boat vs Codemagic
Codemagic is a CI/CD service for mobile apps: each build gets a fresh Mac, Linux or Windows machine that is destroyed when the build ends, after at most 120 minutes on self-serve plans. boat gives each agent a full Linux VM that keeps its disk, serves its own ports and runs coding agents you drive from outside.
Where boat stands out
A machine that stays
A boat sandbox keeps running as long as you want on paid plans, its disk is snapshotted every minute and on stop, and a stopped sandbox costs nothing. You can fork a running sandbox to try several ideas at once. A Codemagic build machine is new for every build and is destroyed when the build ends.
Ports you can reach
boat gives each sandbox HTTPS URLs on up to 50 ports, plus raw TCP, so an agent can run a dev server, an API or a database that you and your users open. Codemagic machines sit on a private network, and only temporary SSH, VNC or RDP is offered, turned on by hand for each build.
Coding agents built in
boat ships Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and other agents inside each sandbox, and you drive agents inside from outside with a prompt, steer and events API. The AI credentials proxy keeps real keys out of the sandbox and can switch to another account when one runs out of credits. Codemagic's AI tool, codemagic-init, helps agents on your own computer write Codemagic workflows.
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
Codemagic
Codemagic is a cloud CI/CD service built for mobile developers: it builds, tests and publishes iOS, Android, Flutter and React Native apps.
You describe a workflow in codemagic.yaml, and each build runs on a new virtual machine: an Apple silicon Mac mini with Xcode, an Ubuntu Linux machine, or a Windows machine. The machine is destroyed when the build finishes, and the result can go straight to App Store Connect, Google Play and other stores. It is built for app teams that want builds and code signing handled for them; it is a different kind of product from an agent sandbox, and the two overlap only where an agent needs a machine for a short, scripted job.
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 | Codemagic: price rank |
|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month A software factory needs machines that keep their work between steps; Codemagic wipes each machine after a build of at most two hours, so it is only a compromise. | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month | 362nd of 367, with limits $32,718 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An always-on assistant must keep running and keep its files; Codemagic builds end within 120 minutes and leave nothing behind. | 5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month | 364th of 366, with limits $98,550 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 | 337th of 345, with limits $9,147 a month |
| Sandboxes for your users 300 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 23 min a month Giving each of your users a sandbox needs hundreds at once; Codemagic sells build slots one at a time, and boat's plans start at 100 running sandboxes. | Cheapest of 361 $209 a month | 349th of 361, with limits $28,497 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 | 336th of 360, with limits $135 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 | 363rd of 364, with limits $10,947 a month |
| CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month Codemagic is a CI service, but its smallest Linux machine is 8 vCPU / 32 GB, and general CI runners on boat keep a warm disk between jobs. | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month | 207th of 377, with limits $3,387 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB A dev box has to survive the night; Codemagic machines are gone 10 minutes after a build ends, while a boat machine keeps its disk when stopped. | 18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month | 191st of 368, with limits $333 a month |
| Computer-use agents 50 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 20,000 sessions of 15 min a month Codemagic lets a person open VNC or RDP on a build machine to debug it, but has no computer-use API; boat streams a 60fps desktop an agent can drive. | 6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month | 71st of 369, with limits $10,047 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 | 151st of 367, with limits $10,947 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 | 148th of 346, with limits $13,310 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 | 337th of 338, with limits $263 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 | 95th of 360, with limits $6,672 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 Only Codemagic fits: it runs real macOS on Apple silicon with Xcode and iOS simulators, and boat runs Linux only. | Can't run it | 32nd of 36, with limits $1,952 a month |
Key features
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | boat | Codemagic |
|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Not published |
| Systemd | Yes | No |
| Desktop GUI | Yes | Yes |
| Browser | Yes | Yes |
| Computer-use API | Yes | No |
| SSH | Yes | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | No |
| Pause/resume | Yes | No |
| Automatic snapshots | Yes | No |
| Fork/clone | Yes | No |
| Live fork (no pause) | Yes | No |
| Memory fork | No | No |
| Custom image (Docker or snapshot) | Yes | No |
| ≥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 | No |
| Agent harness API | Yes | No |
| MCP server | No | No |
| GPU | No | No |
| 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 | No |
| Audit logs | No | Yes |
| 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 for Codemagic: it was not part of the public StarSling benchmark run where boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. Codemagic also sells fixed machine sizes (Mac minis, and Linux X2 at 8 vCPU / 32 GB), so there is no 4 vCPU / 8 GB machine to put next to boat's.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Codemagic 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 | Codemagic, 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 | $333 · Free (individual) · with limits |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $26 · $20/mo | $333 · Free (individual) · 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 | $21,531 · Pay as you go (team, 4 concurrent) · 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 | $12,297 · Pay as you go (team, 4 concurrent) · 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 | $27,147 · Pay as you go (team, 4 concurrent) · 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.
Codemagic: Codemagic bills build minutes: $0.095 a minute on a Mac mini M2, $0.114 on an M4, and $0.045 on Linux X2 or Windows, with 500 free M2 minutes a month for individuals. Each extra build running at once costs $49 a month, and fixed annual plans start at $3,990 a year for unlimited minutes on 3 builds at once.
Limits in those scenarios
Codemagic does not fit any of the five scenarios, because it is a CI service: every build stops within 120 minutes and its files are deleted, so a workday agent or an always-on agent cannot keep its work. Pay as you go starts with one build at a time and adds more at $49 a month each, so 50 agents, 300 user sandboxes or 1,000 short jobs at once mean buying dozens of build slots of 8 vCPU / 32 GB each. On boat the one scenario that does not fit is the 1,000-job burst, which needs more starts per minute and per day than the $2,000 plan allows, so it gets queued.
| Scenario | boat | Codemagic |
|---|---|---|
| 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 Codemagic when
you build, sign and publish iOS, Android or Flutter apps and need real Macs with Xcode for builds that finish within two hours.
- Real Macs with Xcode. Useful if you build iOS or macOS apps: Codemagic runs Apple silicon Mac minis with Xcode and iOS simulators ready.
- A full mobile release pipeline. Useful if you ship mobile apps: Codemagic handles code signing and publishes to App Store Connect, TestFlight and Google Play.
- Windows build machines. Useful if you also build Windows apps: Codemagic offers Windows machines next to its Mac and Linux ones.
Use boat when
your agents need a machine that keeps running and keeps its files: hours of installs, builds, tests and servers on a full Linux VM with Docker, open ports and coding agents built in.
- A machine that stays. An agent that installs tools, clones repos and builds for hours loses all of it on Codemagic after 120 minutes at most. Its caches only save dependency folders, so every new build sets everything else up again.
- Ports you can reach. An agent that builds a web app needs to show it running. On Codemagic nothing on the build machine can be opened from outside, and the machine is gone 10 minutes after the build ends.
- Coding agents built in. On Codemagic you would start an agent as a build step, pass it keys as environment variables it can read, and wait for the build to finish. You cannot steer it midway or keep it running past the build limit.
Questions people ask
Can I run AI coding agents on Codemagic?
Only as a step inside a CI build. The build machine is new each time, stops within 120 minutes on self-serve plans and is destroyed afterwards, and keys reach it as environment variables. On boat the agent is preinstalled in a VM that keeps its disk, and you prompt and steer it through an API.
Is boat cheaper than Codemagic?
For agent work, yes in all five scenarios we priced: one coding agent on workdays is $20 a month on boat and $333 on Codemagic, and 50 agents in parallel are $317 against $21,531. As a CI service, Codemagic does not fit any of the five scenarios, so its numbers are what the closest setup would cost, not a like-for-like product.
Does boat run macOS or iOS builds?
No. boat runs Linux VMs on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) hosts and has no macOS or Windows guests. For Xcode, iOS simulators and App Store publishing, Codemagic is built for that job.
Can I keep a Codemagic machine between builds?
No. Codemagic destroys the machine when the build completes, and SSH or VNC access stays open for only 10 minutes after that. Dependency caches carry over between builds of the same workflow, but the machine itself does not. A boat sandbox keeps its disk when stopped, with snapshots every minute.
Can Android emulators run on both?
On Codemagic, Android emulators run on Linux machines but not on macOS, because Apple's virtualization framework has no nested virtualization. On boat every machine has /dev/kvm, so emulators and other VMs run inside the sandbox.
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. Codemagic lists a SOC 2 Type 2 audit on its pricing page, with the report available on request.
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