boat vs Bitrise
Bitrise is a mobile CI/CD service: it runs iOS and Android builds on Apple silicon Macs and Linux VMs, and now rents remote dev environments for coding agents. boat is a sandbox for agents: a full Linux VM that runs with no time cap, keeps its files with snapshots every minute, and lets you drive the agents inside from outside.
Where boat stands out
A machine that keeps running
A boat sandbox has no session cap on paid plans, so an agent can work for days. Its disk is snapshotted every minute and on stop, and a stopped sandbox costs nothing. Bitrise CI builds time out at 210 minutes and roll back, and its dev sessions keep one disk that is not backed up.
Agents you drive from outside
boat ships Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and other agents in each sandbox, and you send prompts, steer them and read their events through an API. Bitrise starts Claude Code from its CLI and you work with it in a terminal. boat's credentials proxy also keeps real AI keys out of the VM.
Fork, Docker and open ports
Every boat sandbox has root, systemd, Docker and /dev/kvm, and you can fork a running one into a copy. It can serve HTTPS on up to 50 ports and take raw TCP. Bitrise dev sessions are reached by SSH or VNC, have no public URL for a port, and macOS sessions cannot run Docker.
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
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
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 | Bitrise: 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, so a software factory there means its remote dev environments, where each tier runs only 1 to 5 machines at once. | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month | 38th of 367, with limits $3,403 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An always-on assistant needs a machine that never times out; Bitrise sessions stop after days of inactivity, and boat runs with no session cap on paid plans. | 5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month | 73rd of 366, with limits $1,970 a month |
| Code interpreter bursts 100 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 200,000 sessions of 1 min a month | 186th of 345, with limits $2,000 a month | 289th of 345, with limits $658 a month |
| Sandboxes for your users 300 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 23 min a month Bitrise dev environment tiers run at most 5 VMs at once and CI Pro 10 macOS or 30 Linux builds, far below the hundreds of sandboxes this needs. | Cheapest of 361 $209 a month | 269th of 361, with limits $1,604 a month |
| RL rollouts 1,000 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 1,000,000 sessions of 3 min a month | 34th of 360, with limits $2,000 a month | 271st of 360, with limits $6,818 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 | 289th of 364, with limits $1,274 a month |
| CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month Bitrise is a real CI service, best for iOS and Android pipelines; boat fits generic Linux jobs an agent kicks off, with Docker and no build quota. | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month | 181st of 377, with limits $859 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Both keep a persistent disk; Bitrise's monthly cap makes a Mac dev box predictable, while boat's Linux box keeps snapshots every minute. | 18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month | 168th of 368, with limits $119 a month |
| Computer-use agents 50 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 20,000 sessions of 15 min a month Bitrise lets an agent take screenshots of and control a macOS desktop through its MCP server; boat streams a 60fps Linux desktop with Chromium. | 6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month | 68th of 369, with limits $1,186 a month |
| Browser-use agents 50 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 10 min a month | 7th cheapest of 367 $200 a month | 132nd of 367, with limits $746 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 | 131st of 346, with limits $862 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 | 256th of 338, with limits $13,088 a month |
| Parallel red teaming 200 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 5,000 sessions of 30 min a month | 2nd cheapest of 360 $200 a month | 73rd of 360, with limits $537 a month |
| GPU eval jobs 10 at once · 8 vCPU / 32 GB · 500 sessions of 30 min a month Neither has GPUs. | 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 Only Bitrise fits: it rents Apple silicon Macs with iOS simulators, and boat has no macOS. | Can't run it | 21st of 36, with limits $400 a month |
Key features
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | boat | Bitrise |
|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | Yes | No |
| Desktop GUI | Yes | Yes |
| Browser | Yes | Yes |
| Computer-use API | Yes | Yes |
| SSH | Yes | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | Yes | No |
| Fork/clone | Yes | No |
| Live fork (no pause) | Yes | No |
| Memory fork | No | No |
| Custom image (Docker or snapshot) | Yes | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | Yes | No |
| Idle auto-stop | No | Yes |
| Wake on request | No | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | Yes | No |
| Raw TCP inbound | Yes | No |
| Public IPv4 | No | No |
| Egress allowlist | No | No |
| Secret proxy | Yes | No |
| Secret proxy for any API | Yes | No |
| Preinstalled agents | Yes | Yes |
| Agent harness API | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | No | Yes |
| GPU | No | No |
| Windows | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | Yes |
| Self-hosting | No | Yes |
| BYOC | No | Yes |
| Open source | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Yes | Not published |
| Spend limits | Yes | Not published |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Yes | No |
| Audit logs | No | Not published |
| SSO | No | Yes |
| SOC 2 | No | Yes |
| HIPAA | No | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Yes | Not published |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement: Bitrise has no result in the public sandbox benchmark 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.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Bitrise 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 | Bitrise, 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 | $260 · Pro · with limits |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $26 · $20/mo | $119 · RDE Pro · with limits |
| 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 | $2,309 · Pro · with limits |
| 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 | $812 · Pro · with limits |
| 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 | $1,538 · Pro · with limits |
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.
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 monthly build allowance on top of its fee. Remote Dev Environments charge a base fee with some included minutes, then per minute up to a monthly cap per OS, after which that OS is free for the rest of the month.
Limits in those scenarios
Bitrise limits machines by plan: Pro runs at most 10 macOS or 30 Linux builds at once, and a dev environment tier runs 1 to 5 VMs at once, so 50 agents in parallel and 300 user sandboxes do not fit. CI builds stop at the build timeout, so a job that runs all day has to be split up. Dev environments have no such timeout; they stop after a stretch of inactivity you can set, and now and then for maintenance. 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 and needs more starts per day than the $2,000 plan allows.
| Scenario | boat | Bitrise |
|---|---|---|
| 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 Bitrise when
you build and ship iOS or Android apps, need macOS on Apple silicon, or must run in the US, Asia Pacific or your own AWS account.
- Macs and iOS simulators. Useful if your agents 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.
- More regions and self-hosting. Useful if you need machines in the US or Asia Pacific, or inside your own AWS account.
Use boat when
your agents need a full Linux VM that runs for days with Docker, snapshots every minute, forks, open ports and coding agents you drive from outside.
- A machine that keeps running. An agent that runs past a build timeout loses the job and the machine's state. On Bitrise you move long work into a dev session, and a lost disk there has no restore point.
- Agents you drive from outside. Without a prompt and events API, running many agents means scripting a terminal session for each one. On Bitrise, secrets are environment variables, so a key sits inside a machine the agent controls.
- Fork, Docker and open ports. An agent that builds a web app needs to show it running at a URL. On Bitrise you would set up your own tunnel, and you cannot copy a session to try two ideas side by side.
Questions people ask
Is boat cheaper than Bitrise?
In the scenarios we priced, boat costs less in four of five: one coding agent on workdays comes to $20 a month on boat and $260 on Bitrise, one agent running all month to $26 versus $119, and 50 agents in parallel to $317 versus $2,309. For 1,000 short jobs at once, boat comes to $2,000 and Bitrise to $1,538, and neither fits without higher limits.
Can I run AI coding agents on Bitrise?
Yes, in Remote Dev Environments. bitrise-cli rde claude creates a session, clones your branch and starts Claude Code, and other agents can be installed with a warmup script. On boat the agents come preinstalled, and you drive them through an API instead of a terminal.
Does boat run macOS or iOS simulators?
No. boat runs Linux VMs only, so iOS builds and simulators need a Mac service like Bitrise. boat does run Docker and /dev/kvm, so Linux tools and Android emulators work inside a sandbox.
Is Bitrise a sandbox for agents?
Not at its core. Bitrise is a mobile CI/CD service whose build machines are reset after each build, and its Remote Dev Environments are cloud machines for developers and agents with a fixed number of VMs per tier. boat is built to create, stop and fork many agent sandboxes by API.
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. Bitrise runs in the US, Ireland, Frankfurt, Singapore and Sydney, and can also run in your own AWS account.
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. Bitrise lists SOC 2 Type II and PCI DSS on its security page.
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