DigitalOcean vs OVHcloud

Both rent plain Linux VMs that you set up and run yourself. DigitalOcean keeps it simple with bundled Droplet sizes and more GPU choice, while OVHcloud adds Windows, shelving to stop paying for compute, and quotas you can raise to 200 VMs with prepaid credit.

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

OVHcloud

OVHcloud is a French cloud provider; its Public Cloud rents OpenStack virtual machines, storage and networking by the second.

A Public Cloud instance is a Linux or Windows VM picked from families such as General Purpose (B3), Compute (C3), Memory (R3), GPU and the shared-resource Discovery range (D2). You run your own software on it, next to OVHcloud products like private networks, gateways, load balancers, Kubernetes and object storage, through a Control Panel, an API or OpenStack tools. It is general infrastructure, not an agent sandbox, so this page compares the two where they overlap: giving an agent its own Linux machine.

Product: OpenStack instances: fully isolated VMs on shared physical hosts, with Linux and Windows Server images
Billing: Every second is billed after a 1-minute minimum; instances bill until you delete them
Pricing change: Since 2026-10-01, local storage and public IPv4 are billed on top of B3, C3 and R3 instances
Regions: Europe, North America (Canada and the US) and Asia-Pacific (Singapore, Sydney), plus Local Zones
Quotas: Raised in steps of 20, 50, 100 and 200 VMs by buying prepaid credit; more through support
GPUs: Nvidia L4 and L40S instances by the hour, among others
Certifications: Lists ISO 27001/27017/27018, SOC 1, 2 and 3, HDS, PCI DSS and HIPAA in its US datacentres

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	OVHcloud: price rank	boat: price rank
Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Both give an agent a full VM with root and Docker, but each starts empty and keeps billing while stopped; boat ranks 3rd here with agents, snapshots and free stops built in.	134th of 367, with limits $1,187 a month	90th of 367, with limits $814 a month	3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month
Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB	35th of 366, with limits $1,429 a month	136th of 366, with limits $934 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 by the second after a one-minute minimum with no plan fee, which suits short runs; OVHcloud ranks 56th and DigitalOcean 63rd.	63rd of 345, with limits $60 a month	56th of 345, with limits $43 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 300 OVHcloud sandboxes go past its 512 vCPU self-serve quota, so both need raised limits first; boat ranks 1st with 100 to 2,000 sandboxes by plan.	54th of 361, with limits $421 a month	43rd of 361, with limits $299 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	27th of 360, with limits $1,280 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	99th of 364, with limits $231 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 OVHcloud ranks 29th and fits fully, while DigitalOcean ranks 146th as a compromise; on both you run the runner software and the clean-up between jobs yourself.	146th of 377, with limits $171 a month	29th 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 All three fit a 24/7 dev box; OVHcloud's Discovery instances come in under a DigitalOcean Droplet of the same size, and a boat machine also saves its disk every minute.	39th cheapest of 368 $48 a month	23rd cheapest of 368 $34 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 has a desktop built in, so you install a desktop, a browser and the control loop yourself; boat streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium and computer use.	117th of 369, with limits $263 a month	108th of 369, with limits $231 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	174th of 367, with limits $128 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	159th of 346, with limits $65 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	47th of 338, with limits $1,290 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 DigitalOcean ranks 22nd and OVHcloud ranks 120th here; boat ranks 2nd, with isolated full VMs you can fork while they run.	22nd of 360, with limits $199 a month	120th of 360, with limits $64 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	OVHcloud	boat
Isolation	Every Droplet is a full VM with its own kernel	Every instance is a fully isolated VM with its own kernel	Every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel, built as a sandbox API for agents
CPU	Basic plans share hyper-threads with other Droplets; dedicated CPU plans cost more; no comparable measurement	Dedicated vCPUs on B3, C3 and R3; shared resources on Discovery (D2); 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 and Docker; the vmx flag is passed, but OVHcloud warns a live migration can make the guest kernel panic	Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine, documented
Stopping	A powered-off Droplet is billed in full; you destroy it to stop paying	Turn off and pause bill at the same rate; shelve frees compute and bills only a disk snapshot	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	On-demand instance backups, or a schedule such as daily backups keeping the last 7 or 14	Automatic snapshots every minute and on stop
Fork	Take a live snapshot, then create new Droplets from it (disk, no memory)	Take an instance backup, then create a new identical instance 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 IPv4 on any port; HTTPS needs your own certificates or a load balancer	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 built in; you install a desktop and connect over SSH or RDP	60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream
Coding agents	None on Droplets; the separate Harness Runtime product (preview) runs agent templates in microVMs	None; you install and drive agents yourself, for example over SSH	Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, driven from outside with a prompt, steer and events API
Keeping keys out of the machine	No credentials proxy for Droplets; you put secrets on the server yourself	No credentials proxy; secrets live on the instance or are fetched from inside it	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	Security groups with inbound and outbound rules by IP range, 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; on demand, reserved or spot	Nvidia L4, L40S and V100S instances by the hour	None
Windows	No Windows Droplets	Windows Server images with the license included	No Windows guests (Wine for Windows apps)
Machines at once on a new account	3 Droplets on Tier 1; up to 100 on Tier 5 through prepayment, paid invoices or a request	Quotas raised in steps of 20, 50, 100 and 200 VMs by buying prepaid credit; more through support	100 to 2,000 sandboxes by plan

Every feature Battleships tracks (43)

Feature	DigitalOcean	OVHcloud	boat
Full VM (own kernel)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Docker inside	Yes	Yes	Yes
Nested virtualization	Yes	Yes	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	Yes	Yes
Automatic snapshots	No	Yes	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	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	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	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

OVHcloudNot measured

boat26.69 runs/s

Neither DigitalOcean nor OVHcloud has a comparable measurement: their VMs were not 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. On both, results would depend on the plan, since DigitalOcean's Basic plans and OVHcloud's Discovery (D2) instances share CPU, while their dedicated plans do not.

Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. DigitalOcean and OVHcloud 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	OVHcloud, 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	$8 · 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	$34 · 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	$406 · 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	$128 · 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	$256 · 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, including while powered off, and snapshots and backups cost extra.

OVHcloud: OVHcloud bills every second an instance exists, after a 1-minute minimum, until you delete it; shelved instances bill only their snapshot. The prices here use shared Discovery d2 instances, and since October 2026 dedicated B3, C3 and R3 instances also bill local storage and a public IPv4 on top.

OVHcloud: 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, Basic shared plans only, so 50 agents in parallel and sandboxes for your users do not fit until you reach a higher tier (Tier 5 allows 100). OVHcloud raises quotas in steps of 20, 50, 100 and 200 VMs with prepaid credit, so 50 agents fit, but 300 user sandboxes (600 vCPU) or 1,000 short jobs at once go past its 512 vCPU and need support first. The cheap tiers on both share CPU, so heavy builds can slow down. 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 does not fit either.

Scenario	DigitalOcean	OVHcloud	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	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)	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 (no guaranteed share of a core): 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

you need high-end Nvidia or AMD GPUs, simple bundled server sizes, or a long-lived server next to managed databases, Kubernetes and firewall rules.

More GPU choice. Useful if your agents train or serve large models: DigitalOcean rents Nvidia H100, H200 and B300 and AMD MI300X to MI355X GPUs.
Simple bundled sizes. Useful if you want one number per server: a Droplet size includes its SSD, IPv4 and transfer, and caps at 672 hours a month.
A managed agent runtime nearby. Useful if you want DigitalOcean to run agents for you: its Harness Runtime preview runs Claude Code and Codex in microVMs.

Use OVHcloud when

you need Windows servers, want to shelve idle machines, or must run dozens of VMs at once on a new account by buying prepaid credit.

Shelve to stop paying for compute. Useful if machines sit idle for days: a shelved OVHcloud instance frees its compute and bills only its disk snapshot.
Windows servers. Useful if an agent must run Windows software: OVHcloud offers Windows Server images with the license included.
Bigger fleets without waiting. Useful for dozens of agents at once: OVHcloud raises quotas to 200 VMs when you buy prepaid credit, while a new DigitalOcean team starts at 3.

Where boat fits

DigitalOcean and OVHcloud are general clouds, and a team comparing them for agents is really comparing empty Linux servers. If what you are really running is agents, boat gives each one a full VM that is ready to work: coding agents, a desktop, HTTPS ports and a disk saved every minute, with stops that cost nothing. Pick DigitalOcean or OVHcloud instead when you need GPUs, Windows, regions outside the EU or managed services next to the machine.

Idle agents stop billing and keep their work

A powered-off Droplet bills in full, and a turned-off OVHcloud instance bills at the same rate. Shelving or destroying stops the bill, but you rebuild from a snapshot you took by hand. boat saves the disk every minute and stops for free.

Agents and a desktop already inside

Both start as an empty OS, so you install, update and supervise each agent, desktop and API key yourself. DigitalOcean's Harness Runtime runs agents, but as a separate preview product, not on Droplets.

KVM you can rely on, and fork while running

Nested VMs are not a listed Droplet feature, and OVHcloud warns a live migration can make the guest kernel panic. Copying a machine on either means a snapshot or backup first. boat documents /dev/kvm and forks a running sandbox in one call.

Use boat when you want each agent on its own full VM that is ready to work: coding agents, a desktop, HTTPS ports, reliable /dev/kvm, a disk saved every minute, fork while running, and stops that cost nothing. Compare it one to one: boat vs DigitalOcean and boat vs OVHcloud.

Questions people ask

Is DigitalOcean cheaper than OVHcloud?

No, OVHcloud's shared Discovery instances come in lower in every scenario here. One agent that never stops comes to $34 on OVHcloud against $48 on DigitalOcean, and 50 agents in parallel come to $406 against $629, which on DigitalOcean also needs a higher tier. On boat the same runs come to $26 and $317.

Which is faster, DigitalOcean or OVHcloud?

There is no comparable measurement for either. Both sell shared-CPU tiers (DigitalOcean Basic, OVHcloud Discovery) and dedicated ones, so speed depends on the plan you pick. boat did 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in the public StarSling benchmark.

Can I run Docker and nested VMs on DigitalOcean or OVHcloud?

Docker works on both, since each machine is a full VM with root. Nested VMs are mentioned in DigitalOcean's live migration docs but not listed as a feature, and OVHcloud warns that a live migration can make the guest kernel panic. On boat, Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm are documented on every machine.

Do I pay for a stopped machine?

Yes on both. A powered-off Droplet bills in full until you destroy it, and a turned-off or paused OVHcloud instance bills at the same rate, though shelving bills only its disk snapshot. On boat, a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.

Which has GPUs and Windows?

Both rent GPUs: DigitalOcean has Nvidia H100, H200, B300 and L40S and AMD MI300X to MI355X, and OVHcloud has Nvidia L4, L40S and V100S. Only OVHcloud offers Windows Server images. boat has neither GPUs nor Windows guests.

Is either one an agent sandbox?

Not their plain VMs. Droplets and OVHcloud instances start as empty servers, and you install and drive agents yourself; DigitalOcean also sells Harness Runtime for agents as a separate preview product. boat is built for agents, with coding agents, a desktop and a credentials proxy in every sandbox.

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