Depot vs Ubicloud
Depot is CI and build infrastructure: drop-in GitHub Actions runners with a fast cache, a fresh machine for every job. Ubicloud is an open source cloud that rents plain Linux VMs, managed Postgres, Kubernetes and cheap CI runners, and you can run it on your own servers.
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.
Ubicloud
Ubicloud is an open source cloud that runs VMs, managed Postgres, Kubernetes and GitHub Actions runners on leased bare-metal servers.
You rent Linux VMs (Standard with dedicated CPU, or cheaper Burstable with shared CPU) from Ubicloud's managed service, or run the same AGPL code on your own servers. Around the VMs it offers private subnets, an inbound firewall, load balancers, managed PostgreSQL, Kubernetes, GPU VMs, inference endpoints and cheap GitHub Actions runners. It is general infrastructure, not an agent sandbox, so this page compares the two where they overlap: giving an agent its own Linux machine.
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 | Ubicloud: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month An agent that builds an app over days loses its machine on Depot when the job ends, pays for idle time on Ubicloud when stopped, and keeps its disk for free on a stopped boat sandbox. | 331st of 367, with limits $8,688 a month | 126th of 367, with limits $1,136 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB | 86th of 366, with limits $13,148 a month | 154th of 366, with limits $1,139 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 Ubicloud fits short bursts best of the three: cheap burstable VMs billed per minute with no plan fee, while boat's start limits make big bursts a compromise. | 311th of 345, with limits $1,188 a month | 59th of 345, with limits $52 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 a way in: Depot documents no inbound access, Ubicloud gives a public IP and leaves TLS to you, and boat serves HTTPS ports and raw TCP. | 318th of 361, with limits $3,713 a month | 53rd of 361, with limits $390 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 | 234th of 360, with limits $1,560 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 | 31st cheapest of 364 $624 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 sell GitHub Actions runners: Depot adds macOS, Windows and a shared fast cache, Ubicloud bills x64 and arm64 runners per minute of job time, and boat gives you a full VM to register as your own runner. | 125th cheapest of 377 $1,736 a month | 28th cheapest of 377 $300 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB A Depot runner ends with its job, so a dev box that lives all month fits Ubicloud or boat; boat keeps the disk with snapshots every minute and costs less here. | 199th of 368, with limits $534 a month | 67th cheapest of 368 $91 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 Depot nor Ubicloud has a desktop product; boat streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium and computer use. | 321st of 369, with limits $2,600 a month | 132nd of 369, with limits $312 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 | 188th of 367, with limits $156 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 | 165th of 346, with limits $78 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 | 60th of 338, with limits $1,573 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 | 129th of 360, with limits $81 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 Ubicloud fits: it rents Nvidia GPU VMs once support enables them, and boat has no GPUs. | Can't run it | 93rd of 98, with limits $795 a month | Can't run it |
| macOS agents 5 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 1,000 sessions of 20 min a month Only Depot fits: it rents macOS 26, 15 and 14 runners, while Ubicloud and boat run Linux only. | 10th of 36, with limits $248 a month | Can't run it | Can't run it |
Key features
| Feature | Depot | Ubicloud | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | CI runners and fast Docker builds for GitHub Actions, plus agent sandboxes and a beta Sandbox SDK | An open source cloud: general VMs, managed Postgres, Kubernetes, GPU VMs and CI runners | VMs for AI agents that you keep, stop, fork and host from |
| GitHub Actions runners | Drop-in runners with a one-line runs-on change and a shared cache up to 1000 MiB/s | Managed x64 and arm64 runners billed per minute of job time, with a $2.50 monthly credit | A VM you can register as your own runner, with Docker and /dev/kvm; no managed CI cache |
| Isolation | A fresh EC2 instance per CI job, thrown away after; agent sessions in an isolated container | Every VM is a full KVM guest (Cloud Hypervisor) with its own kernel | Every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel |
| How long a machine lives | Runners end with the job; Sandbox SDK default 120 minutes, at most 24 hours | A VM runs until you stop or delete it | No session cap on paid plans; runs until you stop it |
| Stopping | Runners are never reused, so there is nothing to stop and resume | A stopped VM keeps its resources reserved and billing continues as if it were running | A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk |
| Snapshots | Agent sandboxes keep files and the Claude Code conversation; Sandbox SDK snapshots are coming soon | Machine images of a stopped VM's disk, made by hand; no automatic snapshots | Automatic snapshots every minute and on stop |
| Fork | No fork or clone API | Stop the VM, capture a machine image (single disk up to 40 GiB), then boot new VMs from it | Fork a running sandbox into a copy in one call |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Docker on Linux runners; /dev/kvm only on Depot CI sandboxes, not on GitHub Actions runners | Root over SSH, so Docker installs like on any Linux VM; nested virtualization is not documented | 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 | Free public IPv6, public IPv4 for $3 a month; for HTTPS the VM runs TLS itself | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; own IP |
| Coding agents | Claude Code only, started and resumed with the depot claude command | None; you install and drive agents yourself, for example over SSH | 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 | No credentials proxy; secrets live on the VM | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; real keys never enter the sandbox |
| Desktop and computer use | No desktop or computer-use product | None; you install a desktop and browser on the VM yourself | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control |
| Operating systems | Linux x64 and Arm, Windows Server 2025 and 2022, and macOS 26, 15 and 14 | Linux VMs; x64 and arm64 CI runners | Linux only, on AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts; Wine for Windows apps |
| GPUs, self-hosting and regions | GPU runners and Depot Managed in your own AWS account on the Business plan; US and EU regions | Nvidia GPU VMs on request; AGPL code you can run yourself; Germany, Finland and Virginia (US) | No GPUs, managed service only; EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Depot | Ubicloud | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | No | Not published | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | No | Yes |
| Browser | Yes | No | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | No | Yes |
| SSH | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | No | No | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | No | 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 | Yes | No | No |
| Wake on request | No | No | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | No | No | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | No | Not published | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | No | Yes | 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 | Yes | No |
| Windows | Yes | No | No |
| Arm64 | Yes | Yes | No |
| Self-hosting | No | Yes | No |
| BYOC | Yes | Yes | No |
| Open source | No | Yes | 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 Ubicloud: 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. On Ubicloud, speed would also depend on the family you pick, since Standard VMs have dedicated CPU and Burstable VMs get half of each vCPU with short bursts.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Depot and Ubicloud 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 | Ubicloud, 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 | $22 · Usage | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $534 · Developer · with limits | $91 · Usage | $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 | $1,098 · Usage | $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 | $156 · Usage | $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 | $312 · Usage · 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.
Ubicloud: Ubicloud has no plan fee and bills each VM per minute for as long as it exists, running or stopped; a public IPv4 adds $3 a month. CI runners bill per minute of job time, with a $2.50 monthly credit.
Ubicloud: 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; what bites is that a runner lives for one CI job and a Sandbox SDK sandbox ends within 24 hours, so an agent that never stops needs restarts. Ubicloud caps the vCPU a project can run at 32, then 256 once it has paid an invoice, so 300 user sandboxes of 2 vCPU or 1,000 short jobs at once need a raise from support, and its cheap burstable shape guarantees only half of each vCPU. On boat, the 1,000-job burst is the hard one: starts are capped per minute, hour and day, so jobs queue and need more starts per day than the $2,000 plan allows.
| Scenario | Depot | Ubicloud | 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 |
|
|
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Which one should you use?
Use Depot when
you want faster GitHub Actions and Docker builds with a one-line change, or need macOS or Windows runners for CI.
- macOS and Windows runners. Useful if you build or test for Apple or Windows: Depot rents macOS and Windows Server runners by the minute.
- Drop-in CI with a fast cache. Useful if you want faster GitHub Actions: change one runs-on label and jobs use Depot's runners, shared cache and Docker builds.
- Outbound rules and no concurrency limits. Useful if jobs must only reach chosen hosts: Depot filters outbound traffic by IP, CIDR or hostname, and says runners have no concurrency limits.
Use Ubicloud when
you want an open source cloud you can also run yourself, GPU VMs, cheap per-minute CI runners, or long-lived VMs next to managed Postgres and Kubernetes.
- Open source you can run yourself. Useful if you want the cloud on your own servers: Ubicloud's whole stack is AGPL code you can deploy on leased bare metal.
- GPUs on request. Useful if your jobs train or serve models: Ubicloud rents Nvidia A100, B200 and RTX PRO 6000 VMs once support enables them.
- Long-lived VMs in a whole cloud. Useful if a VM must run for weeks next to managed Postgres and Kubernetes, billed per minute with no plan fee.
Where boat fits
Depot and Ubicloud are both built for CI and general infrastructure, not for agents. If what you are really running is agents that build, test and serve apps, boat gives each one a full VM with its own kernel, Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm that keeps its disk, forks while running and has coding agents built in.
A machine that stays, and stops for free
A Depot runner is thrown away after each job and a Sandbox SDK sandbox ends within 24 hours. A stopped Ubicloud VM keeps billing, so you pay for idle time or delete it and lose the disk. boat snapshots every minute and forks running sandboxes.
Apps your agents can show
Depot documents no inbound ports, so an agent's dev server cannot be reached. Ubicloud gives a public IP, but you set up TLS on every VM yourself. boat serves token-protected HTTPS URLs on up to 50 ports, plus raw TCP.
Agents, keys and a desktop built in
Depot runs only Claude Code and passes secrets as environment variables; a Ubicloud VM starts as an empty OS image with keys on the VM. boat ships coding agents you drive from outside, an AI credentials proxy and a 60fps desktop.
Use boat when your agents need a machine that stays: a full VM that keeps its disk, stops for free, forks while running, 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 Ubicloud.
Questions people ask
Is Depot cheaper than Ubicloud?
For the CI runners use case we priced, no: it comes to $1,736 a month on Depot and $300 on Ubicloud, and $86 on boat. For one agent running all month it is $534 on Depot, $91 on Ubicloud and $26 on boat, though Depot is a CI runner and was not made for that job.
Which is faster, Depot or Ubicloud?
We have no comparable CPU measurement for either. boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in the public StarSling benchmark, but Depot and Ubicloud were not in that run.
Can Depot and Ubicloud run Docker?
Yes. Depot's Linux runners have Docker, and /dev/kvm only on Depot CI sandboxes. A Ubicloud VM gives you root over SSH, so Docker installs like on any Linux VM, but nested virtualization is not documented. boat has Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine.
Do I pay for a stopped Ubicloud VM?
Yes. Ubicloud says a stopped VM keeps its resources reserved and billing continues as if it were running, so you delete it to stop paying. Depot runners are thrown away after each job. On boat, a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Which one has macOS or GPUs?
Depot rents macOS 26, 15 and 14 runners and Windows Server runners, and GPU runners on its Business plan. Ubicloud rents Nvidia GPU VMs on request but has no macOS. boat runs Linux only, with no GPUs.
Where does my data run?
Depot runs in the United States, and in the European Union if a project chooses the EU. Ubicloud runs VMs in Germany, Finland and Virginia, plus GPUs in Istanbul. boat runs only in the EU (Germany, Finland and France), with EU data residency.
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