DigitalOcean vs IONOS Cloud
DigitalOcean and IONOS Cloud both rent plain Linux VMs that you set up yourself. DigitalOcean reaches more of the world and publishes its account limits, while IONOS Cloud is a German cloud with lower list prices, Windows Server and limits you raise through support.
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.
IONOS Cloud
IONOS Cloud is the public cloud of IONOS, a German hosting company in the United Internet group. It is a hyperscaler-style IaaS cloud, not an agent sandbox.
You rent KVM virtual machines: Cubes (fixed sizes from 1 to 16 vCPU with a local NVMe disk, billed by the minute), vCPU servers up to 60 vCPU and 230 GB of RAM, Dedicated Core servers and H200 GPU VMs. You build them in the Data Center Designer or through the Cloud API, SDKs and Terraform, next to block storage, private networks, firewalls and managed services. It is for teams that want to run their own servers in Germany, the rest of Europe or the US, and set up everything on them themselves.
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 | IONOS Cloud: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Both give a root Linux VM where Docker runs, but neither comes with coding agents or snapshots on a schedule, so the agent setup is yours to build; boat has it ready. | 134th of 367, with limits $1,187 a month | 64th of 367, with limits $492 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 fits on a Droplet or an IONOS VM, but on both you wire up the agent, its keys and its endpoint yourself. | 35th of 366, with limits $1,429 a month | 107th of 366, with limits $540 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 Both bill short runs finely, DigitalOcean per second with a 60 second minimum and IONOS Cubes by the minute, which suits small bursts better than boat's start limits. | 63rd of 345, with limits $60 a month | 53rd of 345, with limits $27 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 IONOS does not publish its limit, so 300 user sandboxes need a raised limit on both; boat allows 100 to 2,000 by plan. | 54th of 361, with limits $421 a month | 35th of 361, with limits $182 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 | 9th of 360, with limits $740 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 | 93rd of 364, with limits $137 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 IONOS Cloud ranks 1st of 377 for CI runners thanks to low per-minute prices, while DigitalOcean ranks 146th because a new team is held to 3 Droplets. | 146th of 377, with limits $171 a month | Cheapest of 377 $60 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB A 24/7 dev box is what both are built for; IONOS comes to $20 a month and DigitalOcean $48 a month for 4 vCPU / 8 GB. | 39th cheapest of 368 $48 a month | 9th cheapest of 368 $20 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 streams a desktop; on both you install a desktop and VNC yourself, while boat streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium and computer use. | 117th of 369, with limits $263 a month | 86th of 369, with limits $137 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 | 156th of 367, with limits $74 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 | 153rd of 346, with limits $40 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 | 39th of 338, with limits $897 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 | 22nd of 360, with limits $199 a month | 105th of 360, with limits $38 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 DigitalOcean rents a wide range of Nvidia and AMD GPU Droplets, IONOS rents NVIDIA H200 VMs, and boat has no GPUs. | 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 | IONOS Cloud | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | A general Linux VM with its own kernel that you set up and run yourself | A KVM server with its own kernel (Cubes, vCPU or Dedicated Core), plus storage, networks and managed services | A full VM with its own kernel, made for agents and driven through an API |
| CPU | Basic plans share hyper-threads with other Droplets; dedicated CPU plans cost more; no comparable measurement | vCPU and Dedicated Core servers; CPU model varies by location; no comparable measurement | Dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) hosts; 26.69 runs/s at 4 vCPU / 8 GB |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Root and Docker; nested VMs are mentioned in the live migration docs but not listed as a feature | Root Linux VM where you install Docker; running your own VMs inside is not documented | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine, documented |
| Stopping a machine | A powered-off Droplet is billed in full; you destroy it to stop paying | Suspended Cubes keep billing; a stopped vCPU server stops compute billing while its disks keep billing | A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk |
| Snapshots | On-demand disk snapshots billed by size; paid scheduled backups from every 4 hours to weekly | Manual full snapshots of one volume, usable only in the same location | Automatic snapshots every minute and on stop |
| Fork | Take a live snapshot, then create new Droplets from it (disk, no memory) | Snapshot a disk, then create new VMs from it (disk, no memory) | Fork a running sandbox in one call (disk, no memory) |
| Reaching the machine | Public IPv4 and IPv6 on any port; HTTPS needs your own certificates or a load balancer | Public IP on each VM and any port you open; reserved IPv4 billed per 30 days; load balancers | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; own IP |
| Desktop and computer use | Headless Linux; you install a desktop and VNC yourself | None; a remote console for fixing servers | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream |
| Coding agents | None on Droplets; the separate Harness Runtime product (in preview) runs agents in microVMs | None in the VM; an MCP server lets your own AI client manage IONOS resources | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Keeping keys out of the machine | No credentials proxy; you put secrets on the server yourself | No credentials proxy; you put secrets into the VM yourself | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register; switch a credential to another account when credits run out |
| Outbound rules | Free cloud firewalls with outbound rules by IP range, Droplet or tag | Network Security Groups with egress rules by IP, port and protocol | Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist |
| GPUs | Nvidia H100, H200, B300, L40S and RTX Ada, and AMD MI300X to MI355X | NVIDIA H200 PCIe VMs, 1 to 8 GPUs | None |
| Windows | Linux Droplets only | Windows Server VMs with a licence billed per vCPU | No Windows guests; Wine for Windows apps |
| Regions | 13 regions in the US, Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia | Germany, UK, France, Spain and the US | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | DigitalOcean | IONOS Cloud | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Systemd | Yes | Not published | 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 | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | Yes | Yes | 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 | Yes | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | Yes | Yes | No |
| Egress allowlist | Yes | Yes | 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 | Yes | 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 | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Not published | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Not published | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | No | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for DigitalOcean or IONOS Cloud: neither was part of the public StarSling benchmark run. boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB there, on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts. On both clouds, results would depend on the plan and location 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 IONOS Cloud 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 | IONOS Cloud, 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 | $5 · Pay as you go | $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 | $20 · Pay as you go | $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 | $240 · Pay as you go | $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 | $74 · Pay as you go · 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 | $148 · Pay as you go · 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, including while the Droplet is powered off, and snapshots and backups cost extra.
IONOS Cloud: IONOS bills Cubes by the minute at a fixed rate per size with the NVMe disk included, and vCPU servers per core and per GB of RAM. Suspended Cubes keep billing, so the low workday figure assumes you snapshot and delete the machine each night; traffic past 2 TB a month costs extra.
IONOS Cloud: 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 is on Tier 1: 3 Droplets at once, so 50 agents in parallel and sandboxes for your users do not fit until you reach a higher tier, such as Tier 5 with 100 Droplets. IONOS does not publish how many machines a fresh account can run, so 50 agents probably fit but 300 user sandboxes and 1,000 short jobs at once are not confirmed until IONOS Cloud Support raises the limits. On boat the limit is a sandbox count (100 to 2,000 by plan) plus starts per minute, so the 1,000-job burst gets queued and fits on none of the three.
| Scenario | DigitalOcean | IONOS Cloud | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays | None that bite | None that bite | None that bite |
| One agent that never stops | None that bite | None that bite | 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 DigitalOcean when
you need regions in Asia, Australia or Canada, a wide choice of GPUs, or account limits you can plan around.
- Regions around the world. Useful if your users are in Asia, Australia or Canada: Droplets run in 13 regions, and IONOS stops at Europe and the US.
- More GPU choice. Useful if you need more than one kind of GPU: DigitalOcean rents many Nvidia and AMD cards, and IONOS rents H200s only.
- Account limits you can read. Useful if you plan to scale: DigitalOcean publishes its tiers, up to 100 Droplets, while IONOS asks you to contact support.
Use IONOS Cloud when
you want lower list prices, Windows Server, or a German provider with data centers in Europe and the US.
- Lower list prices. Useful if the bill matters most: IONOS comes in below DigitalOcean in every scenario we priced for plain VMs.
- Windows Server. Useful if some of your work needs Windows: IONOS runs Windows Server VMs, and Droplets are Linux only.
- A German cloud with 2 TB of free traffic. Useful if you want a European provider: IONOS is German, and the first 2 TB of outgoing traffic each month is free.
Where boat fits
If what you are really running is AI agents, both DigitalOcean and IONOS Cloud hand you an empty server and leave the agent setup to you. boat gives each agent a full VM that is ready to work, with coding agents, a desktop, HTTPS ports and snapshots every minute built in. Stay with either cloud for GPUs, Windows or regions outside the EU.
Agents and a desktop already inside
On a Droplet or an IONOS VM you install, update and supervise each agent, desktop and VNC server yourself. DigitalOcean's Harness Runtime is a separate preview product, and IONOS's MCP server only manages IONOS resources.
Free stops with the disk saved every minute
A powered-off Droplet bills in full and suspended IONOS Cubes keep billing, so idle agents cost money. The workaround on both is snapshot, delete and rebuild, losing whatever changed since the last snapshot.
Real keys stay out of the machine
Neither cloud has a credentials proxy, so you copy real API keys into each VM, and a prompt injection that reads them gets the real ones. boat's proxy keeps them outside and can switch accounts when credits run out.
Use boat when your agents need a ready machine: coding agents you drive from outside, a desktop and browser, keys kept outside, and snapshots every minute with free stops. Compare it one to one: boat vs DigitalOcean and boat vs IONOS Cloud.
Questions people ask
Is DigitalOcean cheaper than IONOS Cloud?
No, IONOS's list prices are lower in every scenario we priced. One agent that never stops comes to $20 a month on IONOS against $48 on DigitalOcean, and 50 agents in parallel come to $240 on IONOS against $629 on DigitalOcean, which also needs a higher tier than a new team gets.
Which is faster, DigitalOcean or IONOS Cloud?
We have no comparable measurement for either one. DigitalOcean's Basic plans share hyper-threads with other Droplets, and IONOS's CPU model varies by location, so it depends on the plan you pick. boat measured 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB.
Can DigitalOcean and IONOS Cloud run Docker?
Yes, both give you a root Linux VM where Docker runs. Nested virtualization is only mentioned in DigitalOcean's live migration docs and is not documented on IONOS. On boat, Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm are documented on every machine.
Do I pay for a stopped machine?
On DigitalOcean, yes: a powered-off Droplet is billed in full until you destroy it. On IONOS, suspended Cubes keep billing, while a stopped vCPU server stops compute billing but keeps billing its disks. On boat, a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Where do DigitalOcean and IONOS Cloud run?
DigitalOcean has 13 regions in the US, Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia. IONOS runs in Germany, the UK, France, Spain and the US. boat runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France.
Do either of them have an agent sandbox?
DigitalOcean has Harness Runtime, a separate preview product that runs agents such as Claude Code and Codex in microVMs, apart from Droplets. IONOS has an MCP server for managing its resources, but nothing that runs agents for you. boat ships coding agents in every sandbox.
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