boat vs Gologin
Gologin Cloud Browser runs its antidetect Chromium, called Orbita, in the cloud, with a saved fingerprint, cookies and proxy per profile, driven from Puppeteer or Playwright. boat gives each agent a full Linux VM with root, Docker and a disk that persists, plus a 60fps desktop with Chromium and coding agents you drive from outside.
Where boat stands out
A whole machine, not only a browser
Every boat sandbox is a full VM with root, SSH, systemd, Docker and nested virtualization, on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts, with Chromium on a desktop inside it. A Gologin cloud session gives your code an Orbita browser in a container, and nothing else on the machine.
A disk that stays, and many copies at once
A boat sandbox keeps its whole disk, with snapshots every minute and on stop, and you can fork a running sandbox. Paid plans run 100 sandboxes at once or more. A Gologin profile keeps browser data, and its plans include 1 to 3 parallel sessions.
Coding agents you drive from outside, keys kept outside
boat ships Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and other agents in each sandbox, and you prompt, steer and follow them through one API with an event stream. boat's credentials proxy keeps real API keys outside the sandbox for model providers and any HTTPS API. Gologin's MCP server and skills let your own agent drive its browsers.
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
Gologin
Gologin is an antidetect browser company, and Cloud Browser is its hosted version: Gologin profiles running in Gologin's cloud.
Each profile is a copy of Orbita, a modified Chromium, with its own fingerprint, cookies, storage and proxy, and these persist between runs. You connect Puppeteer or Playwright to one URL with your token and a profile id, and an MCP server and Claude Code skills let an outside agent manage profiles and proxies. It is a browser product, not a general sandbox: you get a browser, not a shell on the machine, so this page compares where the two overlap, which is agents that browse.
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 | Gologin: price rank |
|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month A coding agent needs a shell, Docker and a disk, and a Gologin session gives a browser only, so builds and tests fit boat. | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month | 93rd of 367, with limits $844 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An assistant that lives on its machine all month keeps only a browser profile between Gologin sessions; on boat it keeps its whole disk and its processes. | 5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month | 222nd of 366, with limits $2,555 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 | 243rd of 345, with limits $229 a month |
| Sandboxes for your users 300 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 23 min a month | Cheapest of 361 $209 a month | 225th of 361, with limits $720 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 | 248th of 360, with limits $3,481 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 | 240th of 364, with limits $280 a month |
| CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month CI jobs need a shell, Docker and often /dev/kvm, which boat has and a browser session does not. | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month | 222nd of 377, with limits $84 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB A dev box has to keep its files and tools, and a Gologin profile saves browser data such as cookies and storage, so this fits boat. | 18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month | 227th of 368, with limits $51 a month |
| Computer-use agents 50 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 20,000 sessions of 15 min a month Gologin offers Live View of a browser for debugging, while boat streams a 60fps Linux desktop where an agent can use any app. | 6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month | 43rd of 369, with limits $252 a month |
| Browser-use agents 50 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 10 min a month Both fit: Gologin gives an outside agent a fingerprinted browser over CDP, and boat gives Chromium on a full VM where the same agent can also run code. | 7th cheapest of 367 $200 a month | 64th of 367, with limits $252 a month |
| Scraping & bots (startup scale) 50 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 100,000 sessions of 3 min a month Both fit at startup scale; Gologin adds a saved fingerprint and proxy per profile, while boat runs the scraper, its queue and its database on one machine. | 6th cheapest of 346 $90 a month | 95th of 346, with limits $341 a month |
| Mass scraping & bots (undetectable) 1,000 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 3,000,000 sessions of 2 min a month Gologin is built for many accounts on sites that check fingerprints, with residential and mobile IPs in 195+ countries, while boat uses datacenter IPs. | 71st of 338, with limits $1,800 a month | 187th of 338, with limits $6,825 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 | 183rd of 360, with limits $166 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 | Gologin |
|---|---|---|
| Kind of product | A full Linux VM per sandbox, with a desktop and Chromium inside | Hosted Orbita (modified Chromium) profiles reached over one connect URL from Puppeteer or Playwright |
| Isolation | Full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts | Isolated profiles; an error page names a cloud container per session |
| What the agent can touch | The whole machine: root, SSH, any package, any process | The browser only; no shell, SSH or root on the machine |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine | Not offered: a session is a browser, not a machine |
| What stays after a session | The whole disk, with snapshots every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing | The profile: fingerprint, cookies, local storage and settings |
| Fork and copies | Fork a running sandbox with its disk | Clone stored profiles, many at once, by API |
| Parallel sessions | 100 at once on the $20 plan, up to 2,000 on the top plan | 1 to 3 included, $2 a month per extra session, custom plans from 4 |
| Watching the agent | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use on any app, embeddable stream | Live View, a streaming web page of the browser for debugging |
| Fingerprints and IPs | Datacenter IPs and stock Chromium | A saved fingerprint per profile; residential, mobile, datacenter and ISP IPs in 195+ countries |
| Reaching the machine | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; own IP | Gologin's connect and Live View URLs; no ports to host a service on |
| Agents | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API | MCP server, Claude Code skills and CLIs for an agent that runs on your side |
| 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 | Logins persist in profile cookies; API keys stay in your own code |
| Data location | EU only (Germany, Finland and France), with zero data retention | No region choice published; data may be processed in the USA, EU or other countries |
| 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 | Gologin |
|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | No |
| Docker inside | Yes | No |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | No |
| Root | Yes | Not published |
| Systemd | Yes | Not published |
| Desktop GUI | Yes | Yes |
| Browser | Yes | Yes |
| Computer-use API | Yes | Yes |
| SSH | Yes | No |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | Yes | No |
| Automatic snapshots | Yes | Yes |
| Fork/clone | Yes | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | Yes | No |
| Memory fork | No | No |
| Custom image (Docker or snapshot) | Yes | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | Yes | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | No | Yes |
| Wake on request | No | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | Yes | No |
| Raw TCP inbound | Yes | Not published |
| 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 | Yes |
| 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 | Not published |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | No | Yes |
| SSO | No | Yes |
| SOC 2 | No | Yes |
| HIPAA | No | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | No |
| Zero data retention | Yes | Not published |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement. Gologin Cloud Browser was not in StarSling's public CPU benchmark, and it does not publish the vCPU or RAM behind a browser hour, so there is no number to set against boat's 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Gologin 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 | Gologin, 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 | $14 · Enterprise · with limits |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $26 · $20/mo | $51 · Enterprise · 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 | $554 · Enterprise · 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 | $315 · Enterprise · 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 | $696 · Enterprise · 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.
Gologin: Gologin sells browser hours: $4.50, $8 or $14 a month include 50, 100 or 200 hours and 1, 2 or 3 parallel sessions, with extra hours at $0.09 to $0.07 and extra sessions at $2 a month each. Proxy traffic beyond the allowance costs $1 per GB, and Gologin's docs still show older rates, so get a quote for large use.
Limits in those scenarios
The Gologin prices in the table are for a browser session with no published size and no disk beyond the browser profile, so none of them is a 4 vCPU / 8 GB machine, and that is why no scenario fits. Concurrency is the hard limit: the top self-serve plan includes 3 parallel sessions, so 50 agents, sandboxes for your users and 1,000 short jobs at once all need extra session slots or a custom plan. On boat, the 1,000-job burst is the one that does not fit: bursts above 90 starts a minute are queued, and it needs more starts per day than the top plan allows.
| Scenario | boat | Gologin |
|---|---|---|
| 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 Gologin when
your agent only needs the web and has to run many accounts that each keep their own fingerprint, cookies and residential or mobile IP, or when your team already manages profiles in the Gologin app.
- Many accounts with their own fingerprints. Useful for running many logged-in accounts that each need their own fingerprint, cookies and IP on sites that check.
- Cheap light browsing hours. Useful for a few browsers a day: plans start at $4.50 a month with 50 browser hours and one session.
- One profile set across desktop and cloud. Useful for teams already on the Gologin app: the same profiles run on a laptop or in the cloud.
Use boat when
your agent browses and also works: installs, builds, Docker and dev servers on a full VM that keeps its disk and can be forked, with many sessions at once and coding agents and a key proxy built in.
- A whole machine, not only a browser. An agent that reads a page and then has to clone a repo, run docker compose or start a dev server needs a second provider next to Gologin, and has to move files between the two.
- A disk that stays, and many copies at once. On Gologin, files and tools outside the browser profile are gone when the session stops, and 50 agents at once means buying 47 or more extra session slots or a custom plan.
- Coding agents you drive from outside, keys kept outside. With Gologin you write and host the agent loop yourself, on another machine, and the model keys it uses live in your own code.
Questions people ask
Is boat cheaper than Gologin?
For one light browser, no: one coding agent on workdays comes to $14 a month on Gologin against $20 on boat, though Gologin's is a browser with no published size. With more running, boat comes out lower: one agent that never stops is $26 against $51, and 50 agents in parallel are $317 against $554. For 1,000 short jobs at once neither fits.
Can Gologin Cloud Browser run Docker or a shell?
No. A Gologin cloud session is an Orbita browser in a container that you reach from Puppeteer or Playwright, not a shell on the machine. Every boat sandbox has root, SSH, Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm.
Does boat have antidetect fingerprints like Gologin?
No. boat runs stock Chromium on datacenter IPs. For many accounts that each need their own fingerprint and residential or mobile IP, Gologin's profiles and proxies are built for that.
How many browsers can run at once on Gologin?
The paid plans include 1, 2 or 3 parallel sessions, extra sessions cost $2 a month each, and custom plans start at 4. boat runs 100 sandboxes at once on the $20 plan and up to 2,000 on the top plan.
Can I use boat and Gologin together?
Yes. An agent on a boat sandbox can connect to a Gologin profile over its connect URL with Puppeteer or Playwright, while its code, files and tools stay on the boat VM. That puts fingerprinted browsing on Gologin and the rest of the work on a machine that keeps its disk.
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. boat runs only in the EU, with a zero data retention option.
Start a sandbox
Install the CLI, then run boat new.
7-day free trial