boat vs Lightpanda
Lightpanda is a new headless browser written in Zig, and Lightpanda Cloud hosts it for you over CDP, MCP and an HTTP API. boat gives each agent a full Linux VM with root, Docker and a disk that persists, plus Chromium on a 60fps desktop 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 inside it. A Lightpanda Cloud session gives your code a browser through a token and nothing else: no shell, no files, no ports.
A browser that draws, on a desktop agents can see
boat runs Chromium on a Linux desktop streamed at 60fps, so screenshots are the real page and an agent can click by sight in any app. Lightpanda has no rendering engine on purpose: element positions are simulated and screenshots are a placeholder image.
Runs as long as the task, keeps its disk
A boat sandbox has no session cap on paid plans, and its disk persists with snapshots every minute and on stop, so a stopped sandbox costs nothing and comes back with its files. A Lightpanda CDP connection closes after 15 minutes, and its cookies and storage go with it.
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
Lightpanda
Lightpanda calls itself the first browser for machines, not humans: a headless browser built from scratch in Zig, with a hosted cloud version.
Lightpanda runs pages with the V8 JavaScript engine against an in-memory DOM but has no rendering engine, so it never draws a page and screenshots come back as a placeholder. Lightpanda Cloud hosts that engine: you connect Puppeteer, Playwright or chromedp to a WebSocket URL with a token, or use its MCP server or an HTTP API that returns a page as HTML or Markdown. It is a browser product, not a general sandbox: you get a browser session, not a shell or a 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 | Lightpanda: 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 Lightpanda session is only a browser, so builds and tests fit boat. | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month | 105th of 367, with limits $959 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An assistant that lives on its machine all month cannot hold a Lightpanda CDP session past 15 minutes; boat has no session cap on paid plans. | 5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month | 230th of 366, with limits $2,915 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 | 249th of 345, with limits $257 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 | 357th of 361, with limits $818 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 | 251st of 360, with limits $3,973 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 | 346th of 364, with limits $315 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 | 226th of 377, with limits $91 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB A dev box has to keep its files and processes, and nothing in a Lightpanda session lasts after it closes. | 18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month | 230th of 368, with limits $53 a month |
| Computer-use agents 50 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 20,000 sessions of 15 min a month Computer use needs real pixels, and Lightpanda draws none, so screenshots are a placeholder; boat streams a 60fps desktop an agent can see and click. | 6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month | 125th of 369, with limits $283 a month |
| Browser-use agents 50 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 10 min a month Both fit simple page work; Lightpanda gives a light headless engine over CDP, while boat gives real Chromium on a full VM where the same agent can also run code. | 7th cheapest of 367 $200 a month | 67th of 367, with limits $283 a month |
| Scraping & bots (startup scale) 50 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 100,000 sessions of 3 min a month Lightpanda is built for crawling: a small, fast engine and an HTTP API that returns a page as Markdown in one call, though a CDP session closes after 15 minutes. | 6th cheapest of 346 $90 a month | 96th of 346, with limits $385 a month |
| Mass scraping & bots (undetectable) 1,000 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 3,000,000 sessions of 2 min a month Both use datacenter IPs by default; Lightpanda adds a rotating shared datacenter pool with country choice and lets you bring your own proxy. | 71st of 338, with limits $1,800 a month | 196th of 338, with limits $7,795 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 | 192nd of 360, with limits $185 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 | Lightpanda |
|---|---|---|
| Kind of product | A full Linux VM per sandbox, with a desktop and Chromium inside | A hosted headless browser session, reached over CDP, MCP or an HTTP API |
| Isolation | Full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts | Not published for browser sessions; playground scripts run in an isolated container |
| What the agent can touch | The whole machine: root, SSH, any package, any process | The browser only, through a token; no shell, SSH or files |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine | Not offered in a session; you can run the Lightpanda Docker image on your own machines |
| Browser engine | Chromium, with real layout and pixels | Own Zig engine with V8 and no rendering; Chrome is offered for debugging only |
| Screenshots and computer use | 60fps desktop stream, computer use on any app, embeddable in your app | No graphics; Page.captureScreenshot returns a placeholder image |
| Session length | No cap on paid plans; you set the time to live | CDP connection closes after 15 minutes; MCP closes after 5 idle minutes |
| Files after a session | The disk persists, with snapshots every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing | Cookies and storage live in the session only; no disk |
| Fork | Fork a running sandbox with its disk | No fork; each connection opens a fresh browser |
| Reaching the machine | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; own IP | Fixed regional WebSocket endpoints; no ports to host on |
| Agents | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API | Built-in browsing agent runs locally only; the cloud offers an MCP server for your own agent |
| 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 | Not offered; site logins come from your own script |
| Outbound IPs | Datacenter IPs; bring your own proxy | One shared datacenter IP by default, a rotating pool with country choice, or your own proxy |
| Self-hosting and regions | Hosted only, EU only (Germany, Finland and France) | AGPL-3.0 engine you can run yourself; cloud in west Europe and west US |
| 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 | Lightpanda |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | No |
| Browser | Yes | Yes |
| Computer-use API | Yes | No |
| SSH | Yes | No |
| 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 | Not published |
| ≥24 h sessions | Yes | No |
| 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 | Yes |
| Self-hosting | No | Yes |
| BYOC | No | Yes |
| Open source | No | Yes |
| Scoped API keys | Yes | Not published |
| Spend limits | Yes | Not published |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Yes | No |
| Audit logs | No | Not published |
| SSO | No | No |
| SOC 2 | No | No |
| HIPAA | No | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | No |
| Zero data retention | Yes | Not published |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement. Lightpanda was not in StarSling's public CPU benchmark, and it does not publish the vCPU or RAM behind a cloud session, so there is no number to set against boat's 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. Lightpanda's own benchmark compares its engine with headless Chrome, which measures a browser, not a machine.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Lightpanda 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 | Lightpanda, 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 | $19 · Builder · with limits |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $26 · $20/mo | $53 · Builder · 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 | $629 · Builder · 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 | $355 · Builder · 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 | $791 · Builder · 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.
Lightpanda: Lightpanda bills browser hours, the time sessions stay open, metered by the second. Explorer is free with 10 hours a month, and Builder is $19 a month with 300 hours, then $0.08 an hour; opening more sessions than your plan allows returns HTTP 429.
Limits in those scenarios
The Lightpanda prices in the table are for a browser session with no published size and no disk, so none of them is a 4 vCPU / 8 GB machine, and that is why no scenario fits. The 15-minute CDP limit means the workday and always-on agents would have to reconnect again and again. Builder allows 30 sessions at once, so 50 agents, sandboxes for your users and 1,000 short jobs need Enterprise through sales. 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 | Lightpanda |
|---|---|---|
| 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 Lightpanda when
your agent only needs to read the web fast: crawling many pages to HTML or Markdown with a light engine, a browser you can run on your own machines under AGPL, or a west US endpoint.
- A light, fast engine built for crawling. Useful for crawling many plain pages: by its own benchmark the engine uses far less memory and time than headless Chrome.
- Open source, on your own machines. Useful if browsing must stay inside your network: the engine is AGPL-3.0 and runs from one binary or a Docker image.
- US region and a rotating proxy pool. Useful for browsing near US sites or spreading requests: a west US endpoint and a rotating datacenter pool with country choice.
Use boat when
your agent browses and also works: real Chromium on a desktop it can see, plus installs, builds, Docker and dev servers on a full VM that keeps its disk and runs as long as the task takes.
- A whole machine, not only a browser. An agent that reads a page and then has to clone a repo, run tests or start a dev server needs a second provider next to Lightpanda, and has to move data between the two.
- A browser that draws, on a desktop agents can see. A vision model that works from screenshots gets nothing to look at from Lightpanda, and sites that depend on real layout can behave differently, so those steps need a full browser elsewhere.
- Runs as long as the task, keeps its disk. A browsing job longer than 15 minutes on Lightpanda has to be split into sessions, and your code has to carry logins and progress from one to the next.
Questions people ask
Is boat cheaper than Lightpanda?
The table sets a 4 vCPU / 8 GB boat VM against a Lightpanda browser session that has no disk, so it is not like for like. One coding agent on workdays is $20 a month on boat against $19, one agent that never stops is $26 against $53, and 50 agents in parallel are $317 against $629. For 1,000 short jobs at once neither fits, and Lightpanda is lower there at $791 against $2,000.
Can Lightpanda take screenshots?
Not real ones. Lightpanda has no rendering engine, so Page.captureScreenshot returns a placeholder image and element positions are simulated. Its docs say to use a full browser when you need actual pixels; boat runs Chromium on a 60fps desktop.
How long can a Lightpanda Cloud session run?
A CDP connection closes after 15 minutes whatever your plan, and an MCP session closes after 5 minutes without a request. Lightpanda's docs suggest splitting long jobs across sessions. boat has no session cap on paid plans and keeps the disk when you stop.
Can Lightpanda Cloud run Docker or a shell?
No. A hosted session gives you a browser over CDP, MCP or the HTTP API, not a machine. You can run the open source Lightpanda binary or Docker image on your own server, or on a boat sandbox, which has root, SSH, Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm.
Can I use boat and Lightpanda together?
Yes. An agent on a boat sandbox can connect to Lightpanda Cloud over WebSocket for fast crawling, or run the Lightpanda binary inside the VM, and keep Chromium on the desktop for pages that need real pixels.
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.
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