boat vs Alibaba Cloud ECS
Alibaba Cloud ECS is a hyperscaler's general-purpose VM service: you get a server and build the rest. boat is a sandbox made for agents, where every machine already has Docker, /dev/kvm, a desktop, coding agents and HTTPS URLs, and you can fork it while it runs.
Where boat stands out
Coding agents you drive from outside
boat ships Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and other agents inside each sandbox, and you drive them from outside with a prompt, steer and events API. Its credentials proxy keeps real AI keys out of the sandbox and can switch to another account when one runs out of credits. ECS gives you a clean VM and a shell.
Fork a running machine, stop for free
boat snapshots the disk every minute and on stop, and a stopped sandbox costs nothing. You can fork a running sandbox to try two ideas from the same point. On ECS a copy means making a custom image and booting a new instance from it, and a stopped instance still bills its cloud disks.
Desktop, browser and HTTPS URLs ready
Every boat sandbox has a 60fps desktop with Chromium and computer use, and HTTPS URLs on up to 50 ports, token-protected. ECS Linux images have no desktop, and an HTTPS URL needs your own domain, certificate and a load balancer or web server.
The companies and products
boat
boat.dev runs sandboxes for AI agents: each one is a full Linux VM with its own kernel.
You start a machine with one command or one API call, then SSH in, run Docker, open a desktop, or let a built-in agent (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and others) work in it. The disk stays between sessions, and a stopped sandbox costs nothing.
- Isolation
- Full VM per sandbox, own kernel
- Regions
- EU: Germany, Finland, France
Alibaba Cloud ECS
Alibaba Cloud ECS (Elastic Compute Service) is Alibaba'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 family (shared-CPU economy, dedicated Intel or AMD, Arm, GPU or bare metal), an image and a network, and ECS boots a virtual server with its own OS and root access. Disks are separate cloud disks, 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, with many regions in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the Americas.
- Nested virtualization
- Enabled by default on ECS Bare Metal Instances
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 367” means 2 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 | boat: price rank | Alibaba Cloud ECS: price rank |
|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month ECS can run a software factory, but you build the agent setup, preview URLs and cloning yourself; boat ships them on every machine. | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month | 167th of 367, with limits $1,640 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An always-on assistant fits both; on ECS a stopped machine keeps billing its disk, and a normal stop keeps billing everything. | 5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month | 121st of 366, with limits $725 a month |
| Code interpreter bursts 100 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 200,000 sessions of 1 min a month ECS handles big bursts of short jobs better than boat's start limits allow, though each instance takes tens of seconds to boot and has a billing minimum. | 186th of 345, with limits $2,000 a month | 78th of 345, with limits $98 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; on ECS you build the HTTPS access, isolation per user and lifecycle tooling yourself. | Cheapest of 361 $209 a month | 49th of 361, with limits $348 a month |
| RL rollouts 1,000 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 1,000,000 sessions of 3 min a month ECS fits large RL rollouts somewhat better: it can launch big fleets once your regional vCPU quota is raised, while boat's starts per day cap large bursts. | 34th of 360, with limits $2,000 a month | 28th of 360, with limits $1,458 a month |
| Agent evals 250 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 15,000 sessions of 20 min a month | 10th cheapest of 364 $200 a month | 20th cheapest of 364 $430 a month |
| CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month | 14th cheapest of 377 $211 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB | 18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month | 33rd cheapest of 368 $42 a month |
| Computer-use agents 50 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 20,000 sessions of 15 min a month ECS Linux images have no desktop or computer-use API, so you install and stream one yourself; boat streams a 60fps desktop out of the box. | 6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month | 163rd of 369, with limits $437 a month |
| Browser-use agents 50 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 10 min a month boat has Chromium and browser control ready in each sandbox; on ECS you install and wire the browser yourself. | 7th cheapest of 367 $200 a month | 186th of 367, with limits $153 a month |
| Scraping & bots (startup scale) 50 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 100,000 sessions of 3 min a month | 6th cheapest of 346 $90 a month | 178th of 346, with limits $95 a month |
| Mass scraping & bots (undetectable) 1,000 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 3,000,000 sessions of 2 min a month | 71st of 338, with limits $1,800 a month | 73rd of 338, with limits $1,818 a month |
| Parallel red teaming 200 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 5,000 sessions of 30 min a month Red teaming in parallel fits boat fully with forks and snapshots; on ECS each copy means an image and a fresh boot. | 2nd cheapest of 360 $200 a month | 126th of 360, with limits $76 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 |
| 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 |
Key features
| Feature | boat | Alibaba Cloud ECS |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | An agent sandbox: a full VM with agents, desktop, URLs and snapshots set up | A general cloud VM; you install and wire everything else |
| Isolation | Every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel | Every instance is a VM with its own OS and kernel |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine | Docker, root and systemd on any instance; nested virtualization documented on bare metal instances |
| Coding agents | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API | None preinstalled; public images are plain Linux and Windows, and you drive agents over SSH or Cloud Assistant |
| Keeping keys out of the machine | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; switch a credential to another account when credits run out | No credential proxy; secrets are delivered into the instance or fetched from inside it |
| Desktop and computer use | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream | Linux images have no desktop; Windows Server has Remote Desktop; no computer-use API |
| Reaching the machine | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; dedicated IPv6 or IPv4 | Public IPv4 and any port through security groups; HTTPS needs your own domain, certificate and a load balancer or web server |
| Files after a stop | Snapshots every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing | Cloud disks are kept and billed while stopped; snapshots are manual or on a schedule you set |
| Pause and fork | Fork a running sandbox; resume reboots from disk (no memory snapshots) | Hibernation keeps memory (Silicon Valley and Frankfurt only); cloning means making an image and booting a new instance |
| Outbound network rules | Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist | Free security group rules by IP range and port, allow or deny; domain rules with the paid Cloud Firewall |
| GPUs | None | Nvidia GPU families with T4, A10, A30, V100 and L20 cards, among others |
| Operating systems and CPUs | Linux on AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5); Wine for Windows apps | Linux and Windows Server on x86 and Arm |
| Regions | EU only: Germany, Finland, France | Asia, Middle East, US, Europe, Mexico and Brazil, plus Hong Kong and mainland China |
| Compliance and transparency | SOC 2 is in progress. We're open about where we stand: live status and data retention policy. | SOC 2 |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | boat | Alibaba Cloud ECS |
|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | Yes | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | Yes | No |
| Browser | Yes | No |
| Computer-use API | Yes | No |
| SSH | Yes | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | Yes | No |
| Fork/clone | Yes | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | Yes | Yes |
| Memory fork | No | No |
| Custom image (Docker or snapshot) | Yes | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | Yes | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | No | No |
| Wake on request | No | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | Yes | No |
| Raw TCP inbound | Yes | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | No | Yes |
| Egress allowlist | No | Yes |
| Secret proxy | Yes | No |
| Secret proxy for any API | Yes | No |
| Preinstalled agents | Yes | No |
| Agent harness API | Yes | No |
| MCP server | No | Yes |
| GPU | No | Yes |
| Windows | No | Yes |
| Arm64 | No | Yes |
| Self-hosting | No | No |
| BYOC | No | No |
| Open source | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Yes | Not published |
| Spend limits | Yes | Not published |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | No | Not published |
| SSO | No | Yes |
| SOC 2 | No | Yes |
| HIPAA | No | Yes |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Yes | Not published |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement: Alibaba Cloud ECS was not part of the public benchmark run we use. In that run, StarSling's Node.js build-and-test test on 2026-09-29, boat did 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. ECS speed depends on the family you pick: the economy family priced below shares vCPUs and has no performance SLA, while enterprise families like c9i get dedicated vCPUs.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Alibaba Cloud ECS has 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 | boat, a month | Alibaba Cloud ECS, 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 | $20 · $20/mo | $19 · Usage account |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $26 · $20/mo | $42 · Usage account |
| 50 agents in parallel 50 machines of 4 vCPU / 8 GB at once, 8-hour sessions, 1,100 sessions a month, Docker inside | $317 · $20/mo × 3 seats | $814 · Usage account |
| Sandboxes for your users 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 30,000 sessions of 10 minutes a month, up to 300 at once | $200 · $100/mo × 2 seats | $153 · Usage account |
| 1,000 short jobs at once 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 1,000 at once, 3 minutes each, 200,000 jobs a month | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits | $292 · Usage account |
boat: 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.
Alibaba Cloud ECS: ECS bills pay-as-you-go instances per second at list rate, here the shared-CPU economy family in Virginia, with a minimum of 2 to 5 minutes per hourly cycle for these sizes and no platform fee. Cloud disks and bandwidth bill on top, disks also while stopped, and monthly or yearly subscriptions lower the price of a machine that runs all month.
Limits in those scenarios
ECS publishes no fixed instance count: each region has a pay-as-you-go vCPU quota per instance family, which you check and raise in Quota Center, and a raise is reviewed, not automatic. 50 agents in parallel or 300 sandboxes for your users may need that quota raised first. 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 | boat | Alibaba Cloud ECS |
|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| None that bite |
Which one should you use?
Use Alibaba Cloud ECS when
you need GPUs, Windows, regions in Asia, the Middle East or the Americas, or very large bursts of short jobs, and you have the people to build the agent tooling on top.
- GPUs and Windows. Useful if your agents need GPUs or Windows: ECS rents Nvidia GPU instances and Windows Server machines.
- Regions in Asia and beyond. Useful if your users or data sit in Asia, the Middle East or the Americas: ECS has regions across all of them.
- Network rules and memory hibernation. Useful if you must limit where code can connect, or resume a machine with its memory intact.
Use boat when
you want each agent on a ready, full VM: coding agents with an API, keys kept outside, a desktop, HTTPS URLs, minute-by-minute snapshots and forks, with no infrastructure to assemble.
- Coding agents you drive from outside. On ECS you write the code that installs, starts, prompts and watches every agent, and the keys sit inside the instance where any root process can read them. Cloud Assistant runs commands, but it does not drive an agent.
- Fork a running machine, stop for free. Agents break things and branch often. On ECS a normal stop keeps billing everything, and economical mode stops compute charges but can fail to start again when the region runs short of stock.
- Desktop, browser and HTTPS URLs ready. A computer-use agent on ECS needs you to install a desktop, a streaming server and a click API. Showing a user the app an agent built needs DNS and TLS work for every instance.
Questions people ask
Is boat cheaper than Alibaba Cloud ECS?
It depends on the shape of the work. One coding agent on workdays is about even, $20 a month on boat and $19 on ECS, and one agent that never stops comes to $26 versus $42. 50 agents in parallel come to $317 on boat versus $814 on ECS. ECS wins sandboxes for your users at $153 versus $200, and the 1,000-job burst at $292 a month, which does not fit boat's start limits.
Can I just run Claude Code on an ECS instance?
Yes. You launch an instance, install the agent, give it a key and keep it running over SSH or Cloud Assistant. boat does that work for you: the agents come preinstalled, you drive them with a prompt, steer and events API, and the real keys stay outside the machine.
Does Alibaba Cloud ECS support nested virtualization?
Alibaba documents nested virtualization as enabled by default on ECS Bare Metal Instances, which rent a whole server. On boat, /dev/kvm is available on every machine, from the smallest size up.
Does boat have GPUs or Windows like ECS?
No. boat runs Linux VMs on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) hosts, with no GPUs and Wine docs for Windows apps. If you need Nvidia GPUs or Windows Server, ECS has both.
Where does my data run?
boat runs only in the EU (Germany, Finland and France), with EU data residency and a zero data retention option. ECS runs in many regions across Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the Americas, and you choose the region for each instance.
Is boat SOC 2 compliant?
SOC 2 is in progress. We're open about where we stand: live status at status.ascii.dev and our data retention policy at docs.boat.dev/data-retention.
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