Crusoe vs Verda
Crusoe and Verda are both GPU clouds that also rent plain CPU VMs. Crusoe runs in the US and the EU, bills per second and charges only for the disk when a VM is stopped, while Verda runs only in Helsinki, has lower CPU rates and keeps billing a shut-down instance until you delete it.
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.
Verda
Verda, called DataCrunch until 2025, is a European AI cloud that rents Nvidia GPUs, CPU machines and GPU clusters.
You create a GPU or CPU instance, add a disk and an SSH key, and get a full Linux VM with root and its own public IP. Verda also sells GPU clusters with InfiniBand and serverless containers that scale to zero for inference. It is built for teams that train, fine-tune and serve AI models, not as a sandbox for agents.
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 | Verda: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Both hand you a bare Ubuntu VM with no coding agents, no desktop and no fork of a running machine, which makes a software factory a compromise on each. | 232nd of 367, with limits $2,996 a month | 88th of 367, with limits $788 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB | 234th of 366, with limits $3,000 a month | 133rd of 366, with limits $901 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 Short bursts suit both better than boat: Crusoe publishes no start-rate limit, and Verda's serverless containers scale to zero and wake on a request. | 128th of 345, with limits $268 a month | 99th of 345, with limits $165 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 machine an HTTPS URL, so serving your users means running your own proxy and TLS; boat gives every sandbox token-protected HTTPS on up to 50 ports. | 104th of 361, with limits $951 a month | 71st of 361, with limits $629 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 | 20th of 360, with limits $1,097 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 | 43rd cheapest of 364 $811 a month | 91st of 364, with limits $123 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 Both work as CI runners on plain CPU VMs, with Verda's lower rates ahead of Crusoe, and boat adds free stops between jobs. | 48th cheapest of 377 $395 a month | 10th cheapest of 377 $142 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB A 24/7 dev box fits on either, but on Verda you pay the full rate even while it is shut down, and on boat a stopped sandbox costs nothing. | 87th cheapest of 368 $121 a month | 36th cheapest of 368 $45 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 built-in desktop: Crusoe has none and Verda has a guide to install XFCE and TigerVNC yourself, while boat streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium. | 221st of 369, with limits $811 a month | 82nd of 369, with limits $123 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 | 169th of 367, with limits $110 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 | 184th of 346, with limits $103 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 | 84th of 338, with limits $2,057 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 | 122nd of 360, with limits $66 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 Verda fits GPU eval jobs fully and Crusoe is a compromise here; boat has no GPUs, so this one belongs on a GPU cloud. | 86th of 98, with limits $7,803 a month | 14th cheapest of 98 $1,039 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 | Verda | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | GPU and CPU VMs, disks, managed Kubernetes, Slurm and managed inference | GPU and CPU VMs, GPU clusters with InfiniBand and serverless containers | A sandbox for agents: a full VM with tools, desktop and coding agents ready |
| Isolation | Full VM on cloud-hypervisor | Full VM on KVM/QEMU | Full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts |
| GPUs | Nvidia GB200, B300, B200, H200, H100, A100, L40S and AMD MI355X, MI300X; on-demand, spot or reserved | Nvidia GB300, B300, B200, H200, H100, A100, RTX PRO 6000, L40S, RTX 6000 Ada, RTX A6000 and V100; on-demand or spot | None |
| Stopped machines | No compute charge when stopped; the 128 GB OS disk bills until the VM is deleted | A shut-down instance keeps billing at its full rate; only Delete stops it, and kept volumes bill at $0.20/GiB-month | A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk |
| Snapshots and fork | Custom image from the boot disk, only while the VM is shut off | Clone a volume once its instance is shut down or it is detached | Automatic snapshots every minute and on stop; fork a running sandbox |
| Root, Docker and nested virtualization | sudo user; Docker preinstalled on GPU images; nested virtualization not documented | Root on your own VM, so you can install Docker; nested virtualization not documented | Root, systemd, Docker and /dev/kvm on every machine |
| Desktop and computer use | None; install and stream a desktop yourself | No built-in desktop; a guide to install XFCE and TigerVNC yourself | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control |
| Coding agents | None; an MCP server lets an assistant inspect your Crusoe infrastructure | None; an MCP server and CLI agent mode let an outside agent manage Verda machines | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, driven from outside with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Reaching the machine | Public IPv4, static or dynamic; SSH; TCP and UDP load balancers; no managed HTTPS URLs | A free public IPv4 per instance and SSH; you set up TLS yourself | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; dedicated IPv6 or IPv4 |
| Network rules | VPC firewall with allow rules by IP, port and protocol, in and out | A firewall inside the VM (ufw) that you set up yourself | Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist |
| Keeping keys out of the machine | No credentials proxy; secrets live on the VM | Secrets only for serverless containers; on instances you place keys yourself | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; switch a credential to another account when credits run out |
| Scale to zero | No wake on request | Serverless containers sleep when idle and start again on the next request | No wake on request; you start a stopped sandbox through the API |
| Biggest CPU machine | Large CPU and storage VMs with local NVMe, shared disks, Kubernetes and Slurm | CPU instances up to 360 vCPU / 1,440 GB on dedicated AMD EPYC cores | 16 vCPU / 32 GB on the $100 plan and up |
| Regions | US (Texas, Virginia, Ohio, Nevada) and EU (Iceland, Norway) | EU only: three data centers in Helsinki, Finland | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Crusoe | Verda | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | Not published | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | No | Yes |
| Browser | No | No | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | No | Yes |
| SSH | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | Yes | No | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | Yes | Yes | 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 | No | No |
| Wake on request | No | Yes | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | No | Yes | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | Yes | No | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | Yes | Yes | 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 | No | No |
| BYOC | No | No | No |
| Open source | No | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | No | Yes | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | Yes | Yes | No |
| SSO | Yes | No | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | No | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for Crusoe or Verda: neither was in the StarSling hpc-sandbox-benchmarks run we use. 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 (Zen 5) hosts. Crusoe's general-purpose CPU VMs run on AMD Genoa or Turin, and Verda says its CPU instances use dedicated AMD EPYC cores clocked at 3.3 GHz.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Crusoe and Verda 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 | Verda, 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 | $18 · Pay as you go | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $121 · On-demand | $45 · Pay as you go | $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 | $622 · Pay as you go | $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 | $254 · Pay as you go · with limits | $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 | $507 · Pay as you go · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Crusoe: Crusoe bills each VM per second while it runs, at a flat rate per vCPU that includes 4 GB of memory per vCPU, plus a 128 GB OS disk at $0.08/GiB-month, running or stopped. It has no plan fee and does not charge for data transfer today; reservations bill for the whole term.
Verda: Verda charges a prepaid balance in 10-minute blocks and refunds the unused part when you delete early. CPU machines cost $0.012 per vCPU-hour with 4 GB of RAM each, disks are extra at $0.20/GiB-month, and a shut-down instance keeps billing until you delete it.
Verda: 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.
Limits in those scenarios
Both sell CPU VMs with 4 GB of memory per vCPU, so the 4 vCPU rows use 16 GB machines on each, against boat's 8 GB sandbox. Verda's smallest CPU machine is 4 vCPU / 16 GB, so its 2 vCPU rows pay for a bigger machine, and it does not publish how many instances can run at once, so 300 user sandboxes or 1,000 short jobs are not confirmed. Crusoe sets CPU and GPU quotas per project and raises them through support, and Verda's egress price is not published. On boat the limit is a sandbox count by plan plus starts per minute, so the 1,000-job burst is queued.
| Scenario | Crusoe | Verda | 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 need US regions, AMD or GB200 GPUs, reservations, managed Kubernetes or Slurm, or machines that sit stopped for long stretches.
- US and EU regions with network control. For teams that must run in the US, Crusoe has US and EU sites and a VPC firewall for traffic in and out.
- Cheap stops and per-second billing. For machines that sit idle, Crusoe bills per second and charges only for the OS disk while a VM is stopped.
- AMD GPUs and cluster tools. For training at scale, Crusoe adds AMD MI300X and MI355X, Nvidia GB200, reservations, managed Kubernetes and Slurm.
Use Verda when
you want lower CPU rates in Finland, a very large CPU machine, a wide Nvidia range, or inference containers that scale to zero.
- Lower CPU rates. For machines that run all the time, Verda's CPU instances cost $0.012 per vCPU-hour with 4 GB of RAM each.
- Containers that scale to zero. For inference endpoints, Verda's serverless containers sleep when idle and wake on the next request.
- Very large CPU machines and a wide Nvidia range. For one huge job, Verda goes up to 360 vCPU, and rents Nvidia GPUs from V100 up to GB300.
Where boat fits
Crusoe and Verda are built for training and serving models, and boat has no GPUs, so model work belongs on one of them. If what you are really running is agents that write code, browse and host previews, boat gives each one a full VM that saves itself every minute, forks while running and comes with a desktop and coding agents. You can keep the GPU work on Crusoe or Verda and the agent workspaces on boat.
Work that saves itself and forks live
To copy a machine, Crusoe needs the VM shut off to image its boot disk, and Verda clones a volume only after shutdown. Both halt the agent. boat snapshots every minute and forks a sandbox while it runs.
Agents and a desktop inside
Both start you on a bare Ubuntu VM, and their MCP servers manage machines rather than work inside one. You would install each agent, write the runner and stream a desktop yourself. boat ships all three ready.
HTTPS previews and keys kept outside
Crusoe gives you public IPs and TCP load balancers, Verda a public IP and ufw, so every preview needs your own TLS and auth. API keys sit on the VM, where code an agent wrote can read them.
Use boat when you run agents rather than models: full VMs that save every minute, fork while running, cost nothing while stopped, and come with coding agents, a desktop, HTTPS hosting and a keys proxy. Compare it one to one: boat vs Crusoe and boat vs Verda.
Questions people ask
Is Crusoe cheaper than Verda?
Not for CPU machines in our scenarios. One coding agent on workdays comes to $32 a month on Crusoe and $18 on Verda, one agent running all month to $121 versus $45, and 50 agents in parallel to $1,488 versus $622. boat comes to $20, $26 and $317 for the same three.
Which is faster, Crusoe or Verda?
There is no comparable measurement: neither was in the StarSling benchmark run we use. Crusoe's CPU VMs run on AMD Genoa or Turin, and Verda's on dedicated AMD EPYC cores. boat did 26.69 runs per second in that run.
Can Crusoe and Verda run Docker?
Yes. Crusoe preinstalls Docker on its GPU images, and on Verda you have root on your own VM and install it yourself. Neither documents nested virtualization, while boat has Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine.
Does a stopped machine cost money on Crusoe or Verda?
On Crusoe a stopped VM pays no compute, but its 128 GB OS disk bills until you delete the VM. On Verda a shut-down instance keeps billing at its full rate, and only Delete stops the charge. A stopped boat sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Where do Crusoe and Verda run?
Crusoe runs in the US (Texas, Virginia, Ohio, Nevada) and in Iceland and Norway. Verda runs only in three data centers in Helsinki, Finland. boat runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France.
Is Verda the same company as DataCrunch?
Yes. DataCrunch was founded in Helsinki in 2020 and became Verda in 2025. It rents GPU and CPU instances, GPU clusters and serverless containers.
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