Daytona vs Railway
Daytona is a cloud made for running AI-generated code, with container sandboxes by default and VM, Windows and GPU classes on top. Railway is an app and database platform that added Linux VM sandboxes, which are destroyed when they go idle.
The companies and products
Daytona
Daytona is a cloud for running AI-generated code: you create sandboxes from code through its API and SDKs.
By default a Daytona sandbox is a Linux container with its own namespaces and reserved vCPU, memory and disk. You can also pick a Linux VM class (pause, fork, memory snapshots, /dev/kvm), a Windows VM class, or a GPU class with Nvidia and AMD cards. It is built for teams that run agent code, code interpreters and evals through Python, TypeScript, Ruby, Go or Java SDKs.
- Founded
- 2023
Railway
Railway is a cloud platform for deploying web apps, servers and databases, which now also sells sandboxes and cloud agents.
Railway's main product is app hosting: you deploy services and databases as containers on its own hardware. In 2026 it added Sandboxes, isolated Linux VMs you create from the CLI or a TypeScript SDK, run commands in and destroy, and Cloud Agents, a personal VM for running a coding agent, in early access. It suits teams already hosting on Railway who want throwaway machines next to their apps.
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. “15th cheapest of 367” means 14 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 | Daytona: price rank | Railway: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Daytona fits a software factory fully, while Railway is a compromise because its sandboxes are destroyed when idle and keep files only in checkpoints you take; boat keeps the disk on every VM. | 15th cheapest of 367 $4,111 a month | 51st of 367, with limits $342 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB All three fit; on Railway an always-on assistant needs the idle timeout set to 0, and on Daytona it needs the Linux VM class to avoid a shared kernel. | 24th cheapest of 366 $6,104 a month | 16th cheapest of 366 $3,977 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 Daytona and Railway both fit short code runs well: Daytona creates hundreds of sandboxes a minute, and Railway bills for CPU used and destroys the sandbox after. | 25th cheapest of 345 $271 a month | 36th cheapest of 345 $413 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 fits 300 sandboxes at once cleanly: Daytona's Tier 4 pool stops at 500 vCPU, and Railway allows 100 sandboxes per environment on Pro. | 154th of 361, with limits $2,000 a month | 42nd of 361, with limits $290 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 | 130th of 360, with limits $8,261 a month | 78th of 360, with limits $4,450 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 | 189th of 364, with limits $2,000 a month | 108th of 364, with limits $364 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 CI jobs that build containers need Docker, which Daytona has in every class and Railway's sandbox docs do not mention; boat has Docker on every machine. | 308th of 377, with limits $805 a month | 113th cheapest of 377 $1,210 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Railway's Cloud Agents keep a disk and sleep or wake, but are early access; Daytona keeps billing the disk while a sandbox is stopped. | 183rd of 368, with limits $245 a month | 66th cheapest of 368 $89 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 Daytona has a VNC desktop and a computer-use API on Linux and Windows, while Railway sandboxes are headless; boat streams a 60fps desktop. | 26th cheapest of 369 $1,198 a month | 77th of 369, with limits $103 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 | 93rd of 367, with limits $598 a month | 53rd of 367, with limits $93 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 | 38th cheapest of 346 $404 a month | 60th cheapest of 346 $570 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 | 202nd of 338, with limits $8,073 a month | 109th of 338, with limits $2,988 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 | 12th cheapest of 360 $2,000 a month | 43rd of 360, with limits $574 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 Only Daytona fits GPU jobs: it rents Nvidia and AMD GPUs by the hour, and neither Railway nor boat has GPUs. | 20th cheapest of 98 $1,190 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 | Can't run it |
Key features
| Feature | Daytona | Railway | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | A cloud for running AI-generated code through an API and SDKs | An app and database platform that added sandboxes and Cloud Agents in 2026 | Sandbox VMs for agents, with a desktop and coding agents built in |
| Isolation | Container by default; Linux VM and Windows VM classes on request | Sandboxes are isolated Linux VMs; app services are containers | Every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel |
| CPU speed (Node.js build-and-test, 4 vCPU / 8 GB) | 21.52 runs/s on the Linux VM class | No result in the benchmark | 26.69 runs/s |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Docker in all classes; /dev/kvm only on Linux VMs, once KVM is turned on for your organization | Root shell on Ubuntu; the sandbox docs do not mention Docker or /dev/kvm | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine |
| When the sandbox stops or goes idle | Disk kept and billed while stopped; archived containers are free | Destroyed after the idle timeout (30 minutes by default); files survive only in checkpoints | Disk kept, with snapshots every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing |
| Pause and fork | VM classes pause, resume and fork with memory kept; containers cannot | Fork a running sandbox's filesystem; disk checkpoints, no memory | Fork a running sandbox; resume reboots from disk (no memory snapshots) |
| Desktop and computer use | VNC desktop (xfce4) and a computer-use API on Linux and Windows | Headless: terminal, exec and SSH only | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream |
| Coding agents | Guides install agents and run them through process exec | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and Pi preinstalled; you run them headless through exec | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Keeping keys out of the sandbox | Secrets proxy swaps placeholders in HTTPS request headers for allowed hosts | Secrets sit in the sandbox as environment variables, or are saved in a checkpoint | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register; switch to another account when credits run out |
| Reaching the sandbox | HTTPS preview URLs on any port; SSH; no raw TCP or public IP | Up to 10 public HTTPS domains, set only at creation; SSH and port forwarding | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; dedicated IPv6 or IPv4 |
| Outbound internet | Tier 1 and 2 reach only registries, git hosts and AI APIs; open internet and per-sandbox allowlists from Tier 3 | Open internet | Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist |
| GPUs and Windows | Nvidia and AMD GPUs by the hour; Windows VM sandboxes | None | None; Wine for Windows apps |
| Apps and databases next to the sandbox | Sandboxes only | Deploy Postgres, Redis and services in the same project; a sandbox can join their private network | No hosted databases or app services; host your own inside a sandbox |
| Regions | US and EU, plus dedicated regions or your own machines | US West, US East, Amsterdam and Singapore | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Daytona | Railway | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | No | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | Yes | No | Yes |
| Browser | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Computer-use API | Yes | No | Yes |
| SSH | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | Yes | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Memory fork | Yes | No | No |
| Custom image (Docker or snapshot) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | Yes | Yes | No |
| Wake on request | No | No | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | No | No | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | No | No | No |
| Egress allowlist | Yes | No | No |
| Secret proxy | Yes | No | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | Yes | No | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Agent harness API | No | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes | Yes | No |
| GPU | Yes | No | No |
| Windows | Yes | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | No | No |
| Self-hosting | No | No | No |
| BYOC | Yes | Yes | No |
| Open source | No | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | Not published | Yes | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | Yes | Yes | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | Yes | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
In StarSling's public run of 2026-09-29 at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second and Daytona's Linux VM class did 21.52. Daytona's default container class reported no result, and Railway has no result in that benchmark, so we cannot say how Railway compares on speed.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Daytona measured on: Linux VM sandbox (same rates; KVM / nested virt per-org feature). Railway 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 | Daytona, a month | Railway, 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 | $56 · Tier 3 ($500 top-up) | $16 · Hobby · with limits | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $245 · Tier 3 ($500 top-up) | $70 · Hobby · 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 | $2,682 · Tier 3 ($500 top-up) | $739 · Hobby · 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 | $2,000 · Tier 4 ($2,000 top-up every 30 days) · with limits | $223 · Pro · 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 | $2,000 · Tier 4 ($2,000 top-up every 30 days) · with limits | $781 · Pro · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Daytona: Daytona bills per second for the vCPU, memory and disk you reserve, and keeps billing the disk while a sandbox is stopped. You pay from a prepaid wallet: open internet needs a $500 top-up (Tier 3), and the biggest pool needs $2,000 every 30 days (Tier 4).
Railway: Railway bills sandboxes per second at $50 per vCPU-month on CPU used and $50 per GB-month on memory in use, plus $0.05 per GB out, and memory keeps billing while a sandbox waits. It does not publish a price for sandbox disk, so Railway bills here leave disk out.
Railway: 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
Daytona limits the vCPU, memory and disk running at once, up to 500 vCPU on Tier 4, so 300 user sandboxes (600 vCPU) or 1,000 jobs at once (2,000 vCPU) need a custom limit, and Tier 1 and 2 cannot reach the open internet. Railway caps sandboxes per environment, 50 on Hobby and 100 on Pro, and marks every scenario as not a clean fit because it is an app platform with no published sandbox disk price. An always-on Railway agent also needs the idle timeout set to 0. 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 | Daytona | Railway | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 Daytona when
your agents need GPUs, Windows, memory pause, or a US region or your own machines.
- GPUs and Windows. Useful if your agents test models or need Windows: Daytona rents Nvidia and AMD GPUs and runs Windows VM sandboxes.
- Pause with memory. Useful for long tasks you want to freeze: Daytona's VM classes pause and fork with memory kept, so work resumes mid-step.
- Built for agent code first. Useful if sandboxes are your product: Daytona has SDKs in five languages, a desktop, and a secrets proxy for HTTPS headers.
Use Railway when
your app and databases already live on Railway and you want short-lived sandboxes on the same private network, or US and Asia regions.
- Next to your apps and databases. Useful if your app already runs on Railway: sandboxes can join the same private network as your Postgres and services.
- Short jobs billed for CPU used. Useful for many quick runs: a Railway sandbox bills for CPU actually used and is destroyed when the job ends.
- Regions in the US and Asia. Useful if your users are far from Europe: Railway runs in California, Virginia, Amsterdam and Singapore.
Where boat fits
If your agents work for hours at a time, installing, building, running Docker and testing in a browser, look at boat. Every sandbox is a full VM that keeps its disk, with a desktop and coding agents you drive from outside, so you skip the class choices on Daytona and the idle deletes on Railway.
A full VM that keeps its disk
Daytona's default sandbox is a container on a shared kernel, and it bills the disk while stopped. Railway destroys an idle sandbox after 30 minutes unless you take checkpoints. boat saves the disk every minute and a stopped VM costs nothing.
Docker, KVM and a desktop on every machine
On Daytona, /dev/kvm needs the VM class and KVM turned on for your organization. Railway sandboxes are headless and their docs do not mention Docker. boat has Docker, systemd, /dev/kvm and a 60fps desktop everywhere.
Agents you drive from outside
On both, you start each agent through exec and parse its output yourself, and on Railway its key sits inside the VM. boat adds a prompt, steer and events API, and a credentials proxy that keeps keys outside.
Use boat when your agents work for hours or days: a full, faster VM that keeps its disk, with Docker, a desktop and coding agents you drive by API. Compare it one to one: boat vs Daytona and boat vs Railway.
Questions people ask
Is Daytona cheaper than Railway?
In our scenarios Railway's bills are lower, but they leave out disk, which Railway does not price. One agent running all month comes to $245 on Daytona and $70 on Railway, and 50 agents in parallel come to $2,682 versus $739. On boat those come to $26 and $317.
Which is faster, Daytona or Railway?
We cannot say. Daytona's Linux VM class did 21.52 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in StarSling's benchmark, and Railway has no result there. boat did 26.69 in the same run.
Can Daytona and Railway run Docker?
Daytona documents Docker in all of its sandbox classes. Railway's sandbox docs do not mention Docker or /dev/kvm, so you would have to install and check it yourself. boat has Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine.
Are Daytona and Railway sandboxes containers or VMs?
Daytona's default class is a container, with Linux VM and Windows VM classes on request. Railway's sandboxes are isolated Linux VMs, while its app services are containers. On boat, every sandbox is a full VM.
What happens when a sandbox goes idle?
Railway destroys it after the idle timeout, 30 minutes by default, so you keep files only through checkpoints. Daytona auto-stops it and keeps the disk, which keeps billing. A boat sandbox stops, keeps its disk and costs nothing while stopped.
Do Daytona or Railway have GPUs?
Daytona rents Nvidia and AMD GPUs by the hour, from RTX 4090 to B300. Railway and boat have no GPUs, so GPU jobs belong on Daytona.
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