boat vs Oracle Cloud
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is a general cloud: you rent VMs, GPUs and bare metal and build the rest yourself. boat is made for agents, so every sandbox is a full VM that already has Docker, a desktop, coding agents and snapshots every minute.
Where boat stands out
A sandbox, not a VM to build
A boat sandbox starts by API with Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm ready, a disk that is saved every minute, and an HTTPS URL for each port. On Oracle Cloud you get a clean VM and then set up the image, network, security rules, disk backups and cleanup yourself.
Saved every minute, forked while running
boat snapshots each sandbox every minute and on stop, a stopped sandbox costs nothing, and you can fork a running sandbox to try two paths at once. On Oracle Cloud, backups run by hand or on a schedule, the boot disk is billed while stopped, and imaging a running VM shuts it down for several minutes.
Coding agents and a desktop built in
boat ships Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and other agents in each sandbox, driven from outside with a prompt, steer and events API, plus a 60fps desktop with Chromium and computer use. The credentials proxy keeps real AI keys out of the sandbox and can switch to another account when one runs out of credits.
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
Oracle Cloud
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is Oracle's general-purpose cloud: compute, storage, networking, databases and AI services in regions around the world.
OCI Compute rents virtual machines and bare metal servers on x86 (AMD, Intel) and Arm (Ampere), plus GPU machines and Mac servers. You pick a shape, an OS image, a network and a disk, and then install and run everything inside the VM yourself. It is not a sandbox product, so this page compares the part that overlaps: running agent code on a VM.
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 | Oracle Cloud: price rank |
|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month boat fits as it comes, with Docker, a desktop, coding agents and snapshots ready; on Oracle Cloud you build that stack on a VM yourself. | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month | 58th of 367, with limits $413 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An always-on assistant needs a disk that is saved and a way to drive it; boat has both built in, while on Oracle Cloud you script them. | 5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month | 100th of 366, with limits $376 a month |
| Code interpreter bursts 100 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 200,000 sessions of 1 min a month Short code runs are cheap on Oracle's burstable VMs, but each run waits for a full VM boot and the account's service limits. | 186th of 345, with limits $2,000 a month | 51st of 345, with limits $16 a month |
| Sandboxes for your users 300 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 23 min a month boat gives each of your users a sandbox with an HTTPS URL by API; on Oracle Cloud you build the sandbox layer, the URLs and the cleanup yourself. | Cheapest of 361 $209 a month | 31st of 361, with limits $115 a month |
| RL rollouts 1,000 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 1,000,000 sessions of 3 min a month Oracle Cloud fits big rollout fleets on price, as long as your tenancy limits are raised to match. | 34th of 360, with limits $2,000 a month | 7th of 360, with limits $679 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 | Cheapest of 364 $136 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 | 6th cheapest of 377 $102 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB A single dev box can run on Oracle's Always Free Arm allowance, though Oracle may reclaim Always Free VMs it judges idle. | 18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month | 2nd cheapest of 368 $12 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; Oracle Compute VMs have no desktop stream, so you install and expose one yourself. | 6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month | 75th of 369, with limits $97 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 | 154th of 367, with limits $49 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 | 150th of 346, with limits $32 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 | 35th of 338, with limits $642 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 | 102nd of 360, with limits $26 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
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | boat | Oracle Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | Yes |
| 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 | 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 | Yes |
| GPU | No | Yes |
| Windows | No | Yes |
| Arm64 | No | Yes |
| 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 | 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 Oracle Cloud: it was not part of StarSling's public sandbox benchmark run of 2026-09-29, where boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) hosts. Speed on OCI depends on the shape you pick, and burstable shapes guarantee only a part of each vCPU.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Oracle Cloud 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 | Oracle Cloud, 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 | $5 · Usage account · with limits |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $26 · $20/mo | $15 · 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 | $203 · 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 | $49 · 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 | $97 · 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.
Oracle Cloud: Oracle bills per OCPU hour (one x86 OCPU is two vCPUs) and per GB hour of memory while a VM runs, plus the boot disk until you delete it; the first 10 TB of outbound data each month is free. The Oracle prices in this table use burstable E4 VMs, which are billed at a 12.5% CPU baseline whatever you use, so they are far below a full-speed VM.
Limits in those scenarios
Oracle's prices in these scenarios come from burstable VMs with a 12.5% baseline: each vCPU is guaranteed only an eighth of a core, and bursts above that last at most about an hour at a time. An agent that installs, builds and tests all day gets throttled, which is why every Oracle row is marked as not fitting; full-speed VMs cost more. A new Oracle tenancy also starts with default or trial service limits, so 50 agents or 1,000 jobs at once need an approved limit increase first. On boat the 1,000-job burst needs more starts per day and per hour than the $2,000 plan allows, and starts above 90 a minute are queued.
| Scenario | boat | Oracle Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| 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 Oracle Cloud when
you need GPUs, Windows, macOS or Arm, regions outside the EU, or you already run your company on OCI and want to build your own sandbox layer.
- GPUs, Windows, Mac and Arm. Useful if your agents need GPUs, Windows, macOS or Arm: Oracle Cloud rents all four.
- Regions everywhere, fine network control. Useful if data must stay outside the EU or traffic needs strict rules: Oracle Cloud has regions worldwide and per-port, per-range firewalls.
- A free always-on box. Useful for one small personal box: Oracle's Always Free tier covers a modest Arm VM every month.
Use boat when
you want agents working today on full VMs that already have Docker, /dev/kvm, a desktop, coding agents, snapshots every minute and forks, without building and running that layer on raw cloud VMs.
- A sandbox, not a VM to build. An agent platform on raw VMs means your team writes and runs the sandbox layer: images, URLs, backups, teardown. On boat that work is already done, so you ship the agent instead of the plumbing.
- Saved every minute, forked while running. When an agent breaks its machine, you want the state from a minute ago, not from last night's backup. Branching an agent's work on OCI means stopping the VM to image it first.
- Coding agents and a desktop built in. On an OCI VM you install the agent, wire up a way to prompt and watch it, set up a desktop stream, and put the API key on the machine, where code the agent runs can read it.
Questions people ask
Is boat cheaper than Oracle Cloud?
Not on list price. Oracle's numbers in our table use burstable VMs with a 12.5% CPU baseline: one coding agent on workdays comes to $20 a month on boat and $5 on Oracle, and 50 agents in parallel to $317 against $203. Those Oracle VMs are throttled above an eighth of each vCPU, so they do not fit a busy agent, and full-speed shapes cost more.
Can I run AI coding agents on Oracle Cloud?
Yes, on a VM you set up yourself: you install the agent, Docker and any desktop, open ports in security rules, and handle backups and cleanup. Oracle Cloud has no sandbox API, built-in coding agents or desktop stream on Compute VMs. boat ships all of that in every sandbox.
Does boat have GPUs, Windows or macOS like Oracle Cloud?
No. boat runs Linux VMs on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts, with no GPUs, no Windows guests and no macOS, and has Wine docs for Windows apps. Oracle Cloud rents Nvidia and AMD GPUs, Windows Server VMs and Mac servers.
Can Oracle's Always Free tier run an agent?
A small one. Every tenancy gets 1,500 Arm OCPU hours and 9,000 GB hours of memory a month free, which covers a modest Arm VM. Oracle may reclaim Always Free VMs that look idle over seven days, and the free capacity is not enough for a fleet.
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. Oracle Cloud has regions across the Americas, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Australia, and you pick where each VM lives.
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. Oracle lists SOC 2 and HIPAA on its cloud compliance page.
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