boat vs Linode
A Linode is a plain Linux server on Akamai Cloud that you set up, run and pay for until you delete it. boat gives an agent a full VM too, with /dev/kvm, snapshots every minute, free stops, fork while running and coding agents already built in.
Where boat stands out
A disk saved every minute, and fork while running
boat saves a sandbox's disk every minute and when it stops, and a stopped sandbox costs nothing. You can fork a running sandbox in one call. A powered-off Linode is still billed, its backups are a paid add-on with one manual snapshot, and Akamai's docs say to power it off before you clone it.
Nested virtualization on every machine
Every boat sandbox has /dev/kvm, so an agent can run Android emulators, Firecracker or its own VMs inside, next to Docker and systemd. Linode staff say nested virtualization is not supported on Linodes because it does not work with live migration.
Coding agents and a desktop built in
Every boat sandbox has Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and other agents ready, and you drive them from outside with a prompt, steer and events API. It also streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium for computer use, and the credentials proxy keeps real AI keys out of the machine.
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
Linode
Linode is a general-purpose cloud, now sold as Akamai Cloud, and a Linode is one of its Linux virtual machines.
A Linode is a Linux VM you rent by size, with root, a public IP, local disk and, on older plans, a monthly transfer allowance. You pick a distribution, then install and run your own software on it, next to Akamai Cloud products like Kubernetes, block storage, NodeBalancers, VPCs and cloud firewalls. It is a server host, not an agent sandbox, so this page compares the two where they overlap: giving an agent its own Linux machine.
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 | Linode: price rank |
|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Both give a full Linux VM with root and Docker, but a Linode has no /dev/kvm for emulators and keeps billing when powered off, while boat comes with agents, snapshots and free stops. | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month | 145th of 367, with limits $1,292 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB A Linode can run an assistant around the clock, but you build the agent setup, the HTTPS endpoint and the backups yourself; boat has them built in. | 5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month | 164th of 366, with limits $1,200 a month |
| Code interpreter bursts 100 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 200,000 sessions of 1 min a month Both are a compromise here: Linode bills every run as at least a full hour, and boat's start limits queue big bursts. | 186th of 345, with limits $2,000 a month | 174th of 345, with limits $1,200 a month |
| Sandboxes for your users 300 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 23 min a month Linode bills each 10-minute user session as a full hour, and raising the number of machines on an account goes through a support ticket. | Cheapest of 361 $209 a month | 114th of 361, with limits $1,090 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 | 186th of 360, with limits $24,000 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 | 55th cheapest of 364 $1,080 a month |
| CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month Both run Docker builds on a full VM; on Linode you also run the runner software, the image updates and the clean-up between jobs. | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month | 137th cheapest of 377 $4,320 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Both fit a 24/7 dev box: a Linode is a classic always-on server, and a boat machine keeps its disk with snapshots every minute. | 18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month | 40th cheapest of 368 $48 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 and computer use; on a Linode you install a desktop yourself and reach it through a console. | 6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month | 272nd of 369, with limits $1,440 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 | 311th of 367, with limits $1,080 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 | 190th of 346, with limits $108 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 | 89th of 338, with limits $2,160 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 | 189th of 360, with limits $182 a month |
| GPU eval jobs 10 at once · 8 vCPU / 32 GB · 500 sessions of 30 min a month Only Linode fits: it rents Nvidia GPU instances by the hour, and boat has no GPUs. | Can't run it | 78th of 98, with limits $1,500 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 | Linode |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | No |
| Automatic snapshots | Yes | No |
| 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 | 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 | No |
| Arm64 | No | No |
| Self-hosting | No | No |
| BYOC | No | No |
| Open source | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Yes | Yes |
| Spend limits | Yes | No |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Yes | No |
| Audit logs | No | Yes |
| 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 Linode: it was not part of the public StarSling benchmark run where boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. Linode sells both shared and dedicated CPU plans, so results would depend on which plan you pick.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Linode 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 | Linode, 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 | $13 · Usage account |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $26 · $20/mo | $48 · Usage account |
| 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 | $634 · Usage account |
| 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 | $1,080 · Usage account |
| 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 | $7,200 · 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.
Linode: Each Linode size has an hourly price, rounded up to the next full hour, and billing runs from create to delete, including while it is powered off. Older plans stop at a monthly cap; G8 dedicated and GPU plans have no cap since July 2026, and backups and extra egress cost extra.
Limits in those scenarios
Because Linode rounds every instance up to a full hour, a 10-minute user session or a 3-minute job is billed as an hour, which is why the user sandboxes and the 1,000-job burst cost far more there. Linode publishes no fixed instance limit; a new account raises its limits by support ticket, and the burst runs on shared vCPUs that other tenants can slow. On boat the limit is a sandbox count (100 to 2,000 by plan) plus starts per minute, so 1,000 short jobs at once get queued and need more starts per day than the $2,000 plan allows. Neither fits that burst as priced.
| Scenario | boat | Linode |
|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays | None that bite | None that bite |
| One agent that never stops | None that bite | None that bite |
| 50 agents in parallel | None that bite | None that bite |
| Sandboxes for your users | None that bite | None that bite |
| 1,000 short jobs at once |
|
|
Which one should you use?
Use Linode when
you need GPUs, regions outside the EU, or a long-lived server that sits next to Kubernetes, block storage and firewall rules in one cloud.
- Regions around the world. Useful if your users are outside Europe: Linodes run in 33 regions across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia.
- GPUs. Useful if your agents train or serve models: Akamai Cloud rents Nvidia GPU instances by the hour.
- A whole cloud around the server. Useful if the agent's machine must sit next to Kubernetes, block storage, load balancers and firewall rules in one account.
Use boat when
you want each agent on its own full VM that is ready to work: /dev/kvm, coding agents, a desktop, HTTPS ports and minute-by-minute snapshots built in, and stops that cost nothing.
- A disk saved every minute, and fork while running. Agents sit idle for hours between tasks. On Linode you keep paying for the idle server, or script image, delete and rebuild yourself, and copying a busy agent means stopping it first.
- Nested virtualization on every machine. Agents that test mobile apps or build VM images need hardware virtualization. On a Linode they fall back to slow software emulation, or you move that work to another provider.
- Coding agents and a desktop built in. A Linode starts as an empty server, so you install, update and supervise each agent, desktop and key yourself, and any key you place on it can be read by the code the agent runs.
Questions people ask
Is boat cheaper than Linode?
It depends on how the machine runs. One coding agent on workdays comes to $13 a month on Linode against $20 on boat, if you delete the Linode each night. One agent that never stops comes to $26 on boat against $48 on Linode, and 50 agents in parallel come to $317 on boat against $634 on Linode. Short sessions cost much more on Linode because each one is billed as a full hour.
Can I run nested VMs or Android emulators on a Linode?
Not with hardware acceleration. Linode staff have said nested virtualization is not supported because it does not work with live migration. On boat, /dev/kvm is available on every machine next to Docker and systemd.
Do I pay for a Linode that is powered off?
Yes. Akamai bills any service on your account even when it is powered off, because its disk and resources stay reserved. You delete the Linode to stop paying. On boat, a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Is Linode the same as Akamai Cloud?
Yes. Akamai bought Linode in 2022 and now sells it as Akamai Cloud, and its virtual machines are still called Linodes. This page compares those VMs with boat sandboxes.
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. Linode has 33 regions, including Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam, London, Stockholm, Madrid and Milan 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.
Start a sandbox
Install the CLI, then run boat new.
7-day free trial
More comparisons
- boat vs Oracle Cloud
- boat vs IONOS Cloud
- boat vs AWS AgentCore
- boat vs Contabo
- boat vs Azure Virtual Machines
- boat vs AWS Fargate
- boat vs netcup
- boat vs AWS EC2
- boat vs E2B
- boat vs Daytona
- boat vs Modal
- boat vs Vercel Sandbox
- AWS EC2 vs Linode
- Google Compute Engine vs Linode
- Azure Virtual Machines vs Linode
- Oracle Cloud vs Linode
- DigitalOcean vs Linode
- Hetzner Cloud vs Linode
- Vultr vs Linode
- Linode vs Scaleway