DigitalOcean vs Contabo

DigitalOcean rents Droplets billed per second, next to managed databases, Kubernetes and firewalls in one cloud. Contabo rents a KVM server by the month, with a minimum term of one month, and you set it up yourself.

The companies and products

DigitalOcean

DigitalOcean is a general-purpose cloud, and Droplets are its Linux virtual machines.

A Droplet is a Linux VM you rent by size, with root, a public IP, local SSD and a monthly transfer allowance. You pick an image, then install and run your own software on it, next to DigitalOcean products like Kubernetes, managed databases, load balancers and cloud firewalls. It is a server host, not an agent sandbox, so this page compares the two where they overlap: giving an agent its own Linux machine. DigitalOcean also sells two separate products in preview, Harness Runtime for agents and MicroVMs, which are not Droplets.

Founded: 2012
Product: Linux-based virtual machines on virtualized hardware
CPU: Basic plans share a hyper-thread with other Droplets; dedicated CPU plans get the full hyper-thread
Regions: 16 datacenters in 13 regions across the US, Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia
Billing: Per second with a 60 second minimum, capped at 672 hours a month; powered-off Droplets are still billed
GPUs: Nvidia H100, H200, B300, L40S and RTX Ada cards, and AMD MI300X, MI325X, MI350X and MI355X
Agent product: Harness Runtime runs agents such as Claude Code and Codex in separate microVM sandboxes, apart from Droplets

Contabo

Contabo is a German hosting company, founded in Munich in 2003, that rents VPS, dedicated-core VDS, GPU and dedicated servers by the month.

A Contabo Cloud VPS is a KVM virtual machine with shared vCPU cores, a fixed RAM allocation, a static IPv4 and root access, which you order, pay for and then manage yourself. It is a VPS host, not a sandbox product: there is no per-second billing, no agent tooling and no managed HTTPS in front of the server. It fits people who want one cheap server that runs all month in a region of their choice.

Founded: 2003, in Munich, Germany (Contabo GmbH)
Isolation: KVM virtual servers; Cloud VPS shares vCPU cores at the hypervisor, Cloud VDS has dedicated cores
Billing: Monthly rent, minimum first term of one month; listed prices assume a 24-month term
Regions: 11 locations in 9 regions: EU, UK, three US sites, Singapore, Japan, India, Australia
Network: 1 static IPv4 and a /64 IPv6 subnet per server
GPUs: GPU VPS with an Nvidia RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell, in Europe and US Central
Provisioning: A few minutes after payment clears; orders can need identity checks

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. “39th cheapest of 368” means 38 of the other 367 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	DigitalOcean: price rank	Contabo: 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 starts and stops many machines a day: DigitalOcean bills that per second, Contabo bills each server for a whole month, and boat adds agents and free stops.	134th of 367, with limits $1,187 a month	79th of 367, with limits $660 a month	3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month
Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB All three can keep an assistant running for months, but on DigitalOcean and Contabo you install the agent, the HTTPS endpoint and the backups yourself; boat has them built in.	35th of 366, with limits $1,429 a month	95th of 366, with limits $330 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 DigitalOcean fits short code runs better than Contabo, with per-second billing and a 60 second minimum, while Contabo's monthly rent and boat's start limits make big bursts a compromise.	63rd of 345, with limits $60 a month	159th of 345, with limits $660 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 A new DigitalOcean team can run 3 Droplets at once and Contabo servers take minutes to provision and bill monthly, so neither fits hundreds of user sandboxes by default; boat does.	54th of 361, with limits $421 a month	153rd of 361, with limits $1,980 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	31st of 360, with limits $1,786 a month	108th of 360, with limits $6,600 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	106th of 364, with limits $357 a month	177th of 364, with limits $1,650 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 All three run Docker builds on a full VM; a Contabo runner is rented for the month whether busy or not, a Droplet bills per second, and boat bills only while a job runs.	146th of 377, with limits $171 a month	133rd cheapest of 377 $2,980 a month	4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month
24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Contabo ranks 1st for one box that runs all month, since its flat rent is very low; a Droplet and a boat machine also fit, and boat keeps the disk with snapshots every minute.	39th cheapest of 368 $48 a month	Cheapest of 368 $6.6 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 Droplets and Contabo servers are headless until you install and stream a desktop yourself; boat streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium for computer use.	117th of 369, with limits $263 a month	140th of 369, with limits $330 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	56th of 367, with limits $147 a month	232nd of 367, with limits $330 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	88th of 346, with limits $175 a month	258th of 346, with limits $330 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	69th of 338, with limits $1,786 a month	184th of 338, with limits $6,600 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 Many attackers in parallel need many machines at once: DigitalOcean caps a new team at 3 Droplets, Contabo rents each server for a month, and boat runs them side by side.	22nd of 360, with limits $199 a month	321st of 360, with limits $1,320 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	DigitalOcean	Contabo	boat
CPU	Basic plans share hyper-threads with other Droplets; dedicated CPU plans cost more	Cloud VPS shares vCPU cores; Cloud VDS has dedicated cores	Dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) hosts; 26.69 runs/s at 4 vCPU / 8 GB
Billing	Per second, 60 second minimum, capped at 672 hours a month; a powered-off Droplet bills in full	Monthly rent with a minimum first term of one month; listed prices assume a 24-month term	Per second from your plan credit; a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk
Machines at once	3 Droplets for a new team; 100 at Tier 5, reached by prepayment, paid invoices or a request	No published limit; big orders can wait on identity checks and stock	100 to 2,000 sandboxes by plan, plus a limit on starts per minute
Docker and nested virtualization	Root and Docker; nested VMs are mentioned in the live migration docs but not listed as a feature	Root, you install Docker; nested virtualization not supported on any VPS plan, only on Cloud VDS	Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine, documented
Snapshots	On-demand disk snapshots billed by size; paid scheduled backups	1 to 5 manual snapshot slots by plan, kept 30 days, restored in place; none on Cloud VDS	Automatic snapshots every minute and on stop
Fork	Take a live snapshot, then create new Droplets from it (disk, no memory)	No fork; custom images upload as ISO or QCOW2	Fork a running sandbox in one call (disk, no memory)
Desktop and computer use	Headless Linux; you install a desktop and VNC yourself	Headless server; a VNC console for setup and rescue	60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream
Coding agents	None on Droplets; the separate Harness Runtime product runs agents in microVMs	None built in; 1-Click images for apps like n8n, Ollama and OpenClaw	Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API
Keeping keys out of the machine	No credentials proxy; secrets live on the server	None; secrets live inside the server	AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register
Reaching the machine	Public IPv4 and IPv6 on any port; HTTPS needs your own certificates or a load balancer	Static IPv4 and a /64 IPv6, all ports; domains and TLS are yours to set up	HTTPS URLs with TLS for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; own IP
Outbound rules	Free cloud firewalls with outbound rules by IP range, Droplet or tag	No provider-side outbound allowlist	Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist
GPUs	Nvidia H100, H200, B300, L40S and RTX Ada, and AMD MI300X to MI355X	GPU VPS with an Nvidia RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell, in Europe and US Central	None
Windows	Linux Droplets	Windows Server 2016 to 2025 as a licensed add-on	No Windows guests; Wine for Windows apps
Regions	13 regions in the US, Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia	11 locations in the EU, UK, US, Singapore, Japan, India and Australia	EU only: Germany, Finland, France

Every feature Battleships tracks (43)

Feature	DigitalOcean	Contabo	boat
Full VM (own kernel)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Docker inside	Yes	Yes	Yes
Nested virtualization	Yes	No	Yes
Root	Yes	Yes	Yes
Systemd	Yes	Yes	Yes
Desktop GUI	No	No	Yes
Browser	No	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	Yes	No	Yes
Live fork (no pause)	Yes	No	Yes
Memory fork	No	No	No
Custom image (Docker or snapshot)	Yes	Yes	Yes
≥24 h sessions	Yes	Yes	Yes
Idle auto-stop	No	No	No
Wake on request	No	No	No
HTTPS preview URLs	No	No	Yes
Raw TCP inbound	Yes	Yes	Yes
Public IPv4	Yes	Yes	No
Egress allowlist	Yes	No	No
Secret proxy	No	No	Yes
Secret proxy for any API	No	No	Yes
Preinstalled agents	No	No	Yes
Agent harness API	No	No	Yes
MCP server	Yes	No	No
GPU	Yes	Yes	No
Windows	No	Yes	No
Arm64	No	No	No
Self-hosting	No	No	No
BYOC	No	No	No
Open source	No	No	No
Scoped API keys	Not published	Not published	Yes
Spend limits	No	Not published	Yes
Usage per sandbox (API)	Yes	No	Yes
Audit logs	Not published	Not published	No
SSO	Yes	No	No
SOC 2	Yes	No	No
HIPAA	Yes	No	No
EU data residency	Yes	Yes	Yes
Zero data retention	Not published	Not published	Yes

Performance

DigitalOceanNot measured

ContaboNot measured

boat26.69 runs/s

There is no comparable CPU measurement for DigitalOcean or Contabo: neither was part of the public StarSling benchmark run where boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. Both sell shared vCPU tiers (Droplet Basic plans, Contabo Cloud VPS) and dedicated ones, so results would depend on the plan you pick.

Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. DigitalOcean and Contabo 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	DigitalOcean, a month	Contabo, 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	$13 · Pay as you go	$7 · Usage account	$20 · $20/mo
One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month	$48 · Pay as you go	$7 · Usage account	$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	$629 · Pay as you go · with limits	$330 · Usage account	$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	$179 · Pay as you go · with limits	$1,980 · Usage account · 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	$357 · Pay as you go · with limits	$6,600 · Usage account · with limits	$2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits

DigitalOcean: Each Droplet size has a fixed hourly price, billed per second with a 60 second minimum and capped at 672 hours a month. Billing runs from create to destroy, even while powered off, and snapshots and backups cost extra.

Contabo: Contabo charges a flat monthly rent per server, busy or idle, with a minimum first term of one month and lower rates for longer terms. Each machine you need at the same time is a full month's rent.

Contabo: 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

A new DigitalOcean team can run only 3 Droplets at once, so 50 agents in parallel and sandboxes for your users do not fit until a higher tier; Tier 5 allows 100. Contabo publishes no account limit, but 300 user sandboxes or 1,000 short jobs at once mean renting that many servers for a full month, and big orders can wait on identity checks and stock. boat allows 100 to 2,000 sandboxes by plan, but its start limits queue 1,000 short jobs at once, so none of the three fits that burst without higher limits.

Scenario	DigitalOcean	Contabo	boat
One coding agent, workdays	None that bite	monthly cap reached	None that bite
One agent that never stops	None that bite	None that bite	None that bite
50 agents in parallel	Pay as you go: max 3 concurrent	monthly cap reached how many machines can run at once: limit not published, probably fine at 50 (the typical published limit is 50)	None that bite
Sandboxes for your users	Pay as you go: max 3 concurrent	not confirmed: how many machines can run at once (you need 300; the typical published limit is 50) monthly cap reached	None that bite
1,000 short jobs at once	Pay as you go: max 3 concurrent shared vCPUs on this tier, per-second with 672 h cap”): heavy, sustained CPU use can be slowed by other tenants	not confirmed: how many machines can run at once (you need 1,000; the typical published limit is 50) shared vCPUs on this tier: heavy, sustained CPU use can be slowed by other tenants monthly cap reached	max 2,400 starts/day (needs ~6,667) max 600 starts/hour (needs ~1,000) bursts above 90 starts/min are queued (a burst of 333 takes ~4 min to start)

Which one should you use?

Use DigitalOcean when

you need servers that live for hours and bill per second, a wide choice of GPUs, or machines next to managed databases, Kubernetes and firewall rules in one cloud.

Billed per second. Useful for machines that live hours, not months: Droplets bill per second with a 60 second minimum, while Contabo rents by the month.
A whole cloud around the server. Useful if the server must sit next to managed databases, Kubernetes, load balancers and outbound firewall rules in one account.
More GPU choices. Useful for model work: DigitalOcean rents Nvidia H100, H200, B300 and L40S and AMD MI300X to MI355X GPU Droplets.

Use Contabo when

you want one cheap server that runs all month, unmetered traffic, Windows Server, or a GPU box at a flat rent.

One server that runs all month. Useful for one always-on box: a flat monthly rent buys a 4 vCPU / 8 GB Cloud VPS with a static IPv4, for much less.
Traffic without a meter. Useful for heavy downloads: Contabo traffic is unlimited under fair use, while each Droplet has an allowance and bills overage.
Windows Server. Useful if you need Windows: Contabo offers Windows Server 2016 to 2025 as a licensed add-on on its VPS and VDS lines.

Where boat fits

DigitalOcean and Contabo both rent you a plain server to set up and keep running. If what you are really running is agents that start, stop and fork machines all day, boat gives each one a full VM from an API, saved every minute, with coding agents, a desktop and HTTPS ports ready.

Disk saved every minute, and free stops

An agent that wrecks its install loses at most a minute on boat. A powered-off Droplet bills in full and snapshots happen only when you ask; a Contabo Cloud VPS 4 has one manual snapshot slot and bills all month.

Coding agents driven from outside

boat preinstalls Claude Code, Codex and OpenCode with a prompt, steer and events API, and keeps real keys out through its credentials proxy. On a Droplet or Contabo server you install agents, script them over SSH and store keys on disk.

A desktop, /dev/kvm and HTTPS ready

Computer-use agents need a screen and emulators need /dev/kvm. Both rivals ship headless servers, Contabo has no nested virtualization on VPS plans, and HTTPS on either means your own certificates or a load balancer.

Use boat when agents start, stop and fork machines all day: each one gets a full VM in seconds, saved every minute, with coding agents, a desktop and HTTPS ports you drive from outside. Compare it one to one: boat vs DigitalOcean and boat vs Contabo.

Questions people ask

Is DigitalOcean cheaper than Contabo?

For a machine that runs all the time, no: one 4 vCPU / 8 GB agent that never stops comes to $7 a month on Contabo, $48 on DigitalOcean and $26 on boat. For one agent on workdays it is $7 on Contabo, $13 on DigitalOcean and $20 on boat. For 50 agents in parallel, boat comes to $317 against $330 on Contabo and $629 on DigitalOcean, which also needs a higher tier.

Which is faster, DigitalOcean or Contabo?

Neither has a comparable measurement: they were not in the StarSling benchmark run where boat scored 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. Both share vCPUs on their cheaper tiers (Droplet Basic, Contabo Cloud VPS) and sell dedicated cores for more.

Can DigitalOcean and Contabo run Docker and nested VMs?

Both give root on a KVM VM, so Docker works. DigitalOcean mentions nested VMs in its live migration docs but does not list them as a feature, and Contabo does not support nested virtualization on any VPS plan, only on Cloud VDS. boat documents Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine.

Does Contabo bill by the hour like DigitalOcean?

No. Contabo rents servers by the month with a minimum first term of one month, while DigitalOcean bills Droplets per second with a 60 second minimum. A powered-off Droplet still bills in full until you destroy it; on boat a stopped sandbox costs nothing.

Can I run 50 agents at once on either?

A new DigitalOcean team is limited to 3 Droplets at once and needs Tier 5 for 100. Contabo publishes no limit, but each server is a full month's rent and big orders can wait on checks and stock. boat runs 50 in parallel on its plans.

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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