boat vs Zeabur
Zeabur is an app platform: you rent a server by the month and deploy apps and databases onto it. boat makes a full VM for each agent by API, saves its disk every minute, forks it while it runs, and comes with a desktop and coding agents you drive from outside.
Where boat stands out
Machines on demand that stop for free
boat creates a sandbox from code when an agent needs one, saves its disk every minute and on stop, and charges nothing while it is stopped. A Zeabur server is bought for a month, takes a few minutes to provision and bills until you cancel it.
Fork a running sandbox
On boat you can fork a sandbox while it runs, or start many from a named snapshot, each with the same disk. Zeabur backs up volumes and databases, kept for 7 days, but has no snapshot or clone of a whole machine.
Coding agents and a desktop built in
boat ships Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and other agents inside each sandbox, which you drive from outside with a prompt, steer and events API, next to a 60fps desktop with Chromium. Its credentials proxy keeps real AI keys outside the machine. Zeabur's MCP server and Claude Code plugin work the other way: your assistant uses them to deploy apps.
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
Zeabur
Zeabur is a platform for deploying apps, databases and templates onto servers you rent through it or bring yourself.
You buy a server from a catalog of AWS, GCP, Hetzner, Linode, DigitalOcean, Aliyun, Tencent Cloud and Volcengine machines, billed at a fixed monthly price, or connect one you already own. With ZeaburOS (built on K3s) the server becomes a deployment node where your services run as containers, with logs, domains, email and backups in the dashboard; with plain Ubuntu it is a normal VPS you run over SSH. It is built for developers and teams hosting web apps, not for creating short-lived machines from code.
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 | Zeabur: price rank |
|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month A software factory creates and throws away many machines a day; on Zeabur each one is a server bought for a month and ready within a few minutes. | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month | 168th of 367, with limits $1,705 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An assistant that runs all month fits a Zeabur server well, but you install and run the agent yourself and it has no desktop. | 5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month | 89th of 366, with limits $205 a month |
| Code interpreter bursts 100 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 200,000 sessions of 1 min a month Neither is built for one-minute bursts: boat limits starts per minute and per day, and a Zeabur server is billed for a whole month. | 186th of 345, with limits $2,000 a month | 260th of 345, with limits $305 a month |
| Sandboxes for your users 300 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 23 min a month 300 sandboxes for your users would mean 300 monthly servers on Zeabur, and it publishes no limit on how many one account can hold. | Cheapest of 361 $209 a month | 256th of 361, with limits $1,205 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 | 254th of 360, with limits $4,005 a month |
| Agent evals 250 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 15,000 sessions of 20 min a month Evals start many machines from the same state; boat forks a running sandbox, while Zeabur has no machine fork or snapshot. | 10th cheapest of 364 $200 a month | 326th of 364, with limits $4,255 a month |
| CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month Zeabur runs its own build machines for apps you deploy, but it does not offer runners for your CI jobs. | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month | 353rd of 377, with limits $2,285 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB A Zeabur server with plain Ubuntu is a fair 24/7 dev box at a fixed monthly price, without snapshots or a desktop. | 18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month | 137th of 368, with limits $22 a month |
| Computer-use agents 50 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 20,000 sessions of 15 min a month Zeabur servers are headless, so a computer-use agent needs a desktop and browser you install and stream yourself. | 6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month | 226th of 369, with limits $855 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 | 203rd of 367, with limits $205 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 | 208th of 346, with limits $155 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 | 110th of 338, with limits $3,005 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 | 304th of 360, with limits $805 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 | Zeabur |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | Sandbox VMs for agents, created and deleted by API, CLI or SDK | An app platform: you deploy services, databases and templates onto a server |
| Isolation | Every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel | Each server is a whole VPS for you; your services run as containers on it |
| Getting a machine | Created from code whenever an agent needs one, billed per second | Bought in the dashboard, ready within a few minutes, billed per month and renewed automatically |
| Stopping | Stop any time; the disk is kept and a stopped sandbox costs nothing | No pause that stops the bill; a server bills monthly until you cancel it |
| Snapshots and fork | Disk snapshots every minute and on stop; fork a running sandbox; named snapshots to start new ones | Backups of volumes and databases only (Dev plan and up, kept 7 days); no machine snapshot or fork |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine | Root over SSH on Ubuntu 24.04 or ZeaburOS; Docker Compose once Zeabur services are turned off; /dev/kvm not documented |
| Desktop and computer use | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream | Headless servers; no desktop or browser product |
| Coding agents | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API | An MCP server and a Claude Code plugin that let your own assistant deploy to Zeabur; nothing runs agents inside a server for you |
| Keeping keys out of the machine | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register; switch a credential to another account when credits run out | Secrets are environment variables injected into the service |
| Reaching the machine | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; dedicated IPv6 or IPv4 | Own public IPv4 per server, HTTPS with automatic certificates on domains, inbound firewall rules by port and IP |
| Apps, databases, domains and email | Sandboxes only; host your own services inside a VM | One-click templates, managed databases, domain purchase and transactional email |
| Your own servers | Runs only on boat's machines | Connect any server with root SSH and 2 GB of memory, or an existing Kubernetes cluster |
| Regions | EU only: Germany, Finland, France | Asia, China, Europe, North America, South America and Oceania, across eight cloud providers |
| 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 | Zeabur |
|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | Not published |
| 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 | 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 | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | Yes | Not published |
| Public IPv4 | No | Yes |
| 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 | Not published |
| Windows | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | Not published |
| Self-hosting | No | No |
| BYOC | No | Yes |
| 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 | No |
| HIPAA | No | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Yes | Not published |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement. boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in StarSling's public benchmark, but Zeabur has no result in that benchmark, and its speed depends on which provider's server you buy.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Zeabur 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 | Zeabur, 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 | $22 · Dev · with limits |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $26 · $20/mo | $22 · Dev · 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 | $855 · Dev · 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 | $1,205 · Dev · 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 | $4,005 · Dev · 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.
Zeabur: Each Zeabur server has a fixed monthly price that depends on the provider and city, and renews automatically until you cancel, whether it is busy or idle. Our bills use the cheapest matching server plus the $5 Dev plan, since Zeabur's pricing page says buying a server needs a paid plan; it does not publish an egress price beyond each server's included traffic.
Limits in those scenarios
Zeabur does not fit any scenario cleanly because it is an app platform: you rent whole servers by the month instead of creating machines from code. That is why one agent on workdays costs the same as one running all month there, and why 50 agents or 300 sandboxes for your users mean 50 or 300 monthly servers, with no published limit on how many an account can hold. On boat, the 1,000-job burst is queued above 90 starts a minute and needs more starts per day than the $2,000 plan allows.
| Scenario | boat | Zeabur |
|---|---|---|
| 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 Zeabur when
you are hosting a web app and its databases and want a fixed-price server in a region outside Europe, or on hardware you already own.
- A full app platform. Useful if you are shipping a web app: Zeabur deploys services, databases, domains and email from one dashboard.
- Servers almost anywhere. Useful if your users are outside Europe: Zeabur sells servers in Asia, China, the Americas and Oceania.
- Bring your own servers. Useful if you already own machines: Zeabur can manage any server with root SSH, or a Kubernetes cluster.
Use boat when
your agents need machines made from code: full VMs that stop for free, snapshot every minute and fork, with a desktop and coding agents you drive by API while their keys stay outside.
- Machines on demand that stop for free. Agents come and go by the hour. On Zeabur each new agent means buying another monthly server and remembering to cancel it, and a server you power down keeps billing.
- Fork a running sandbox. Evals and parallel attempts start from the same state. On Zeabur you would rebuild that state on every new server by hand, or script it yourself.
- Coding agents and a desktop built in. On a Zeabur server you install each agent, write the code that prompts and watches it, and put its API key in an environment variable that code the agent runs can read.
Questions people ask
Is boat cheaper than Zeabur?
It depends on the work. For one agent running all month Zeabur is lower: $26 on boat versus $22 for a Zeabur server with its plan. For one agent on workdays boat is lower, $20 versus $22, because a Zeabur server bills the whole month either way. For fleets the gap grows: 50 agents in parallel come to $317 versus $855, and sandboxes for your users to $200 versus $1,205.
Can I run AI agents on Zeabur?
Yes, on a server you rent from it: install the agent over SSH on plain Ubuntu, or deploy it as a container service. Zeabur's own AI tools, an MCP server and a Claude Code plugin, let an assistant on your computer deploy apps to Zeabur. boat instead creates a VM per agent from code, with coding agents preinstalled and an API to prompt and steer them.
Is a Zeabur server a VM or a container?
The server is a whole VPS from a cloud provider, used only by you. With ZeaburOS, the services you deploy on it run as containers on K3s; with plain Ubuntu it is a normal VPS you manage yourself. On boat, every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel.
Can I pause a Zeabur server to stop paying?
No. Servers are billed monthly at a fixed rate and renew until you cancel; there is no documented pause that lowers the bill. On boat a stopped sandbox keeps its disk and costs nothing until you resume it.
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. On Zeabur you choose a provider and city for each server, in Asia, China, Europe, North America, South America or Oceania.
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. Zeabur's security page says it is pursuing SOC 2 Type II certification.
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