs, cheap GitHub Actions runners, or a long-lived VM next to managed Postgres and Kubernetes.
- Open source you can run yourself. Useful if you want to run the cloud on your own servers: Ubicloud's whole stack is AGPL code.
- GPUs on request. Useful if you train or serve models: Ubicloud rents Nvidia A100, B200 and RTX PRO 6000 VMs once support enables them.
- Long-lived VMs next to a whole cloud. Useful if a VM must run with no time cap next to managed Postgres, Kubernetes and cheap GitHub Actions runners.
Where boat fits
Bitrise is a mobile CI service and Ubicloud is a general cloud, so neither is built as an agent sandbox. If what you are really running is agents, boat gives each one a full Linux VM that is ready to work, with snapshots, fork, a desktop and coding agents built in. For iOS builds pick Bitrise, and for GPUs or self-hosting pick Ubicloud.
A machine that keeps running and keeps its disk
Bitrise CI builds stop at 210 minutes and roll back, and its dev disks are not backed up. A stopped Ubicloud VM bills as if running, so you pay for idle time or delete it. boat snapshots every minute and stops for free.
Agents you drive from outside
Bitrise starts Claude Code in a terminal and Ubicloud gives you an empty OS image, so on both you script and supervise each agent yourself, with keys on the machine. boat has agents preinstalled, an API to drive them, and a credentials proxy.
Fork, a desktop and HTTPS ports
Bitrise has no fork and no public URL for a port; copying a Ubicloud VM means stopping it to capture an image, and HTTPS means running TLS yourself. boat forks a running sandbox and serves 50 ports over HTTPS.
Use boat when your agents need a full Linux VM that is ready to work: coding agents you drive from outside, a desktop, HTTPS ports, snapshots every minute, fork while running and stops that cost nothing. Compare it one to one: boat vs Bitrise and boat vs Ubicloud.
Questions people ask
Is Bitrise cheaper than Ubicloud?
In every scenario we priced, Ubicloud costs less: one agent running all month comes to $91 on Ubicloud against $119 on Bitrise, and 50 agents in parallel to $1,098 against $2,309. boat comes to $26 and $317 for the same two.
Which is faster, Bitrise or Ubicloud?
We cannot say: neither has a result in the public StarSling benchmark we use. boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB there.
Can Bitrise or Ubicloud run Docker?
Bitrise runs Docker and nested virtualization on its Linux machines, but not inside macOS sessions. A Ubicloud VM gives you root over SSH, so Docker installs like on any Linux VM. boat has Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine.
Does Ubicloud have Macs like Bitrise?
No. Ubicloud runs Linux VMs only, while Bitrise rents Apple silicon Macs on M2 Pro, M4 and M4 Pro chips with iOS simulators. boat runs Linux only too.
Can I run AI coding agents on Bitrise or Ubicloud?
On Bitrise, yes, in Remote Dev Environments, where its CLI starts Claude Code in a session. On Ubicloud you install agents on a plain VM and drive them over SSH. boat ships Claude Code, Codex and OpenCode in each sandbox, driven from outside through an API.
Where does my data run?
Bitrise runs in the US, Ireland, Frankfurt, Singapore and Sydney, or in your own AWS account. Ubicloud runs VMs in Germany, Finland and Virginia, plus GPU VMs in Istanbul. boat runs only in the EU (Germany, Finland and France).
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