boat vs Sealos DevBox
Sealos DevBox is a cloud development environment: a Kubernetes container that people open from Cursor, VS Code or JetBrains, then ship to Sealos Cloud. boat gives each agent its own VM with Docker, a desktop and coding agents you drive from outside.
Where boat stands out
A full VM, with Docker inside
On boat every sandbox has its own kernel, with root, systemd, Docker and /dev/kvm ready. A Sealos DevBox is a Kubernetes container that shares the host kernel, and its docs do not describe running Docker or KVM inside it.
Coding agents you drive from outside
boat ships Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and other agents inside each sandbox, and your code drives them with a prompt, steer and events API. Sealos has an open-source Codex gateway that you deploy and run yourself. boat's credentials proxy also keeps real AI keys out of the sandbox.
A desktop and a browser in every sandbox
Each boat sandbox streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium, and agents can use it through computer use and browser control. You can embed the stream in your own app. A DevBox is reached over SSH, an IDE or a web terminal, with no desktop.
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
Sealos DevBox
Sealos DevBox is a managed cloud development environment from Labring, part of the Sealos cloud platform built on Kubernetes.
Each DevBox is a Kubernetes container started from one of 20+ language and framework runtimes, reached over SSH from Cursor, VS Code, JetBrains Gateway or a web terminal. When the code is ready you release it as an OCI image and deploy it to Sealos Cloud with one click, next to managed databases and object storage. It is built for developers and teams who want the same setup on every machine, not for running fleets of agent sandboxes through an API.
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 | Sealos DevBox: price rank |
|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month A software factory needs Docker and parallel agents on full machines; DevBox runs as a container with no documented Docker inside. | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month | Can't run it |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB Sealos only fits as a compromise: every always-on assistant holds its CPU and memory in one shared package, so a fleet needs the biggest published package. | 5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month | 336th of 366, with limits $12,451 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 | 340th of 345, with limits $12,451 a month |
| Sandboxes for your users 300 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 23 min a month Sealos sells no package with the 600 vCPU that 300 sandboxes of 2 vCPU need at once, so this case does not fit there. | Cheapest of 361 $209 a month | Can't run it |
| 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 | Can't run it |
| Agent evals 250 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 15,000 sessions of 20 min a month | 10th cheapest of 364 $200 a month | Can't run it |
| CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month Sealos says DevBox is not a CI platform and is built for interactive work, and Docker inside a DevBox is not documented. | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month | Can't run it |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Both fit a dev box that stays on; a 4 vCPU / 8 GB box needs the Standard package on Sealos, because Starter and Hobby give 1 GiB of memory per vCPU. | 18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month | 89th cheapest of 368 $128 a month |
| Computer-use agents 50 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 20,000 sessions of 15 min a month Sealos DevBox is headless, reached over SSH and a web terminal, so there is no desktop for a computer-use agent to see and click. | 6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month | 363rd of 369, with limits $12,451 a month |
| Browser-use agents 50 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 10 min a month boat ships Chromium and a 60fps desktop in every sandbox; on a DevBox you install and run a headless browser yourself. | 7th cheapest of 367 $200 a month | 365th of 367, with limits $12,451 a month |
| Scraping & bots (startup scale) 50 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 100,000 sessions of 3 min a month On Sealos the bots share one fixed package with a traffic cap per tier, so more bots or more traffic means moving up a tier by hand. | 6th cheapest of 346 $90 a month | 331st of 346, with limits $2,030 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 | Can't run it |
| 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 | Can't run it |
| 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 | Sealos DevBox |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Sandbox VMs for AI agents, created and driven through an API, SDK or CLI | A cloud dev environment that people open from their IDE, with a release and deploy pipeline |
| Isolation | Every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel | Kubernetes container that shares the host kernel |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine | Root in the container; Docker inside a DevBox and /dev/kvm are not documented |
| Files after a stop | Snapshots every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing | Changes are saved as image layers and the DevBox boots from the latest one; normal and cold shutdown modes |
| Copying a sandbox | Fork a running sandbox in one call | Turn a release into a template, then create new DevBoxes from it; no clone of a running box |
| Starting images | Named snapshots (templates), shareable by code; no Dockerfile builds | 20+ ready runtimes plus public and private templates; releases build OCI images |
| Reaching the sandbox | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; dedicated IPv6 or IPv4 | Public domain per exposed port, custom domains with SSL, NodePorts (4 to 16 by plan), SSH through a shared gateway |
| Desktop and computer use | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream | None: SSH, IDE and a web terminal only |
| Coding agents | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API | An open-source Codex gateway you deploy yourself inside a DevBox; MCP servers for the Sealos platform |
| 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 | No credentials proxy documented; keys go in as environment variables |
| Shipping to production | Host services straight from the sandbox on HTTPS URLs or raw TCP | Release an OCI image and deploy it to Sealos Cloud in one click, with managed databases and S3-compatible storage |
| How you pay | Monthly plan that becomes usage credit, spent per second on running sandboxes | One flat monthly package of CPU, memory, disk and traffic, billed whether you use it or not |
| Where data lives | EU only (Germany, Finland, France), with EU data residency and zero data retention | Regions are not published; the privacy policy says data may be processed in the US |
| Compliance and transparency | SOC 2 is in progress. We're open about where we stand: live status and data retention policy. | Not published |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | boat | Sealos DevBox |
|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | No |
| Docker inside | Yes | No |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | No |
| Root | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | Yes | Not published |
| 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 | Yes |
| 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 | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | Yes | Yes |
| 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 | Yes |
| MCP server | No | Yes |
| GPU | No | No |
| 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 | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Yes | No |
| Audit logs | No | Not published |
| SSO | No | No |
| SOC 2 | No | Not published |
| HIPAA | No | Not published |
| EU data residency | Yes | No |
| Zero data retention | Yes | Not published |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for Sealos DevBox: it is not in StarSling's public sandbox benchmark, and Sealos does not publish CPU results. boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in that benchmark, on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) hosts.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Sealos DevBox 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 | Sealos DevBox, 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 | $128 · Monthly resource package |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $26 · $20/mo | $128 · Monthly resource package |
| 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 | $12,451 · Monthly resource package · 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 | Can't run it |
| 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 | Can't run it |
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.
Sealos DevBox: Sealos charges a flat monthly price for a fixed package of CPU, memory, disk and traffic, the same whether your DevBoxes run one hour or all month. Starter and Hobby give 1 GiB of memory per vCPU, so a 4 vCPU / 8 GB agent needs Standard; Starter and Hobby have a lower price on the first paid purchase only.
Limits in those scenarios
A Sealos package is one shared pool: the CPU and memory of every DevBox at once must fit inside it. So 50 agents of 4 vCPU / 8 GB need 200 vCPU and land on the Enterprise package at $12,451 a month, and even then they lack Docker inside. No published package holds the 600 vCPU for 300 user sandboxes or the 2,000 vCPU for 1,000 short jobs. On boat the limit is a sandbox count (100 to 2,000 by plan) plus starts per minute, so the 1,000-job burst gets queued and needs more starts per day than the $2,000 plan allows.
| Scenario | boat | Sealos DevBox |
|---|---|---|
| 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 Sealos DevBox when
people on your team write code by hand in Cursor, VS Code or JetBrains and want one flat bill and a one-click path to deploy on Sealos Cloud with managed databases.
- One flat bill for a whole workspace. Useful for a team that wants one known bill: a Sealos package covers all its DevBoxes, apps and databases for a flat monthly price.
- From code to production in one place. Useful for developers shipping web apps: a DevBox releases an OCI image and deploys it to Sealos Cloud, next to managed databases.
- Made for your IDE. Useful for people who code by hand: DevBox connects to Cursor, VS Code and JetBrains Gateway, with 20+ ready runtimes.
Use boat when
AI agents do the work: many parallel sandboxes created by API, each a full VM with Docker, a desktop and coding agents you drive from outside.
- A full VM, with Docker inside. Agents run docker compose, build images and start emulators. In a container without a documented Docker daemon, those steps fail or need a workaround, and the 50-agent fleet below does not fit on Sealos for that reason.
- Coding agents you drive from outside. On a DevBox you install the agent, run the Codex gateway yourself and put API keys in environment variables, where code the agent runs can read them. Other agents, like Claude Code, get no gateway at all.
- A desktop and a browser in every sandbox. Agents that test a web app, fill a form or use a GUI tool need a screen. On a DevBox you set up a virtual display and a browser yourself, with no stream to watch the agent work.
Questions people ask
Is boat cheaper than Sealos DevBox?
For agent work in the scenarios we priced, yes: one coding agent on workdays comes to $20 a month on boat and $128 on Sealos, because a 4 vCPU / 8 GB box needs the Standard package. 50 agents in parallel come to $317 a month on boat against $12,451 on Sealos. Sealos has no published package big enough for 300 user sandboxes or 1,000 jobs at once.
Is a Sealos DevBox a container or a VM?
A container. Sealos describes DevBox as built on Kubernetes containers, made to feel like a virtual machine. On boat every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel, Docker and /dev/kvm.
Can I self-host Sealos DevBox?
The DevBox docs say no: DevBox is a managed service on Sealos Cloud, and they point to Coder or Gitpod for self-hosting. The wider Sealos platform code is public under the Sealos Sustainable Use License, which bars offering it as a cloud service to others. boat is a managed service too.
Can AI agents use Sealos DevBox?
Yes, as a place to run code: you can connect an AI IDE like Cursor, and Sealos runs MCP servers for its platform. Labring also publishes an open-source Codex gateway meant to run inside a DevBox. boat ships several coding agents in every sandbox and drives them through its own prompt, steer and events API.
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. Sealos does not publish its regions, and its privacy policy says data may be moved to and processed in the US.
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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