DigitalOcean vs Linode

DigitalOcean and Linode both rent plain Linux VMs that you set up and keep running yourself, at the same price for a 4 vCPU / 8 GB machine. DigitalOcean bills by the second but caps a new team at 3 Droplets, while Linode bills by the full hour and runs in more than twice as many regions.

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

Linode

Linode is a general-purpose cloud, now sold as Akamai Cloud, and a Linode is one of its Linux virtual machines.

A Linode is a Linux VM you rent by size, with root, a public IP, local disk and, on older plans, a monthly transfer allowance. You pick a distribution, then install and run your own software on it, next to Akamai Cloud products like Kubernetes, block storage, NodeBalancers, VPCs 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.

Founded: 2003; Akamai completed its acquisition of Linode in March 2022
Product: Compute Instances: virtual machines for general-purpose Linux workloads
CPU: Shared CPU plans keep costs down for dev and low-traffic servers; Dedicated CPU plans give competition-free guaranteed CPU
Regions: 33 compute regions in 15 countries across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia
Billing: Hourly, rounded up to the next hour; powered-off instances are still billed; most plans have a monthly cap, but G8 and GPU plans have none since July 2026
GPUs: Nvidia RTX 4000 Ada, RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell (on request) and Quadro RTX 6000; HGX B300 through sales
Compliance: Akamai's compliance programs list SOC 2 and HIPAA

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	Linode: price rank	boat: price rank
Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month	134th of 367, with limits $1,187 a month	145th of 367, with limits $1,292 a month	3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month
Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB DigitalOcean ranks 35th and Linode 164th for an always-on assistant, but on both you build the agent setup, the HTTPS link and the backups yourself; boat ranks 5th with them built in.	35th of 366, with limits $1,429 a month	164th of 366, with limits $1,200 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 runs far better than Linode: it bills per second with a 60 second minimum, while Linode bills every run as at least a full hour.	63rd of 345, with limits $60 a month	174th of 345, with limits $1,200 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 Linode bills each 10-minute session as a full hour, so neither suits user sandboxes out of the box; boat ranks 1st.	54th of 361, with limits $421 a month	114th of 361, with limits $1,090 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 DigitalOcean ranks 31st and Linode 186th, because many short rollouts are billed by the second on DigitalOcean and by the full hour on Linode.	31st of 360, with limits $1,786 a month	186th of 360, with limits $24,000 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 Linode is a full match here and DigitalOcean a compromise, since a new DigitalOcean team needs a higher tier before it can run many machines at once.	106th of 364, with limits $357 a month	55th cheapest of 364 $1,080 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	146th of 377, with limits $171 a month	137th cheapest of 377 $4,320 a month	4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month
24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB DigitalOcean and Linode are nearly tied for a 24/7 dev box, at the same monthly price; boat ranks 18th and keeps the disk with snapshots every minute.	39th cheapest of 368 $48 a month	40th cheapest of 368 $48 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 DigitalOcean nor Linode ships a desktop, so you install one and reach it through VNC or the Glish console; boat streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium.	117th of 369, with limits $263 a month	272nd of 369, with limits $1,440 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	311th of 367, with limits $1,080 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	190th of 346, with limits $108 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	89th of 338, with limits $2,160 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	189th of 360, with limits $182 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 Linode has a priced fit in this table, with Nvidia GPU instances by the hour; DigitalOcean also rents Nvidia and AMD GPU Droplets, and boat has no GPUs.	Can't run it	78th of 98, with limits $1,500 a month	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	Linode	boat
What you get	A general Linux server (Droplet) you set up and run yourself	A general Linux server (Linode) you set up and run yourself	A sandbox API for agents, on full VMs
Isolation	Every Droplet is a full VM with its own kernel	Every Linode is a full VM with its own kernel	Every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel
CPU	Basic plans share hyper-threads; dedicated CPU plans cost more; no comparable measurement	Shared CPU plans, or Dedicated CPU plans for a higher price; no comparable measurement	Dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) hosts; 26.69 runs/s at 4 vCPU / 8 GB
Billing unit	Per second, 60 second minimum, capped at 672 hours a month	Per hour, rounded up to the next hour; most plans have a monthly cap	Per second from a monthly plan that becomes usage credit
Machines at once on a new account	3 Droplets on Tier 1; up to 100 on Tier 5 through prepayment or history	No fixed published limit; raised by support ticket	100 to 2,000 sandboxes by plan
Docker and nested virtualization	Root and Docker; nested VMs are mentioned in the live migration docs but not listed as a feature	Root and Docker; Linode staff say nested virtualization is not supported	Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine, documented
Stopping	A powered-off Droplet is billed in full; destroy it to stop paying	A powered-off Linode is still billed; delete it to stop paying	A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk
Snapshots	On-demand disk snapshots billed by size; paid scheduled backups	Paid Backups add-on: scheduled backups plus one manual snapshot	Automatic snapshots every minute and on stop
Fork	Live snapshot, then new Droplets from it (disk, no memory)	Clone copies all disks; the docs say to power off first	Fork a running sandbox in one call (disk, no memory)
Reaching the machine	Public IP on any port; HTTPS needs your own certificates or a load balancer	Public IP on any port; HTTPS needs your own certificates or a NodeBalancer	HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; own IP
Desktop and coding agents	Headless; agents only in the separate Harness Runtime preview	Headless; StackScripts and Marketplace apps install general software	60fps desktop with Chromium and computer use; Claude Code, Codex and OpenCode preinstalled
Keeping keys out of the machine	No credentials proxy; you put secrets on the server	No credentials proxy; secrets arrive through user data or files	AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register
Outbound rules	Free cloud firewalls with outbound rules by IP range, Droplet or tag	Free Cloud Firewall with outbound rules by protocol, port and IP range	Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist
GPUs and regions	Nvidia and AMD GPU Droplets; 13 regions	Nvidia GPU instances; 33 regions in 15 countries	No GPUs; EU only: Germany, Finland, France

Every feature Battleships tracks (43)

Feature	DigitalOcean	Linode	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	Yes	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	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	No	No
GPU	Yes	Yes	No
Windows	No	No	No
Arm64	No	No	No
Self-hosting	No	No	No
BYOC	No	No	No
Open source	No	No	No
Scoped API keys	Not published	Yes	Yes
Spend limits	No	No	Yes
Usage per sandbox (API)	Yes	No	Yes
Audit logs	Not published	Yes	No
SSO	Yes	Yes	No
SOC 2	Yes	Yes	No
HIPAA	Yes	Yes	No
EU data residency	Yes	Yes	Yes
Zero data retention	Not published	Not published	Yes

Performance

DigitalOceanNot measured

LinodeNot measured

boat26.69 runs/s

There is no comparable measurement for DigitalOcean or Linode: 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 and dedicated CPU plans, so their results would depend on which 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 Linode 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	Linode, 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	$13 · 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	$48 · 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	$634 · 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	$1,080 · Usage account	$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	$7,200 · Usage account · with limits	$2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits

DigitalOcean: Each Droplet size has an 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.

Linode: Each Linode size has an hourly price, rounded up to the next full hour, and billing runs from create to delete, including while it is powered off. Older plans stop at a monthly cap; G8 dedicated and GPU plans have no cap since July 2026.

Linode: 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 3 Droplets at once, so 50 agents in parallel and sandboxes for your users do not fit until the team reaches a higher tier. Linode has no fixed published limit, but it rounds every instance up to a full hour, so 30,000 user sessions of 10 minutes come to $1,080 a month against $179 on DigitalOcean. For 1,000 short jobs at once, both run on shared vCPUs that other tenants can slow, and boat queues the starts, so none of the three fits as priced.

Scenario	DigitalOcean	Linode	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	Pay as you go: max 3 concurrent	None that bite	None that bite
Sandboxes for your users	Pay as you go: max 3 concurrent	None that bite	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	shared vCPUs on this tier: heavy, sustained CPU use can be slowed by other tenants	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

your jobs are short and you want to pay by the second, or you need AMD as well as Nvidia GPUs.

Billing by the second. Useful for short or bursty jobs: Droplets bill per second with a 60 second minimum, so a few minutes costs a few minutes.
Nvidia and AMD GPUs. Useful if you want AMD Instinct cards as well as Nvidia H100, H200 and B300, on demand, reserved or spot.
Live snapshots to copy a machine. Useful when you copy a busy server: you can snapshot a running Droplet and create new ones from it.

Use Linode when

you need more regions around the world or many machines on a new account, and your servers run for hours at a time.

Regions around the world. Useful if your users are spread out: Linodes run in 33 regions in 15 countries, against 13 regions for DigitalOcean.
No small starting cap. Useful for running many machines early: Linode publishes no fixed instance limit, while a new DigitalOcean team gets 3 Droplets.
Part of Akamai. Useful if the server must sit next to Kubernetes, block storage and NodeBalancers in a cloud run by Akamai.

Where boat fits

DigitalOcean and Linode are general clouds, so this only matters if what you are really running is agents. If each agent needs its own Linux machine that is ready to work, stops for free and can be copied while it runs, boat gives you that without building it on top of a plain server.

Idle time stays free, and nothing is lost

A powered-off Droplet or Linode is billed in full, so an idle agent keeps costing money. The workaround is to snapshot, destroy and rebuild, which you script yourself and which loses anything since the last snapshot. boat saves the disk every minute and stops for free.

Nested VMs and fork while running

Linode does not support nested virtualization and says to power off before cloning; DigitalOcean only mentions nested VMs in its migration docs. boat documents /dev/kvm on every machine and forks a running sandbox in one call.

Agents, desktop and HTTPS built in

Both start as empty servers: you install each agent, a desktop and VNC, and set up certificates or a load balancer for HTTPS. boat has coding agents you drive from outside, a 60fps desktop, HTTPS on 50 ports and a credentials proxy.

Use boat when you want each agent on its own full VM that is ready to work: /dev/kvm, coding agents, a desktop, HTTPS ports and minute-by-minute snapshots built in, and stops that cost nothing. Compare it one to one: boat vs DigitalOcean and boat vs Linode.

Questions people ask

Is DigitalOcean cheaper than Linode?

For long-running servers they cost the same: a 4 vCPU / 8 GB machine running all month comes to $48 on both, and $13 for workdays only. For short sessions DigitalOcean is far cheaper, because Linode bills each one as a full hour. On boat, the always-on machine comes to $26 a month.

Which is faster, DigitalOcean or Linode?

There is no comparable measurement for either one. Both sell shared CPU plans that other tenants can slow and dedicated CPU plans for more money. boat ran 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in the public StarSling benchmark.

Can DigitalOcean or Linode run Docker and nested VMs?

Both run Docker, since each machine is a full VM with root. DigitalOcean mentions nested VMs in its live migration docs but does not list them as a feature, and Linode staff say nested virtualization is not supported. On boat, /dev/kvm is documented on every machine.

Do I pay for a powered-off Droplet or Linode?

Yes, on both. DigitalOcean bills a powered-off Droplet until you destroy it, and Akamai bills a powered-off Linode until you delete it. On boat, a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.

How many machines can a new account run?

A new DigitalOcean team is on Tier 1, with 3 Droplets at once; Tier 5 allows 100 and is reached through prepayment, paid invoices or a request. Linode publishes no fixed limit and raises account limits by support ticket. boat allows 100 to 2,000 sandboxes by plan.

Is Linode the same as Akamai Cloud?

Yes. Akamai bought Linode in 2022 and now sells it as Akamai Cloud, and its virtual machines are still called Linodes.

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