Deno Sandbox vs Claude Managed Agents
Deno Sandbox gives your code a small Firecracker microVM that starts in under 200 ms and lives up to 30 minutes. Claude Managed Agents is a hosted agent: you send Claude a task and it works in a container Anthropic runs, sleeping for free between messages.
The companies and products
Deno Sandbox
Deno Sandbox is part of Deno Deploy, the hosting platform from the company behind the Deno runtime, and runs untrusted or AI-generated code in Linux microVMs.
Each sandbox is a Firecracker microVM with 2 vCPU, up to 4 GB of memory and a 10 GB disk that is wiped when it ends, created from a TypeScript or Python SDK. Outbound traffic goes through a proxy that can enforce a host allowlist and swap placeholder secrets for real ones. It is built for short runs of agent or user code, and a sandbox can be promoted to a Deno Deploy app.
- Isolation
- Firecracker microVM per sandbox
Claude Managed Agents
Claude Managed Agents is Anthropic's ready-made agent harness: Claude runs as an autonomous agent in a cloud sandbox that Anthropic manages, and you talk to it through an events API.
This is an agent platform, not a sandbox you rent. You define an agent (model, prompt, tools, MCP servers, skills) and an environment, then start sessions, send messages as events and stream back what Claude does; the harness handles tool calls, prompt caching and compaction. Each session gets its own Ubuntu container, or runs its tools on a worker you host yourself. It is built for teams that want Claude doing long tasks without building their own agent loop or sandbox.
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. “290th cheapest of 367” means 289 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 | Deno Sandbox: price rank | Claude Managed Agents: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month A software factory runs installs, builds and Docker for hours, which outlasts Deno's 30-minute lifetime and is cramped in a Managed Agents container where Docker is only in limited availability; boat gives a full VM with Docker and systemd. | 290th of 367, with limits $5,665 a month | 106th of 367, with limits $964 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 its machine all month fits Managed Agents better than Deno, since idle sessions sleep for free, but its state expires 30 days after the sandbox is created; a boat disk stays as long as you keep it. | 287th of 366, with limits $5,803 a month | 219th of 366, with limits $2,511 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 of code suit Deno Sandbox well, with starts under 200 ms and CPU billed only while code runs, and Managed Agents bills runtime only while the agent works. | 141st of 345, with limits $329 a month | 163rd of 345, with limits $756 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 Deno can give each user a sandbox with a public URL per port but caps Builder at 20 at once per region, while Managed Agents has no inbound ports at all; boat gives token-protected HTTPS URLs on up to 50 ports. | 148th of 361, with limits $1,863 a month | 231st of 361, with limits $823 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 | 122nd of 360, with limits $7,963 a month | 252nd of 360, with limits $3,978 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 | 296th of 364, with limits $1,563 a month | 244th of 364, with limits $320 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 run Docker or Android emulators need Docker and /dev/kvm, which boat documents and neither Deno nor Managed Agents does. | 304th of 377, with limits $731 a month | 227th of 377, with limits $96 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 a disk that lasts and a way in: Deno has SSH but wipes its root disk after 30 minutes, and Managed Agents has no SSH at all. | 179th of 368, with limits $200 a month | 224th of 368, with limits $48 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 Deno nor Managed Agents has a desktop or a computer-use tool; boat streams a Linux desktop at 60fps with Chromium. | 280th of 369, with limits $1,583 a month | 127th of 369, with limits $288 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 Managed Agents ships headless Chromium with Playwright, while on Deno you install a browser yourself in 4 GB of memory; boat shows Chromium on a live desktop you can watch. | 284th of 367, with limits $783 a month | 126th of 367, with limits $288 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 | 286th of 346, with limits $573 a month | 127th of 346, with limits $390 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 | 247th of 338, with limits $11,923 a month | 155th of 338, with limits $4,798 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 | 251st of 360, with limits $367 a month | 179th of 360, with limits $160 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 | Can't run it | 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 | Deno Sandbox | Claude Managed Agents | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | A microVM sandbox you create from a TypeScript or Python SDK to run your own or AI-written code | A hosted Claude agent: Anthropic's harness runs Claude in a sandbox and you send it events | A sandbox platform: each agent gets its own full Linux machine, with coding agents built in |
| Isolation | Firecracker microVM with its own kernel | Isolated Linux container per session | Full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts |
| Machine size | 2 vCPU fixed, 768 MB to 4 GB memory, 10 GB disk | Up to 8 GB memory and 10 GB disk; vCPU not published; not configurable | 4 vCPU / 8 GB by default, up to 16 vCPU / 32 GB on the $100 plan and above |
| Session length | Up to 30 minutes; longer work can be promoted to a Deno Deploy app | No published cap; an idle session sleeps and resumes on the next message | No cap on paid plans; you set the time to live |
| What persists | Root disk wiped when the sandbox ends; opt-in volumes of 300 MB to 20 GB, Chicago only | Sandbox checkpointed when a session goes idle; state kept only 30 days after the sandbox is created | The whole disk, saved every minute and on stop, for as long as you keep it; fork a running sandbox |
| Wake on next message | No | Yes; idle time is not billed | No; a stopped sandbox is started by API and costs nothing while stopped |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Root access; Docker and nested virtualization not documented | Docker listed as limited availability; root, systemd and /dev/kvm not documented | Root, Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm for Android emulators and VMs |
| Inbound access | HTTPS URL per exposed port, public without authentication; SSH | No inbound ports or SSH; reached only through the sessions and events API | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected by default; raw TCP; SSH |
| Browser and desktop | No desktop or browser; a VS Code editor in the browser | Headless Chromium with Playwright; no desktop or computer-use tool | Linux desktop streamed at 60fps, with Chromium and computer use |
| Agents | A root image with Claude Code, run through the shell command API | Anthropic's harness with Claude models, steering, memory stores, multiagent threads and webhooks | Claude Code, Codex and five more preinstalled, driven from outside with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Outbound rules | Host allowlist per sandbox, enforced by a proxy outside the VM | Unrestricted, or limited to listed hosts plus optional package registries and MCP servers | Open internet, no provider-side allowlist |
| Keeping API keys out of the sandbox | Placeholder secrets swapped for real ones on requests to approved hosts | Vault secrets live in the sandbox as placeholders and are swapped in at egress, per host | Credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; switch a credential to another account when credits run out |
| Start time | Under 200 ms | Not published; an idle session resumes from its checkpoint | Boots a full VM |
| Where it runs | Amsterdam and Chicago | US workspace geo only, or tools on workers you host yourself | EU only (Germany, Finland, France) |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Deno Sandbox | Claude Managed Agents | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Docker inside | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | No | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Systemd | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | No | Yes |
| Browser | No | Yes | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | No | Yes |
| SSH | Yes | No | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | No | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | Yes | Yes |
| Fork/clone | No | 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 | No | Yes | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | No | Yes | No |
| Wake on request | No | Yes | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | Yes | No | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | No | No | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | No | No | No |
| Egress allowlist | Yes | Yes | No |
| Secret proxy | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Agent harness API | No | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | No | Yes | No |
| GPU | No | No | No |
| Windows | No | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | No | No |
| Self-hosting | No | Yes | No |
| BYOC | No | Yes | No |
| Open source | No | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Not published | No |
| SSO | No | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | No | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | No | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | No | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for either: neither Deno Sandbox nor Claude Managed Agents is in the hpc-sandbox-benchmarks run, Deno's fixed 2 vCPU shape could not run the 4 vCPU test, and Anthropic does not publish a sandbox's vCPU count. boat did 26.69 runs per second on the Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Deno Sandbox and Claude Managed Agents 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 | Deno Sandbox, a month | Claude Managed Agents, 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 | $53 · Pro · with limits | $13 · Claude API (pay-as-you-go, usage tiers) · with limits | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $200 · Builder · with limits | $53 · Claude API (pay-as-you-go, usage tiers) · 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 | $2,779 · Builder · with limits | $634 · Claude API (pay-as-you-go, usage tiers) · 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 | $783 · Builder · with limits | $360 · Claude API (pay-as-you-go, usage tiers) · 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 | $1,563 · Builder · with limits | $796 · Claude API (pay-as-you-go, usage tiers) · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Deno Sandbox: Sandboxes need Deno Deploy Pro at $20 a month or Builder at $200 a month; the fee is not credit but includes CPU, memory and egress allowances shared with your Deploy apps. Past those, CPU costs $0.10 per hour of active CPU and memory $0.025 per GiB-hour for the whole life of the sandbox.
Claude Managed Agents: There is no plan fee: you pay model tokens at API rates plus a session runtime fee that accrues only while a session is running, including time spent waiting on the model. The table shows runtime only; tokens come on top and usually cost more.
Claude Managed Agents: Plans start at $20 a month, and the whole fee is usage credit. You pay per second while a sandbox runs, and a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk; model tokens for the built-in agents are paid to your model provider.
Limits in those scenarios
Neither Deno Sandbox nor Claude Managed Agents fits any of the five scenarios as written. A Deno sandbox lives up to 30 minutes at 2 vCPU and 4 GB, and Builder allows 20 at once per region, short of 50 agents or 300 user sandboxes. Managed Agents is a different kind of product with an unpublished machine size, Docker only in limited availability, 300 creates per minute, and usage-tier spend limits that pause all API use when reached. boat fits four of the five; at 1,000 short jobs at once its top plan queues starts above 90 a minute and allows 2,400 starts a day.
| Scenario | Deno Sandbox | Claude Managed Agents | 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 Deno Sandbox when
you run short pieces of your own or untrusted code that must start in milliseconds, reach only the hosts you allow, or run in the US, especially if you already deploy on Deno Deploy.
- Fast starts for short code. Good for one sandbox per request: it starts in under 200 ms and CPU bills only while code runs.
- Your code, your loop. Fits teams with their own agent or any model: it is a plain sandbox you drive from a TypeScript or Python SDK.
- Locked-down outbound and a path to Deploy. Useful for untrusted code: limit each sandbox to listed hosts, and promote finished work to a Deno Deploy app.
Use Claude Managed Agents when
you want Claude itself to do long text and code tasks with no harness to build, idle time that costs nothing, and the option to run tools on your own workers.
- No agent loop to build. Teams that want Claude doing long tasks get the harness, caching, compaction, memory and webhooks ready to use.
- Idle sessions sleep for free. Agents that wait between messages pay runtime only while working, and resume on the next message with files in place.
- Run tools on your own workers. Teams with strict network rules can run every tool call on their own infrastructure while Anthropic keeps the orchestration.
Where boat fits
Deno Sandbox is built for short runs of code, and Claude Managed Agents for Claude working on text and code in a small container. If your agents install, build, run Docker or a browser for hours, and you want to open what they build, look at boat. It gives each agent a full VM with Claude Code, Codex and five other agents that you drive from outside.
A machine that is still there tomorrow
A Deno sandbox ends after 30 minutes and wipes its root disk, and Managed Agents drops sandbox state 30 days after creation. Either way the agent reinstalls everything. boat saves the whole disk every minute, with no lifetime cap on paid plans.
Room for Docker and emulators
Deno is fixed at 2 vCPU and 4 GB with Docker not documented, and Managed Agents tops out at 8 GB with Docker in limited availability. boat goes up to 16 vCPU / 32 GB with Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm.
Open and watch what the agent builds
Managed Agents has no inbound ports, so you copy code elsewhere to try it, and Deno's port URLs are public without authentication. boat gives token-protected HTTPS on up to 50 ports, raw TCP and a 60fps desktop.
Use boat when your agents need a real machine for hours or weeks: Docker, emulators, a desktop and browser, ports you can open, a disk that lasts, and the choice of Claude Code, Codex or other agents. Compare it one to one: boat vs Deno Sandbox and boat vs Claude Managed Agents.
Questions people ask
Is Deno Sandbox cheaper than Claude Managed Agents?
For runtime alone, Managed Agents costs less in all five scenarios on this page, for example $53 a month against $200 for Deno for one agent that never stops. But Managed Agents also bills model tokens, which usually cost more than the runtime, and neither product fits these scenarios as written.
Which is faster, Deno Sandbox or Claude Managed Agents?
Neither has a published CPU benchmark we can compare, and Anthropic does not say how many vCPUs a sandbox gets. Deno says a sandbox starts in under 200 ms, and a Managed Agents session's time is often spent waiting on the model.
Can Deno Sandbox or Claude Managed Agents run Docker?
Deno's docs do not say Docker works inside a sandbox, and Managed Agents lists Docker as limited availability. boat runs Docker and systemd and exposes /dev/kvm for Android emulators and VMs.
Can I run Claude Code on Deno Sandbox or Claude Managed Agents?
Deno offers a root image with Claude Code that you run through shell commands. Managed Agents runs Anthropic's own harness with Claude models, not Claude Code. On boat, Claude Code, Codex and five other agents come preinstalled.
Which one keeps files between runs?
A Deno sandbox wipes its root disk when it ends, unless you mount a volume, which is Chicago only. Managed Agents checkpoints an idle sandbox but keeps state only 30 days after the sandbox is created. boat keeps the whole disk, saved every minute, until you delete the sandbox.
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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