Crusoe vs Replicate
Crusoe rents whole machines: GPU and CPU VMs with SSH and a disk that survives a stop, which you set up yourself. Replicate runs AI models as containers behind a prediction API, on GPUs that scale up with requests and down to zero, with no machine to log into.
The companies and products
Crusoe
Crusoe calls itself "the AI factory company": it builds energy-first data centers and rents GPU and CPU machines on Crusoe Cloud.
Crusoe Cloud is infrastructure for training and serving models: Nvidia and AMD GPU VMs, general-purpose and storage CPU VMs, disks, managed Kubernetes and Slurm, and managed inference. You create Ubuntu VMs through a console, CLI, Terraform or API, log in over SSH and install what you need. It is not a sandbox product, so this page compares the CPU VMs where it overlaps with boat.
Replicate
Replicate runs AI models with an API: thousands of community and official models, plus your own models packaged with Cog.
You call a public model with one API request, fine-tune one on your data, or package your own model with Cog, Replicate's open-source tool that builds a Docker image with an HTTP prediction server. Replicate runs it on CPU or NVIDIA GPU hardware as deployments that scale up with traffic and down to zero. It is built for teams that serve models, not for agents that need a machine of their own, so this page compares the places where the two overlap.
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. “43rd cheapest of 364” means 42 of the other 363 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 | Crusoe: price rank | Replicate: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month | 232nd of 367, with limits $2,996 a month | 268th of 367, with limits $4,340 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An assistant that lives on one machine all month needs a lasting disk, which a Crusoe VM has and a Replicate instance does not. | 234th of 366, with limits $3,000 a month | 335th of 366, with limits $11,300 a month | 5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month |
| Code interpreter bursts 100 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 200,000 sessions of 1 min a month Both are compromises for short code bursts: Crusoe has no start-rate limit in its terms, and Replicate scales back to zero when traffic stops. | 128th of 345, with limits $268 a month | 258th of 345, with limits $295 a month | 186th of 345, with limits $2,000 a month |
| Sandboxes for your users 300 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 23 min a month Neither gives each user an HTTPS URL to a machine: Crusoe gives a public IP you put your own proxy on, Replicate gives a model endpoint. | 104th of 361, with limits $951 a month | 317th of 361, with limits $3,705 a month | Cheapest of 361 $209 a month |
| RL rollouts 1,000 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 1,000,000 sessions of 3 min a month | 71st of 360, with limits $4,055 a month | 174th of 360, with limits $17,900 a month | 34th of 360, with limits $2,000 a month |
| Agent evals 250 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 15,000 sessions of 20 min a month Agent evals fit on both, at $811 a month on Crusoe and $1,440 on Replicate, while boat does it for $200 with snapshots and forks. | 43rd cheapest of 364 $811 a month | 67th cheapest of 364 $1,440 a month | 10th cheapest of 364 $200 a month |
| CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month Crusoe fits CI runners because its VMs keep a disk and run Docker, while Replicate has no SSH or persistent disk; boat adds /dev/kvm for emulators. | 48th cheapest of 377 $395 a month | 311th of 377, with limits $864 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB A dev box needs SSH and a disk that keeps your installs, which Crusoe has and Replicate does not; boat also keeps the disk for free when stopped. | 87th cheapest of 368 $121 a month | 306th of 368, with limits $226 a month | 18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month |
| Computer-use agents 50 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 20,000 sessions of 15 min a month Neither has a desktop or computer-use tools; boat ships a 60fps desktop with Chromium in every sandbox. | 221st of 369, with limits $811 a month | 263rd of 369, with limits $1,296 a month | 6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month |
| Browser-use agents 50 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 10 min a month | 246th of 367, with limits $405 a month | 322nd of 367, with limits $1,296 a month | 7th cheapest of 367 $200 a month |
| Scraping & bots (startup scale) 50 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 100,000 sessions of 3 min a month | 268th of 346, with limits $403 a month | 272nd of 346, with limits $439 a month | 6th cheapest of 346 $90 a month |
| Mass scraping & bots (undetectable) 1,000 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 3,000,000 sessions of 2 min a month | 201st of 338, with limits $8,055 a month | 221st of 338, with limits $8,775 a month | 71st of 338, with limits $1,800 a month |
| Parallel red teaming 200 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 5,000 sessions of 30 min a month | 201st of 360, with limits $207 a month | 306th of 360, with limits $855 a month | 2nd cheapest of 360 $200 a month |
| GPU eval jobs 10 at once · 8 vCPU / 32 GB · 500 sessions of 30 min a month Replicate fits GPU eval jobs fully at $1,338 a month against Crusoe's $7,803, partly because Crusoe's H100, H200 and A100 SXM VMs come only as 8-GPU machines; boat has no GPUs. | 86th of 98, with limits $7,803 a month | 22nd cheapest of 98 $1,338 a month | 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 | Can't run it |
Key features
| Feature | Crusoe | Replicate | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | A plain Ubuntu GPU or CPU VM you set up yourself, plus Kubernetes and Slurm | A model packaged as a Cog container and called through a prediction API | A full VM for agents with tools, a desktop and coding agents ready |
| Shell access | SSH as a sudo user | No SSH; you call the model through the HTTP API or client libraries | SSH, root and systemd, like a normal Ubuntu server |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Docker preinstalled on GPU images; nested virtualization not documented | The model is the container; Docker inside and /dev/kvm are not documented | Docker inside, and /dev/kvm for Android emulators and VMs |
| Files after a stop | The OS disk and attached disks survive a stop; local NVMe is erased | No persistent disk; instances start fresh from the image | The whole disk is saved every minute and on stop |
| Fork and snapshots | Custom image from the boot disk, only while the VM is shut off | No snapshots or fork; you add replicas of the same image | Fork a running sandbox; named snapshots as templates |
| Run time | VMs run until you stop or delete them | Instances can stay on, but each prediction times out after 30 minutes unless support raises it | No session cap on paid plans; you set the time to live |
| Scale to zero and wake | No; you start and stop VMs yourself | Yes; deployments scale to zero and start again on the next prediction | No; a stopped sandbox is started by API |
| GPUs | Nvidia GB200, B300, B200, H200, H100, A100, L40S and AMD MI355X, MI300X; on-demand, spot or reserved | T4, L40S, A100 80GB, H100 and H200, up to 8 per instance, billed per second | None, CPU only |
| Ready-made models | Managed inference, but the VMs come empty | Thousands of public and official models, plus fine-tuning | None; you bring the model API you call |
| Reaching the machine | Public IPv4, static or dynamic; TCP and UDP load balancers; no managed HTTPS URLs | One prediction API per model behind API token auth; no own IP or ports | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; dedicated IPv4 or IPv6 |
| Desktop and coding agents | None; install and stream a desktop and agents yourself | None to run inside; Replicate hosts models your agent can call | 60fps desktop with Chromium, and Claude Code, Codex and more driven from outside by API |
| Keeping API keys out of the machine | No credentials proxy; secrets live on the VM | Secrets are sent to the model as inputs and redacted from logs | Credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API |
| Regions | US (Texas, Virginia, Ohio, Nevada) and EU (Iceland, Norway) | Subprocessors listed in the United States; no region choice documented | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
| Self-hosting | No | Cog images run anywhere Docker runs | No |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Crusoe | Replicate | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | No | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | No | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Systemd | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | No | Yes |
| Browser | No | No | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | No | Yes |
| SSH | Yes | No | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | No | Yes |
| Pause/resume | Yes | No | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | Yes | No | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | No | No | Yes |
| Memory fork | No | No | No |
| Custom image (Docker or snapshot) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | No | Yes | No |
| Wake on request | No | Yes | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | No | Yes | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | Yes | No | No |
| Egress allowlist | Yes | No | No |
| Secret proxy | No | No | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | No | No | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | No | No | Yes |
| Agent harness API | No | No | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes | Yes | No |
| GPU | Yes | Yes | No |
| Windows | No | No | No |
| Arm64 | Yes | No | No |
| Self-hosting | No | Yes | No |
| BYOC | No | No | No |
| Open source | No | Yes | No |
| Scoped API keys | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | No | Yes | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | Yes | Yes | No |
| SSO | Yes | No | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Not published | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | Not published | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | No | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for Crusoe or Replicate: neither was in the StarSling hpc-sandbox-benchmarks run we use, so we cannot say which is faster at CPU work. boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in that run, on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts. Both Crusoe and Replicate are mainly chosen for GPU work, which this test does not cover.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Crusoe and Replicate have 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 | Crusoe, a month | Replicate, a month | boat, 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 | $32 · On-demand | $57 · Usage · with limits | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $121 · On-demand | $237 · Usage · with limits | $26 · $20/mo |
| 50 agents in parallel 50 machines of 4 vCPU / 8 GB at once, 8-hour sessions, 1,100 sessions a month, Docker inside | $1,488 · On-demand | $2,851 · Usage · with limits | $317 · $20/mo × 3 seats |
| Sandboxes for your users 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 30,000 sessions of 10 minutes a month, up to 300 at once | $405 · On-demand | $1,620 · Usage | $200 · $100/mo × 2 seats |
| 1,000 short jobs at once 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 1,000 at once, 3 minutes each, 200,000 jobs a month | $811 · On-demand | $3,580 · Usage | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Crusoe: Crusoe bills each VM per second while it runs, with 4 GB of memory per vCPU, and every VM also pays for a 128 GB OS disk each month, running or stopped. It has no plan fee and does not charge for data transfer today.
Replicate: Replicate bills per second by hardware tier, from prepaid credit that expires after a year. Public models bill only while they run; private models and deployments also bill setup and idle time.
Replicate: Plans start at $20 a month, and the whole fee is usage credit spent per second on running sandboxes. A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Limits in those scenarios
Replicate does not fit the workday agent, the always-on agent or the 50-agent fleet, because it has no persistent disk, and each prediction stops after 30 minutes unless support raises it. Crusoe fits all five scenarios, but it sells 4 vCPU only with 16 GB and sets per-project quotas you raise through support, so a large fleet may need a ticket first. Replicate publishes no disk or egress price, so the scenarios count none. boat fits four of the five; at 1,000 short jobs at once its starts get queued, while Crusoe and Replicate both fit the burst.
| Scenario | Crusoe | Replicate | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 | None that bite |
|
|
Which one should you use?
Use Crusoe when
you want real VMs you log into, with GPUs from L40S to GB200 or plain CPU machines, in the US or the EU, and you are happy to set them up yourself.
- A real machine with a lasting disk. If you want to log in over SSH and keep files across stops, Crusoe gives you full VMs with a persistent OS disk.
- The widest GPU range. For training or big inference, Crusoe rents Nvidia up to GB200 and AMD MI300X and MI355X, on demand, spot or reserved.
- US and EU regions with network control. Crusoe runs in the US, Iceland and Norway, with VPC firewall rules for traffic in and out and static public IPs.
Use Replicate when
you want to call or serve an AI model on GPUs as an API that scales to zero, from its catalog or packaged with Cog.
- Thousands of models, one API call away. Teams that want to call an image, video, speech or language model without hosting it can start with one request.
- Scale to zero. Models that wait for traffic scale down to zero and wake on the next prediction, so idle time on public models costs nothing.
- Cog runs anywhere. Cog, the open-source tool that packages models for Replicate, builds Docker images you can also run on your own servers.
Where boat fits
Crusoe and Replicate are both built for running models on GPUs, and boat has no GPUs. If what you are really running is agents that write code, use a browser or work for hours, look at boat: each agent gets a ready full VM, and it can still call Replicate or a Crusoe GPU for the model work.
Work that saves itself and forks live
A Replicate instance starts fresh, so an agent loses its files when it scales down. A Crusoe VM keeps its disk, but copying it means shutting it off to make an image, which halts the agent.
A desktop and coding agents inside
Neither has a desktop, a browser or coding agents to start from. On Crusoe you install, stream and drive them yourself; on Replicate there is no shell to run them in at all.
Hosting and keys handled for you
Crusoe gives a public IP, so HTTPS previews mean your own proxy and certificates, and keys sit on the VM. Replicate passes secrets into the model as inputs, where code running there can read them.
Use boat when what you are running is agents: a full VM that saves itself every minute, forks while running, and comes with a desktop, coding agents, HTTPS hosting and a keys proxy. Compare it one to one: boat vs Crusoe and boat vs Replicate.
Questions people ask
Is Crusoe cheaper than Replicate?
In the CPU scenarios we priced, yes: one agent that never stops comes to $121 a month on Crusoe and $237 on Replicate, and 1,000 short jobs at once to $811 against $3,580. For GPU eval jobs Replicate is cheaper, at $1,338 a month against $7,803 on Crusoe.
Which is faster, Crusoe or Replicate?
We have no comparable CPU measurement for either one, so we cannot say. Both are mainly used for GPU work, and the speed there depends on the GPU you pick.
Can Crusoe or Replicate run Docker?
Crusoe's GPU images come with Docker preinstalled, and its VMs give you a sudo user over SSH. Replicate builds your model into a Docker image with Cog, but running Docker inside that container is not documented. A boat sandbox runs Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm.
Can I SSH into Replicate like a Crusoe VM?
No. Replicate has no SSH; you reach a model only through its prediction API. Crusoe VMs and boat sandboxes both give you SSH and a disk that is still there after a stop.
Are Crusoe or Replicate sandboxes for AI agents?
Not in the usual sense. Crusoe rents plain VMs you set up yourself, and Replicate runs models behind an API. Neither has a desktop, a coding agent harness or live forks, which a boat sandbox has built in.
Does boat have GPUs?
No. boat runs CPU VMs on AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts. If your agent needs a model on a GPU, it can call Replicate's API or a Crusoe GPU VM from inside a boat sandbox.
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