Depot vs Codemagic
Depot is general CI infrastructure: drop-in GitHub Actions runners with a shared fast cache and quick Docker builds. Codemagic is CI/CD for mobile apps: each build gets a fresh Mac, Linux or Windows machine, signs the app and can publish it to the stores.
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.
Codemagic
Codemagic is a cloud CI/CD service built for mobile developers: it builds, tests and publishes iOS, Android, Flutter and React Native apps.
You describe a workflow in codemagic.yaml, and each build runs on a new virtual machine: an Apple silicon Mac mini with Xcode, an Ubuntu Linux machine, or a Windows machine. The machine is destroyed when the build finishes, and the result can go straight to App Store Connect, Google Play and other stores. It is built for app teams that want builds and code signing handled for them; it is a different kind of product from an agent sandbox, and the two overlap only where an agent needs a machine for a short, scripted job.
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 | Codemagic: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Neither keeps a machine between jobs: a Depot runner ends with its job and a Codemagic build stops within 120 minutes, so an agent building an app over days fits better on boat. | 331st of 367, with limits $8,688 a month | 362nd of 367, with limits $32,718 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 and Codemagic builds stop within 120 minutes, while boat has no session cap on paid plans. | 86th of 366, with limits $13,148 a month | 364th of 366, with limits $98,550 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 | 337th of 345, with limits $9,147 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 to be reachable from outside; neither Depot nor Codemagic documents inbound ports, while boat serves HTTPS on up to 50 ports and raw TCP. | 318th of 361, with limits $3,713 a month | 349th of 361, with limits $28,497 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 | 336th of 360, with limits $135 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 | 363rd of 364, with limits $10,947 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 Depot is made for general CI, a one-line runs-on change with a shared cache, while Codemagic's smallest Linux machine is 8 vCPU / 32 GB and its focus is mobile builds; boat gives you a VM you register as your own runner. | 125th cheapest of 377 $1,736 a month | 207th of 377, with limits $3,387 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB A dev box has to keep its state overnight; Depot and Codemagic both throw the machine away after the job, while a stopped boat sandbox keeps its disk and costs nothing. | 199th of 368, with limits $534 a month | 191st of 368, with limits $333 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 Codemagic lets a person open VNC or RDP on a build machine to debug it and Depot has no desktop product; boat streams a 60fps desktop an agent can drive. | 321st of 369, with limits $2,600 a month | 71st of 369, with limits $10,047 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 | 151st of 367, with limits $10,947 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 | 148th of 346, with limits $13,310 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 | 337th of 338, with limits $263 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 | 95th of 360, with limits $6,672 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 macOS by the minute: Depot ranks 10th and Codemagic ranks 32nd of 36 here, and boat runs Linux only, so it does not fit. | 10th of 36, with limits $248 a month | 32nd of 36, with limits $1,952 a month | Can't run it |
Key features
| Feature | Depot | Codemagic | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | GitHub Actions runners, Depot CI and fast Docker builds, plus agent sandboxes and a beta Sandbox SDK | CI/CD for mobile apps: builds start from codemagic.yaml or the API | VMs for AI agents that you keep, stop, fork and host from |
| How long a machine lives | Runners end with the job; Sandbox SDK default 120 minutes, at most 24 hours | 120 minutes per build on Free, Pay as you go and Fixed price; custom on Enterprise | 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 | Machine and disk are deleted; only per-workflow dependency caches carry over | Snapshots every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk |
| Fork | No fork or clone API | No fork; every build starts from a stock image | Fork a running sandbox into copies |
| Operating systems | Linux x64 and Arm from 2 to 64 CPUs, Windows Server 2025 and 2022, macOS 26, 15 and 14 | macOS on Apple silicon Mac minis, Linux X2 (8 vCPU / 32 GB), Windows | Linux only (x86-64); Wine for Windows apps |
| Mac machines | macOS runners at 8 CPU / 24 GB; capacity not fully elastic, so jobs can queue | Mac mini M2 (8-core CPU / 12 GB) and M4 (10-core CPU / 16 GB) with Xcode and iOS simulators preinstalled | None |
| App store publishing | Not built in | Code signing and publishing to App Store Connect, TestFlight, Google Play and more | Not built in; you script it yourself |
| CI integration and cache | Drop-in GitHub Actions runners with a shared cache up to 1000 MiB/s, plus fast Docker builds | Its own workflows in codemagic.yaml with per-workflow dependency caches | A VM you can register as your own runner; no managed CI cache |
| Builds at once | Says its runners have no concurrency limits | One build at a time on Pay as you go, plus $49 a month per extra build; fixed annual plans include 3 | Plans start at 100 running sandboxes; starts are capped per minute, hour and day |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Docker on Linux runners; /dev/kvm only on Depot CI sandboxes, not on GitHub Actions runners | Docker and Android emulators on Linux; no nested virtualization on macOS | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine |
| Reaching the machine | SSH into a running Depot CI job for debugging; no documented inbound ports or URLs | Temporary SSH, VNC or RDP through a gateway, turned on per build | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; SSH |
| Coding agents | Claude Code only, started and resumed with the depot claude command | codemagic-init helps agents on your own computer; nothing runs agents on build machines | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Keeping keys out of the machine | Secrets are passed into the job or sandbox as environment variables | Encrypted environment variables delivered into the build machine while it runs | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; real keys never enter the sandbox |
| Regions | United States, and the European Union if a project chooses the EU | US data centers; dedicated macOS hosts in the EU on request | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Depot | Codemagic | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Systemd | No | No | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | Yes | Yes |
| Browser | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | No | Yes |
| SSH | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | No | Yes |
| Pause/resume | No | No | 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 | No | 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 | No | Yes |
| Agent harness API | Yes | No | Yes |
| MCP server | No | No | No |
| GPU | Yes | No | No |
| Windows | Yes | Yes | No |
| Arm64 | Yes | Yes | No |
| Self-hosting | No | No | No |
| BYOC | Yes | No | 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 | Yes | 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 for Depot or Codemagic: neither was in the public StarSling benchmark run where boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. Codemagic also sells only fixed sizes, such as Linux X2 at 8 vCPU / 32 GB, so we do not compare CPU speed here.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Depot and Codemagic 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 | Codemagic, 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 | $333 · Free (individual) · 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 | $333 · Free (individual) · 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 | $21,531 · Pay as you go (team, 4 concurrent) · 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 | $12,297 · Pay as you go (team, 4 concurrent) · 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 | $27,147 · Pay as you go (team, 4 concurrent) · 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.
Codemagic: Codemagic bills build minutes: $0.095 a minute on a Mac mini M2, $0.114 on an M4, and $0.045 on Linux X2 or Windows. Each extra build at once costs $49 a month, and fixed annual plans start at $3,990 a year for unlimited minutes on 3 builds at once.
Codemagic: 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
Neither Depot nor Codemagic fits the agent scenarios, because both are CI services whose machines end with the job. On Depot the number of machines is not the problem, since it says there are no concurrency limits; a Sandbox SDK sandbox ends after 24 hours at most, so an always-on agent needs restarts. Codemagic stops every build within 120 minutes, deletes its files, and starts with one build at a time, so 50 agents or 300 user sandboxes mean buying dozens of $49 build slots of 8 vCPU / 32 GB each. On boat the 1,000 short jobs burst is the one that does not fit, because starts are capped per minute, hour and day and the jobs queue.
| Scenario | Depot | Codemagic | 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 across Linux, Windows and macOS, with many jobs running at once.
- Faster GitHub Actions with one line. Useful if you already use GitHub Actions: change one runs-on label and jobs use Depot's runners and fast shared cache.
- Many jobs at once, many sizes. Useful for big CI fleets: Depot says its runners have no concurrency limits, with Linux sizes from 2 to 64 CPUs.
- Docker builds and egress rules. Useful if you build container images or must limit outbound traffic on Linux runners to chosen hosts.
Use Codemagic when
you build, sign and publish iOS, Android or Flutter apps and want Macs with Xcode ready for builds that finish within two hours.
- Macs set up for iOS. Useful if you build iOS apps: Codemagic runs Apple silicon Mac minis with Xcode and iOS simulators ready.
- A full mobile release pipeline. Useful if you ship mobile apps: Codemagic signs builds and publishes to App Store Connect, TestFlight and Google Play.
- Free Mac minutes to start. Useful for a solo developer: the individual plan includes 500 free Mac mini M2 minutes a month.
Where boat fits
Depot and Codemagic are both CI services, built to start a machine, run one job and throw it away. If what you are really running is agents that install tools, build for hours and serve what they make, look at boat. It gives each agent a full Linux VM that stays, though it has no macOS and no managed CI pipeline.
A machine that stays
A Depot runner ends with its job and a Codemagic build stops within 120 minutes, and both delete the machine. An agent loses its installs and work each time, or you rebuild it on every run from caches. boat keeps the disk, snapshots every minute, and forks.
Apps your agents can serve
Neither Depot nor Codemagic documents a way to open a port to outside traffic; you get SSH, or VNC and RDP, to debug. An agent that builds a web app cannot show it. boat gives HTTPS URLs on up to 50 ports plus raw TCP.
Agents you drive from outside
Depot starts only Claude Code with its CLI, and Codemagic runs no agents on build machines; both pass keys in as environment variables the agent can read. boat preinstalls several agents with a prompt, steer and events API, and its credentials proxy keeps keys out.
Use boat when your agents need a machine that stays: a full Linux VM that keeps its disk, forks, serves apps on HTTPS ports and comes with coding agents you drive from outside. Compare it one to one: boat vs Depot and boat vs Codemagic.
Questions people ask
Is Depot cheaper than Codemagic?
In most scenarios we priced, yes, though neither is made for agent work. 50 agents in parallel come to $5,710 a month on Depot against $21,531 on Codemagic, and one coding agent on workdays comes to $122 against $333. One agent running all month is the exception: $534 on Depot against $333 on Codemagic.
Which is better for iOS builds?
Both rent macOS by the minute. Codemagic is built around mobile apps, with Xcode and iOS simulators on Mac minis plus signing and store publishing. Depot's macOS runners plug into GitHub Actions, which suits teams whose CI already lives there.
Which is faster?
We have no comparable CPU measurement for either. Neither was in the StarSling benchmark run where boat did 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB.
Can Depot or Codemagic run Docker?
Yes, both run Docker on their Linux machines. Codemagic also runs Android emulators on Linux, but not on macOS, which has no nested virtualization. Depot offers /dev/kvm only on Depot CI sandboxes, not on its GitHub Actions runners, while boat has Docker and /dev/kvm on every machine.
How long can a build run?
Codemagic stops a build after 120 minutes on Free, Pay as you go and Fixed price plans, with custom limits on Enterprise. Depot runners run until the job ends, and its Sandbox SDK sandboxes last 24 hours at most. boat has no session cap on paid plans.
Can I run AI coding agents on Depot or Codemagic?
Depot sells remote sandboxes that run Claude Code in a container. On Codemagic an agent can only run as a step inside a build, which ends within 120 minutes. On boat several coding agents are preinstalled in a VM that keeps its disk, and you prompt and steer them through an API.
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