boat vs Hostinger VPS
Hostinger VPS is web hosting's take on a server: you rent a KVM machine for months at a time and set it up yourself. boat starts sandbox VMs from an API in seconds, saves them every minute, and ships a desktop and coding agents you drive from outside.
Where boat stands out
Machines from an API, saved every minute
boat starts a sandbox from the API in seconds, snapshots it every minute and on stop, and can fork a running one into copies. A stopped sandbox keeps its disk. On Hostinger each new server is a purchase on a monthly or longer term, and its one manual snapshot is deleted after a day.
Coding agents you drive from outside
boat ships Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and other agents in every sandbox, and one API prompts them, steers them mid-task and streams their events. Its credentials proxy keeps real AI keys out of the sandbox. On a Hostinger VPS you install the agents, write the glue to run them over SSH, and store keys on the server.
Nested virtualization and a real desktop
Every boat sandbox has /dev/kvm, Docker and systemd ready, and can show a 60fps desktop with Chromium for computer use. Hostinger's support page says nested virtualization is not supported on any VPS plan, and its desktop template is a VNC session with no computer-use tools.
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
Hostinger VPS
Hostinger is a web hosting company founded in 2004 in Kaunas, Lithuania, that sells websites, domains, email, VPS and GPU servers.
A Hostinger VPS is a KVM virtual machine on AMD EPYC hosts, with root, a dedicated IP, NVMe disk and a fixed size from KVM 1 to KVM 8. It is a VPS host, not a sandbox product: you rent each server for a term, from one month up to 24 months prepaid, then install and run your own software. It fits people who want one long-lived server, close to their users, managed from the same account as their domains and sites.
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 | Hostinger VPS: price rank |
|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month A software factory starts and stops many machines a day; boat does that by API in seconds, while each Hostinger server is a purchase rented for a full term. | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month | 149th of 367, with limits $1,299 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An assistant that lives on one machine fits both; on Hostinger you install the agent, keep its keys on the server and watch it yourself. | 5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month | 102nd of 366, with limits $450 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 | 157th of 345, with limits $649 a month |
| Sandboxes for your users 300 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 23 min a month Handing a fresh sandbox to each of your users needs fast starts, stops and forks; on Hostinger each one is a new server bought on a long term. | Cheapest of 361 $209 a month | 168th of 361, with limits $2,697 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 | 280th of 360, with limits $8,990 a month |
| Agent evals 250 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 15,000 sessions of 20 min a month Agent evals need many clean copies of the same machine; boat forks a running sandbox, while Hostinger can only restore a snapshot onto the same server. | 10th cheapest of 364 $200 a month | 203rd of 364, with limits $3,248 a month |
| CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month Both run CI jobs on real VMs; boat bills only while a job runs, while a Hostinger runner is rented whether it is busy or not. | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month | 132nd cheapest of 377 $2,960 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Both fit one dev box that runs all month; Hostinger gives a bigger disk and a dedicated IP, while boat adds saved state every minute and a desktop. | 18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month | 34th cheapest of 368 $43 a month |
| Computer-use agents 50 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 20,000 sessions of 15 min a month boat streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium for computer use; Hostinger has an Ubuntu desktop template over VNC, but no browser or computer-use tools. | 6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month | 200th of 369, with limits $650 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 | 252nd of 367, with limits $450 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 | 256th of 346, with limits $325 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 | 181st of 338, with limits $6,490 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 | 332nd of 360, with limits $1,798 a month |
| GPU eval jobs 10 at once · 8 vCPU / 32 GB · 500 sessions of 30 min a month Hostinger rents GPUs by the hour, from RTX 4090 to B200; boat has no GPUs. | Can't run it | 84th of 98, with limits $2,250 a month |
| 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 | Hostinger VPS |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Sandbox VMs for agents, started and stopped from an API | Rented KVM servers you set up and run yourself |
| Isolation | Full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts | KVM VM on AMD EPYC hosts |
| Starting a machine | A new sandbox from the API in seconds, billed per second | Each new VPS is a purchase on a 1 to 24-month term, also through the API |
| Nested virtualization | /dev/kvm on every machine | Not supported on any VPS plan |
| Docker, root and systemd | Ready on every machine | Full root; Docker templates and a Docker Manager |
| Saved state | Snapshots every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing | One manual snapshot, kept one day, restored in place; free weekly backups |
| Fork and templates | Fork a running sandbox; named snapshots as templates | No clone; machines start from Hostinger's OS and app templates |
| Desktop and computer use | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream | Ubuntu desktop template over VNC on KVM 2 and up; no computer-use tools |
| Coding agents | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API | None preinstalled; its Claude Code hosting page sells the same VPS for you to set up |
| Keeping keys out of the machine | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register | None; secrets live on the server |
| Reaching the machine | HTTPS URLs with TLS for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; dedicated IPv6 or IPv4 | Dedicated IPv4 and IPv6, all ports; TLS is yours to set up with Traefik or Certbot |
| AI assistant access | REST API and CLI | MCP server with 372 tools over the whole Hostinger API |
| GPUs | None | GPU servers by the hour: RTX 4090, RTX 5090, RTX PRO 6000, L40S, A100 and B200 |
| Regions | EU only: Germany, Finland, France | Europe, the US, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brazil |
| Compliance and transparency | SOC 2 is in progress. We're open about where we stand: live status and data retention policy. | No SOC 2 report published |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | boat | Hostinger VPS |
|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | No |
| Root | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | Yes | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | Yes | Yes |
| Browser | Yes | No |
| Computer-use API | Yes | No |
| SSH | Yes | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes |
| 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 | 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 | 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 | Yes |
| 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 | No |
| Audit logs | No | Not published |
| SSO | No | Yes |
| SOC 2 | No | No |
| HIPAA | No | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Yes | Not published |
Performance
Hostinger VPS is not in the hpc-sandbox-benchmarks run, so there is no comparable CPU measurement for it. boat was measured on that Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, and the table shows its score. Hostinger publishes a CPU credit system: a VPS runs at full speed for about three hours of heavy load, then drops to a lower limit until credits rebuild; we don't guess how it would score.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Hostinger VPS 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 | Hostinger VPS, 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 | $29 · Usage account · with limits |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $26 · $20/mo | $29 · Usage account · 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 | $1,450 · Usage account · 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 | $4,497 · Usage account · 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 | $14,990 · Usage account · 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.
Hostinger VPS: Hostinger charges a flat monthly rent per server, busy or idle, and the lowest rates need 24 months paid upfront; shorter terms cost more per month. The prices here use the regular 24-month rate spread over each month, so every machine you need at the same time is a full rental.
Limits in those scenarios
The Hostinger column assumes a 24-month prepaid term, which is why every scenario is marked as not fitting: you pay two years per machine before it starts. Hostinger publishes no limit on how many servers one account can run, and each new server is a purchase through an API capped at 90 requests per minute, so 300 user sandboxes or 1,000 short jobs mean buying that many long-term servers. Heavy CPU use for more than about three hours drains Hostinger's CPU credits and slows the machine. On boat, concurrency goes from 100 to 2,000 by plan, but start-rate limits mean even the top plan can't launch 1,000 short jobs at once without queueing.
| Scenario | boat | Hostinger VPS |
|---|---|---|
| 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 Hostinger VPS when
you want one long-lived server outside Europe, an hourly GPU, or a server in the same account as your domains and websites.
- Regions around the world. Useful if your users are far from Europe: Hostinger has servers in the US, Asia and South America.
- GPUs by the hour. Useful for model inference or training: Hostinger rents GPUs by the hour, from RTX 4090 to B200.
- Hosting, domains and an MCP server in one account. Useful when an agent manages a whole website: domains, DNS, email and servers sit behind one API and MCP server.
Use boat when
agents start, stop and fork machines all day: each sandbox is a full VM from an API in seconds, saved every minute, with /dev/kvm, a desktop and coding agents you drive from outside.
- Machines from an API, saved every minute. Agents wreck installs and need fresh machines all day. On Hostinger you buy a server for each one, remember to snapshot by hand, and can't split one good machine into ten for parallel tries.
- Coding agents you drive from outside. On a plain VPS the agent's API keys sit on a disk the agent can read and leak. You also build and maintain the code that starts, prompts and watches each agent yourself.
- Nested virtualization and a real desktop. Android emulators, Firecracker and VM image builds need /dev/kvm, so they cannot run on a Hostinger VPS at all. Computer-use agents need a screen they can see and click through an API.
Questions people ask
Is boat cheaper than Hostinger VPS?
Against Hostinger's regular 24-month rate, boat costs less in all five scenarios on this page. For one agent the two are close, but 50 agents in parallel come to $317 on boat against $1,450, and 300 sandboxes for your users to $200 on boat against $4,497. Hostinger's intro prices are lower for the first term, then renew at the regular rate, and neither fits 1,000 short jobs at once.
Does Hostinger VPS have hourly billing?
Not for VPS. Hostinger rents each server by the month on 1, 12 or 24-month terms, and stopping it does not lower the bill. Its separate GPU hosting is billed per started hour. boat bills per second while a sandbox runs, and a stopped one costs nothing.
Can I run Claude Code on a Hostinger VPS?
Yes, you get root and can install it yourself, then run it over SSH with your API key on the server. boat preinstalls Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and others, drives them through an API, and keeps real keys out of the sandbox with its credentials proxy.
Does Hostinger VPS support nested virtualization?
No. Hostinger's support page says nested virtualization is not supported on its VPS plans, so Android emulators and VMs that need a hypervisor can't run there. Every boat sandbox has /dev/kvm.
Where do boat and Hostinger run?
boat runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France, with EU data residency. Hostinger has data centers in France, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands, the UK, the US, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brazil.
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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