Depot vs Bitrise
Depot makes GitHub Actions and Docker builds faster: you change one runs-on label and each job gets a fresh Linux, Windows or macOS machine. Bitrise is a full CI/CD service for iOS and Android apps on Apple silicon Macs and Linux, and it also rents remote dev environments with a persistent disk.
The companies and products
Depot
Depot is a build and CI platform: faster Docker builds, drop-in GitHub Actions runners, its own Depot CI, and newer sandboxes for coding agents.
Depot's main product is GitHub Actions runners: you change one runs-on label and each job runs on a fresh AWS EC2 instance that is thrown away when the job ends, with Linux, Arm, Windows and macOS sizes and a shared fast cache. It also sells remote agent sandboxes that run Claude Code in a container, and a Sandbox SDK in public beta whose sandboxes live at most 24 hours. It is built for engineering teams that want CI and builds to finish sooner, so it is a different kind of product than an agent sandbox, and this page compares where the two overlap.
Bitrise
Bitrise is a mobile CI/CD platform that builds, tests and ships iOS and Android apps on its own Mac and Linux machines.
Bitrise is a different kind of product: a CI service. Each build runs in its own virtual machine from a Bitrise stack, and the machine is rolled back after the build. Since 2026 it also sells Remote Dev Environments, macOS and Linux sessions with a persistent disk where you can start Claude Code from a CLI or drive the machine through an MCP server. It is built for mobile teams.
- Funding
- $95M+ in total
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. “125th cheapest of 377” means 124 of the other 376 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 | Depot: price rank | Bitrise: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Depot runners end with the job and Bitrise CI builds time out at 210 minutes, so an agent that builds an app over days fits better on boat, where the disk, Docker and /dev/kvm stay on one VM. | 331st of 367, with limits $8,688 a month | 38th of 367, with limits $3,403 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An always-on assistant needs a machine that never ends; Depot's Sandbox SDK caps a sandbox at 24 hours, Bitrise dev sessions stop after days idle or for maintenance, and boat has no session cap on paid plans. | 86th of 366, with limits $13,148 a month | 73rd of 366, with limits $1,970 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 | 311th of 345, with limits $1,188 a month | 289th of 345, with limits $658 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 Your users' sandboxes need hundreds at once and a URL to reach them; Bitrise Pro runs at most 10 macOS or 30 Linux builds at once, neither documents inbound ports, and boat serves HTTPS ports and raw TCP. | 318th of 361, with limits $3,713 a month | 269th of 361, with limits $1,604 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 | 311th of 360, with limits $17,908 a month | 271st of 360, with limits $6,818 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 | 319th of 364, with limits $2,888 a month | 289th of 364, with limits $1,274 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 are real CI: Depot fits any GitHub Actions workflow with a one-line change and a shared cache, Bitrise fits iOS and Android pipelines, and boat gives you a full Linux VM to run your own runner or scripts on. | 125th cheapest of 377 $1,736 a month | 181st of 377, with limits $859 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Bitrise dev environments keep a persistent disk, which Depot runners do not, while boat's Linux box keeps snapshots every minute and costs nothing when stopped. | 199th of 368, with limits $534 a month | 168th of 368, with limits $119 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 Bitrise lets an agent control a macOS desktop through its MCP server, Depot has no desktop product, and boat streams a 60fps Linux desktop with Chromium. | 321st of 369, with limits $2,600 a month | 68th of 369, with limits $1,186 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 | 139th of 367, with limits $1,304 a month | 132nd of 367, with limits $746 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 | 139th of 346, with limits $1,763 a month | 131st of 346, with limits $862 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 | 312th of 338, with limits $35,108 a month | 256th of 338, with limits $13,088 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 | 81st of 360, with limits $863 a month | 73rd of 360, with limits $537 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 Both rent Macs and boat has none: Depot has macOS 26, 15 and 14 runners for GitHub Actions, while Bitrise has Apple silicon Macs with iOS simulators and a desktop. | 10th of 36, with limits $248 a month | 21st of 36, with limits $400 a month | Can't run it |
Key features
| Feature | Depot | Bitrise | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | CI runners and build machines for GitHub Actions, plus agent sandboxes and a beta Sandbox SDK | Mobile CI/CD service, plus Remote Dev Environments for developers and agents | VMs for AI agents that you keep, stop, fork and host from |
| Isolation | A fresh EC2 instance per CI job; agent sessions in an isolated container | Every build or session is its own VM; CI VMs are rolled back after each build | Every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel, on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts |
| Operating systems | Linux x64 and Arm, Windows Server 2025 and 2022, macOS 26, 15 and 14 | macOS on Apple silicon (M2 Pro, M4, M4 Pro) with iOS simulators, and Linux with Android emulators | Linux only; Wine for Windows apps |
| CI pipeline | Drop-in GitHub Actions runners with a shared cache up to 1000 MiB/s, plus fast Docker builds | Mobile workflows, code signing, build cache, release management and over-the-air updates | A VM you can register as your own runner; no managed CI cache |
| How long a machine runs | Runners end with the job; Sandbox SDK default 120 minutes, at most 24 hours | CI builds time out at 210 minutes; dev sessions have no time cap but stop after 5 days idle by default and now and then for maintenance | No session cap on paid plans; runs until you stop it |
| Files after a stop | Runners are never reused; agent sandboxes keep files; SDK snapshots are coming soon | Dev sessions keep one persistent disk, which is not backed up; CI machines keep nothing | Snapshots every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk |
| Fork | No fork or clone API | No fork; warm pools hand out fresh sessions booted from a template | Fork a running sandbox into an independent copy |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Docker on Linux runners; /dev/kvm only on Depot CI sandboxes, not on GitHub Actions runners | Docker and nested virtualization on Linux machines; neither on macOS sessions | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine |
| Machines at once | Says its runners have no concurrency limits | Pro runs at most 10 macOS or 30 Linux builds at once; a dev environment tier runs 1 to 5 VMs | 100 to 2,000 sandboxes by plan, with starts capped per minute, hour and day |
| Reaching the machine | SSH into a running Depot CI job for debugging; no documented inbound ports or URLs | SSH, VNC and a web terminal; device preview links stream a simulator; no public URL for a port | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; dedicated IPv6 or IPv4 |
| Coding agents | Claude Code only, started and resumed with the depot claude command | Claude Code started from the CLI; other agents through warmup scripts; an MCP server | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, driven from outside with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Desktop and computer use | No desktop or computer-use product | VNC desktop on macOS sessions; an open-source MCP server takes screenshots and controls it | 60fps Linux desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream |
| Keeping keys out of the machine | Secrets are passed in as environment variables | Secrets are environment variables, so the value enters the machine | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; real keys never enter the VM |
| Regions and hosting | US and EU regions; Depot Managed in your own AWS account on the Business plan | US, Ireland, Frankfurt, Singapore and Sydney; your own AWS account or self-hosted Bitrise Runners | EU only: Germany, Finland, France; managed only |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Depot | Bitrise | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | No | No | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | Yes | Yes |
| Browser | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | Yes | Yes |
| SSH | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | No | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | No | 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 | Yes | No | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | Yes | Yes | No |
| Wake on request | No | No | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | No | No | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | No | No | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | No | No | No |
| Egress allowlist | Yes | No | No |
| Secret proxy | No | No | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | No | No | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Agent harness API | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | No | Yes | No |
| GPU | Yes | No | No |
| Windows | Yes | No | No |
| Arm64 | Yes | Yes | No |
| Self-hosting | No | Yes | No |
| BYOC | Yes | Yes | No |
| Open source | No | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | No | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Not published | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | Not published | No | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement: neither Depot nor Bitrise has a result in the public StarSling benchmark we use, so we do not compare their speeds. boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in StarSling's run of 2026-09-29.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Depot and Bitrise 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 | Depot, a month | Bitrise, 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 | $122 · Developer · with limits | $260 · Pro · with limits | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $534 · Developer · with limits | $119 · RDE Pro · 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 | $5,710 · Developer · with limits | $2,309 · Pro · 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 | $1,628 · Developer · with limits | $812 · 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 | $3,588 · Developer · with limits | $1,538 · Pro · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Depot: Depot plans cost $20 or $200 a month and include GitHub Actions, Depot CI and Docker build minutes; after that a 2-CPU Linux runner costs $0.006 a minute and bigger sizes multiply it. Agent sandboxes cost $0.01 a minute.
Bitrise: Bitrise CI is sold by plan: Starter is a flat fee with unlimited minutes on Medium machines, and Pro adds per-minute machine time and a monthly build allowance on top of its fee. Remote Dev Environments charge a base fee with included minutes, then per minute up to a monthly cap per OS.
Bitrise: 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
Depot says its runners have no concurrency limits, so what bites is the shape of the product: a runner lives for one CI job, and a Sandbox SDK sandbox ends after at most 24 hours, so an agent that never stops needs restarts. Bitrise Pro caps CI builds at 3.5 hours and 10 at once, so 50 agents in parallel and 300 user sandboxes do not fit, and the always-on case moves to a dev environment. On boat the 1,000-job burst is the hard one: starts are capped per minute, hour and day, so the jobs queue.
| Scenario | Depot | Bitrise | 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 Depot when
you want faster GitHub Actions and Docker builds, or need Linux, Arm, Windows or macOS runners with no concurrency limit.
- Faster GitHub Actions in one line. Useful if your CI already runs on GitHub Actions: change one runs-on label and jobs use Depot's runners and fast cache.
- Windows, Arm and egress rules. Useful if you build for Windows or Arm, or must limit outbound traffic on Linux runners to chosen hosts.
- No limit on machines at once. Useful if many jobs start together: Depot says its runners have no concurrency limits.
Use Bitrise when
you build and ship iOS or Android apps, want a managed mobile pipeline with code signing and releases, or need Macs in Asia Pacific or your own AWS account.
- A full mobile CI/CD pipeline. Useful if you ship iOS or Android apps: Bitrise handles builds, code signing, caching, store releases and over-the-air updates.
- Macs your agents can drive. Useful if agents test iOS apps: Bitrise dev sessions keep a disk and give a macOS desktop and simulators through an MCP server.
- More regions and self-hosting. Useful if machines must run in Asia Pacific, or inside your own AWS account or hardware.
Where boat fits
Depot and Bitrise are CI services, and boat is not one. If what you are really running is agents, boat gives each one a full Linux VM that keeps running and keeps its disk, serves apps on HTTPS ports and comes with coding agents you drive from outside. For iOS builds, macOS or Windows runners and managed CI caches, stay with Depot or Bitrise.
A machine that stays
Depot runners vanish after each job and its Sandbox SDK stops at 24 hours; Bitrise CI builds stop at 210 minutes and roll back. boat has no session cap on paid plans and snapshots the disk every minute.
Apps your agents can serve
Neither Depot nor Bitrise documents a public URL for a port, so an agent's web app needs your own tunnel. boat serves HTTPS on up to 50 ports, token-protected, plus raw TCP.
Agents driven from outside, keys kept out
Both start Claude Code from a CLI and pass secrets in as environment variables an agent can read. boat has a prompt, steer and events API, and its credentials proxy keeps real keys out of the VM.
Use boat when what you run is agents: a full Linux VM that runs for days with Docker and /dev/kvm, snapshots every minute, forks, open HTTPS ports and coding agents you drive from outside. Compare it one to one: boat vs Depot and boat vs Bitrise.
Questions people ask
Is Depot cheaper than Bitrise?
In our scenarios Bitrise comes lower in four of five, though both are CI products and neither fits these agent jobs. One agent running all month comes to $119 on Bitrise against $534 on Depot, and 50 agents in parallel to $2,309 against $5,710. One coding agent on workdays is the exception: $122 on Depot against $260 on Bitrise.
Which is faster, Depot or Bitrise?
We cannot say: neither has a result in the public StarSling benchmark we use. boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB there.
Can Depot or Bitrise run Docker?
Yes on Linux. Depot runs Docker on its Linux runners and also speeds up Docker image builds, and Bitrise runs Docker and nested virtualization on its Linux machines, but not inside macOS sessions. boat has Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine.
Which is better for macOS and iOS?
Both rent Macs. Depot has macOS 26, 15 and 14 runners at 8 CPU / 24 GB for GitHub Actions, and Bitrise has Apple silicon Macs with iOS simulators, code signing and store releases. boat runs Linux only.
Can I run AI coding agents on Depot or Bitrise?
Both can run Claude Code: Depot with its depot claude command, and Bitrise in Remote Dev Environments started from its CLI, with other agents added by warmup scripts. On boat the agents come preinstalled and you drive them through an API.
Where does my data run?
Depot runs in the United States, and in the European Union if a project chooses it. Bitrise runs in the US, Ireland, Frankfurt, Singapore and Sydney, or in your own AWS account. boat runs only in the EU (Germany, Finland and France).
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