boat vs GitHub Codespaces
GitHub Codespaces is a cloud dev environment: a Linux dev container on its own VM, opened from a repository in VS Code or the browser, that stops after at most 12 hours. boat is a sandbox you drive from code: full VMs with /dev/kvm, a desktop and coding agents built in, that run until you stop them and fork while running.
Where boat stands out
Machines that keep running and keep their work
A boat sandbox runs until you stop it, with no session cap on paid plans. Its disk is snapshotted every minute and on stop, a stopped sandbox costs nothing, and you can fork a running one into copies. A codespace stops after 12 hours at most, even while in use, and after 30 idle minutes by default; there is no way to copy one.
A full VM with /dev/kvm and a desktop
Every boat machine has root, systemd, Docker and /dev/kvm, plus a 60fps desktop with Chromium for computer use, HTTPS on up to 50 ports and raw TCP. A codespace is a dev container with Docker and an editor, but GitHub documents no /dev/kvm, no graphical desktop and no public address.
Coding agents you drive from outside
boat ships Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and other agents in 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. Codespaces gives you Copilot as an editor extension and copies secrets in as environment variables.
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
GitHub Codespaces
GitHub Codespaces is GitHub's cloud development environment: a ready-to-code Linux machine for a repository, opened in the browser, VS Code or the GitHub CLI.
Codespaces is a different kind of product from boat: a dev environment for people working on a GitHub repository, not a sandbox API for agents. Each codespace is a Docker container built from the repo's dev container config, running on its own newly built VM on Azure, with 2 to 32 cores. It is built for developers and teams who want every contributor to start from the same setup, with prebuilds, port forwarding and GitHub billing.
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 | GitHub Codespaces: price rank |
|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month An agent on Codespaces gets Docker in a dev container, but no documented /dev/kvm and a hard stop at 12 hours, so long build-and-test loops must be restarted. | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month | 274th of 367, with limits $4,618 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An always-on assistant does not fit Codespaces well: every codespace stops after 12 hours at most, and after 30 idle minutes by default if nothing prints to a terminal. | 5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month | 309th of 366, with limits $6,970 a month |
| Code interpreter bursts 100 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 200,000 sessions of 1 min a month Neither is built for one-minute runs; each codespace builds a dev container on a new VM, which prebuilds speed up but do not remove. | 186th of 345, with limits $2,000 a month | 288th of 345, with limits $619 a month |
| Sandboxes for your users 300 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 23 min a month Codespaces are created for GitHub users on a repository, and GitHub does not publish how many can run at once, so handing 300 machines to your own users is a compromise. | Cheapest of 361 $209 a month | 281st of 361, with limits $1,964 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 | 282nd of 360, with limits $9,489 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 | 295th of 364, with limits $1,519 a month |
| CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month Codespaces has no fork and no snapshot API, so each run starts from a repo or a prebuild built by GitHub Actions instead of a copy of a warm machine. | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month | 314th of 377, with limits $909 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Codespaces is a polished VS Code environment per repo but only a compromise for a 24/7 box, since it stops after 12 hours at most, while boat is a full VM that keeps running. | 18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month | 130th of 368, with limits $270 a month |
| Computer-use agents 50 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 20,000 sessions of 15 min a month A codespace has an editor and a terminal but no graphical desktop, while boat streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium for computer use. | 6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month | 267th of 369, with limits $1,367 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 | 275th of 367, with limits $678 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 | 310th of 346, with limits $922 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 | 280th of 338, with limits $18,637 a month |
| Parallel red teaming 200 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 5,000 sessions of 30 min a month boat can fork one prepared machine into many while it runs; on Codespaces every copy is created again from the repository. | 2nd cheapest of 360 $200 a month | 267th of 360, with limits $445 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 | GitHub Codespaces |
|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel | A Docker container on its own newly built VM, with its own virtual network |
| How long it runs | Runs until you stop it; no session cap on paid plans | Stops after 30 idle minutes by default (up to 240) and after 12 hours at most, even while in use |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine | Docker and sudo inside the dev container; /dev/kvm and nested virtualization are not documented |
| Desktop and computer use | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream | VS Code in the browser or on your machine, JupyterLab and a terminal; no graphical desktop |
| Files after a stop | Snapshots every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox keeps its disk and costs nothing | Saved files are kept and storage is billed; stopped codespaces are deleted after 30 days by default |
| Fork and snapshots | Fork a running sandbox into copies with its files; named snapshots as templates | No copy or snapshot endpoint; new codespaces start from a repo, branch, pull request or prebuild |
| Starting point | Named snapshots (templates), shareable by code; no Dockerfile builds | Dev container config in the repository, with prebuilds built by GitHub Actions |
| Driving it from code | API and SDK to create, fork, stop and run commands, on every plan | REST API and GitHub CLI to create, start, stop and delete; commands run over SSH |
| Coding agents | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API | GitHub Copilot as a VS Code extension; other agents you install and run yourself |
| Keeping keys out of the sandbox | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register; switch a credential to another account when credits run out | Secrets are copied into the codespace as environment variables |
| Reaching the sandbox | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; dedicated IPv6 or IPv4 | A URL per forwarded port, private, organization or public; SSH and CLI tunnels to your own machine; no public IP |
| Outbound internet | Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist | Open internet; GitHub says there is no way to restrict it |
| Regions | EU only: Germany, Finland, France | US East, US West, Europe West and Southeast Asia |
| 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 | GitHub Codespaces |
|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | No |
| Root | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | Yes | Not published |
| 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 | 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 | Yes |
| 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 | No |
| Arm64 | No | No |
| Self-hosting | No | No |
| BYOC | No | No |
| Open source | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Yes | Not published |
| Spend limits | Yes | Yes |
| 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 GitHub Codespaces: it was not in the public benchmark runs we use. 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 dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) hosts.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. GitHub Codespaces 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 | GitHub Codespaces, 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 | $51 · Personal account: GitHub Free |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $26 · $20/mo | $270 · Personal account: GitHub Free · 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 | $3,019 · Personal account: GitHub Free |
| 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 | $850 · Personal account: GitHub Free · 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 | $1,889 · Personal account: GitHub Free · 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.
GitHub Codespaces: Codespaces bills $0.09 per core-hour for the whole time a codespace is active, used or not, until it is stopped or times out, plus $0.07 per GB-month for storage while it exists, stopped too. There is no 4-core machine with 8 GB, so a 4 vCPU / 8 GB job is priced on the 4-core 16 GB machine; personal accounts get a free monthly quota and organizations do not.
Limits in those scenarios
Every codespace stops after 12 hours at most and after 30 idle minutes by default, so it does not fit the always-on scenario: its price there assumes a script that restarts it, and running processes end at each stop. GitHub says there are limits on how many codespaces you can create and run at once but does not publish them, so 300 user sandboxes and 1,000 short jobs show as not confirmed, and 50 agents are likely but not certain. 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 | GitHub Codespaces |
|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays | None that bite | 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 GitHub Codespaces when
your developers want a ready VS Code environment for a GitHub repository, opened from a branch or pull request, in the US, EU or Asia.
- Built into GitHub. Useful if your team lives on GitHub: open a codespace from any repo, branch or pull request, with the dev container already set up.
- Free hours for personal accounts. Useful for occasional personal work: a GitHub Free account includes 120 core-hours and 15 GB-month of storage each month.
- Regions in the US and Asia. Useful if your developers sit in the US or Asia: codespaces run in US East, US West, Europe West and Southeast Asia.
Use boat when
your code starts and drives agents that work for hours or days: full VMs with /dev/kvm, a desktop and open ports, built-in coding agents with keys kept outside, and machines that keep their work and fork while running.
- Machines that keep running and keep their work. An agent left on a long task on Codespaces is stopped at 12 hours and its processes end, so you need a script that restarts it and resumes the job. Every parallel attempt starts again from the repository.
- A full VM with /dev/kvm and a desktop. Android emulators and microVMs need /dev/kvm, computer-use agents need a screen, and other services need raw TCP. On Codespaces an agent doing that work has none of the three.
- Coding agents you drive from outside. On Codespaces you write the code that starts, prompts and watches each agent over SSH, and an API key in an environment variable can be read by any code the agent runs.
Questions people ask
Is boat cheaper than GitHub Codespaces?
In most scenarios we priced, yes: one coding agent on workdays is $20 a month on boat against $51, and one agent running all month is $26 against $270, though Codespaces only gets there with a restart every 12 hours. 50 agents in parallel come to $317 against $3,019, and 300 user sandboxes to $200 against $850. For 1,000 short jobs at once, boat lands at $2,000 and Codespaces at $1,889, and neither fits without higher limits.
Can I run an AI agent in GitHub Codespaces 24/7?
Not without restarts. A codespace has a maximum lifetime of 12 hours, even while you use it, and stops after 30 idle minutes by default if nothing types or prints to a terminal. A boat sandbox runs until you stop it, with no session cap on paid plans.
Can I run Claude Code in GitHub Codespaces?
Yes, you can install it yourself and run it in the terminal, with your API key as a Codespaces secret, which arrives as an environment variable. boat ships Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and others preinstalled, keeps the real keys outside the sandbox, and gives you one API to prompt, steer and watch them.
Does Codespaces support Docker and nested virtualization?
Docker works inside a codespace through dev container features, and you have sudo. GitHub does not document /dev/kvm, so Android emulators and microVMs that need it are not a supported setup. Every boat machine has Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm.
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. Codespaces runs in US East, US West, Europe West and Southeast Asia, and you pick the region when you create one.
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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