boat vs IBM Cloud VPC
IBM Cloud VPC rents plain Linux and Windows virtual servers in regions around the world, and you build everything around them. boat gives each agent a full VM that already has Docker, /dev/kvm, forks of running machines and coding agents you drive by API.
Where boat stands out
Docker and /dev/kvm on every machine
Every boat sandbox is a full VM with root, systemd, Docker and nested virtualization, so /dev/kvm is there for Android emulators, Firecracker or QEMU. IBM's docs say nested virtualization is not supported on its virtual servers and suggest an architecture that does not need it.
Coding agents you drive from outside
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 credentials proxy keeps real AI keys out of the machine and can switch to another account when one runs out of credits. An IBM server gives you SSH and the API to manage servers, and the rest is code you write.
Fork a running machine, keep its files for free
boat can fork a sandbox while it runs, snapshots the disk every minute and on stop, and charges nothing while a sandbox is stopped. On IBM a copy starts from a volume snapshot or image and boots cold, and snapshots are taken by hand, by API or on a backup schedule.
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
IBM Cloud VPC
IBM Cloud VPC is IBM's general-purpose cloud for virtual servers: you rent Linux or Windows machines inside your own virtual private network.
It is a hyperscaler IaaS product, not a sandbox API. Each virtual server instance is a full VM with root and SSH, picked from balanced, compute, memory, Flex and GPU profiles, and networking, disks, images, firewalls and any agent tooling are pieces you set up yourself. It suits teams that already run on IBM Cloud and want raw VMs they control end to end.
- Nested virtualization
- Not supported on virtual server instances
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 | IBM Cloud VPC: price rank |
|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month IBM can host a software factory, but without nested virtualization there are no emulators or microVMs inside, and you build the images, HTTPS and agent driver yourself. | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month | 108th of 367, with limits $966 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An always-on assistant needs a machine that keeps working at full speed; the IBM figure uses a Flex server that guarantees only a quarter of each vCPU. | 5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month | 130th of 366, with limits $874 a month |
| Code interpreter bursts 100 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 200,000 sessions of 1 min a month IBM fits short code runs better here: a small burstable Flex server costs little when it sits mostly idle, and there is no start limit beyond your vCPU quota. | 186th of 345, with limits $2,000 a month | 55th of 345, with limits $32 a month |
| Sandboxes for your users 300 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 23 min a month Giving each user a VM on IBM means building your own sandbox layer (URLs, auth, cleanup), and 300 servers of 2 vCPU need a quota raise past 200 vCPU per region. | Cheapest of 361 $209 a month | 57th of 361, with limits $428 a month |
| RL rollouts 1,000 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 1,000,000 sessions of 3 min a month IBM's burstable Flex servers make RL fleets cheap if each rollout needs little CPU, once the vCPU quota is raised by support case. | 34th of 360, with limits $2,000 a month | 22nd of 360, with limits $1,130 a month |
| Agent evals 250 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 15,000 sessions of 20 min a month Both fit; IBM suits eval batches you already script with its CLI or Terraform, and boat lets you fork one prepared sandbox into many. | 10th cheapest of 364 $200 a month | 11th cheapest of 364 $230 a month |
| CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month | 59th cheapest of 377 $438 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB | 18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month | 45th cheapest of 368 $57 a month |
| Computer-use agents 50 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 20,000 sessions of 15 min a month IBM servers have a VNC console for troubleshooting but no desktop stream or computer-use API; on boat a 60fps desktop and Chromium come with every machine. | 6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month | 114th of 369, with limits $253 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 | 179th of 367, with limits $140 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 | 176th of 346, with limits $90 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 | 53rd of 338, with limits $1,349 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 | 124th of 360, with limits $69 a month |
| GPU eval jobs 10 at once · 8 vCPU / 32 GB · 500 sessions of 30 min a month Only IBM fits: it rents Nvidia L4, L40S, H100 and H200 and Intel Gaudi 3 servers, and boat has no GPUs. | Can't run it | 31st cheapest of 98 $3,080 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
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | boat | IBM Cloud VPC |
|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | No |
| Root | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | Yes | Yes |
| 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 | 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 | Yes |
| 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 | Yes |
| Windows | No | Yes |
| 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 | Yes |
| HIPAA | No | Yes |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Yes | Not published |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for IBM Cloud VPC: the public sandbox benchmark we use did not include it. 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. IBM's speed depends on the profile you pick, and a Flex server's guaranteed share depends on its CPU baseline.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. IBM Cloud VPC 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 | IBM Cloud VPC, 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 | $18 · Usage account · with limits |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $26 · $20/mo | $57 · 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 | $673 · 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 | $197 · 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 | $344 · 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.
IBM Cloud VPC: IBM bills each server per second while it runs, with no plan fee; boot volumes, floating IPs and egress are billed on top, and storage keeps billing while a server is stopped. The IBM figures in the table use burstable Flex servers with a 25% CPU baseline, the cheapest fit, priced at US list rates.
Limits in those scenarios
Every IBM figure in the table uses a burstable Flex server that guarantees 25% of each vCPU and can burst to 50% only when the host has spare time, so a busy agent runs well below the full machine; that is why none of the IBM rows fit as asked. IBM also caps each region at 200 vCPU by default, which 50 agents of 4 vCPU use up exactly, and stopped servers still count. On boat the 1,000-job burst is held back by starts per minute and per day, even on the $2,000 plan.
| Scenario | boat | IBM Cloud VPC |
|---|---|---|
| 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 IBM Cloud VPC when
you need GPUs, Windows or a region outside the EU, or your company already runs on IBM Cloud and wants raw VMs it controls end to end.
- GPUs and Windows. Useful if agents train or test models, or need Windows: IBM rents Nvidia and Gaudi GPU servers and Windows Server images.
- Regions worldwide and network rules. Useful if data must stay in the Americas, Japan, Australia or India, or if traffic must follow IP rules you set.
- Low-cost burstable servers. Useful for agents that mostly wait: Flex servers with a small CPU baseline cost far less than full-rate ones.
Use boat when
you want agents to work in full VMs right away: Docker and /dev/kvm on every machine, forks of running sandboxes, a desktop, HTTPS URLs and coding agents you drive by API, without building that layer on top of raw servers.
- Docker and /dev/kvm on every machine. An agent that tests Android apps or runs microVMs needs /dev/kvm. IBM virtual servers do not offer it at all, so that work has to move to a different IBM product with its own setup and billing.
- Coding agents you drive from outside. On IBM you build and maintain the layer that installs agents, sends prompts, streams events and stores keys. With Secrets Manager the key still lands inside the server, where code the agent writes can read it.
- Fork a running machine, keep its files for free. Agents that try five fixes in parallel need five copies of the same live machine. On IBM each copy means snapshotting, creating and booting a server, and stopped servers still bill their volumes and count toward your quota.
Questions people ask
Is boat cheaper than IBM Cloud VPC?
It depends on the job. One agent that never stops comes to $26 a month on boat and $57 on IBM, and 50 agents in parallel come to $317 versus $673. For one agent on workdays, sandboxes for your users and 1,000 short jobs at once, IBM comes out about the same or lower, but every IBM figure uses servers that guarantee only a quarter of each vCPU.
Does IBM Cloud VPC support nested virtualization?
No. IBM's docs say nested virtualization is not supported on virtual server instances. Every boat sandbox has /dev/kvm, so Android emulators, Firecracker and QEMU run inside it.
Can I use IBM Cloud virtual servers as sandboxes for AI agents?
Yes, each server is a full VM with its own kernel, so it isolates code well. What it does not give you is the sandbox layer: fast forks, HTTPS preview URLs, a desktop stream, a keys proxy and an API to drive coding agents. On boat those come with every sandbox.
Does boat have GPUs or Windows like IBM Cloud?
No. boat runs Linux VMs on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts, with no GPUs and no Windows guests, and has Wine docs for Windows apps. If you need GPUs or Windows Server, IBM has both.
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. IBM Cloud VPC runs in 13 regions, including Frankfurt, London and Madrid in Europe.
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. IBM Cloud lists SOC 2 among its compliance programs.
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