exe.dev vs Unikraft Cloud
exe.dev rents you a persistent Linux VM you log into over SSH, with Docker and coding agents ready. Unikraft Cloud turns your Dockerfile into a tiny microVM that wakes in milliseconds and sleeps when traffic stops.
The companies and products
exe.dev
exe.dev, made by Bold Software, Inc., rents Linux VMs for developers and AI agents that you reach over SSH and HTTPS.
You reserve a pool of vCPUs and memory, and your VMs share it; you can also start standalone VMs billed by the second. Each VM is KVM-isolated (they use Cloud Hypervisor), boots from a container image in about two seconds, and has root, systemd and Docker. It comes with Claude Code, Codex, Pi and exe.dev's own Shelley agent, and is aimed at developers who want a persistent dev box or a sandbox for their agents.
- Company
- Bold Software, Inc.
- Preinstalled agents
- claude, codex, pi and the Shelley web agent
Unikraft Cloud
Unikraft Cloud is a microVM cloud from Unikraft Inc. that runs any Dockerfile-based workload as a minimal Linux microVM with millisecond cold starts and scale-to-zero.
Your Dockerfile becomes the VM image at build time, and each instance runs on a heavily customized Firecracker VMM, so it boots in milliseconds and can go into standby when no traffic arrives. It is a general compute platform built for dense, bursty work such as HTTP services, headless browsers and agent fleets, sold as flat self-serve plans plus Enterprise dedicated hosts, on-prem and bring your own cloud. It is not a dev machine you log into: instances are reached through services, the CLI and a sandbox plugin for commands and files.
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. “15th cheapest of 366” means 14 of the other 365 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 | exe.dev: price rank | Unikraft Cloud: 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 runs Docker and test suites inside the sandbox; exe.dev can, Unikraft documents no container runtime inside, and boat adds a desktop and snapshots. | 253rd of 367, with limits $3,701 a month | Can't run it | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB exe.dev fits always-on assistants with a VM and disk that last; Unikraft's Team pool is 8 GiB of memory shared by every running instance. | 15th cheapest of 366 $3,833 a month | Can't run it | 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 Short runs that sleep between calls are the shape Unikraft is built for, though self-serve plans cap you at 24 running instances; exe.dev pools bill whether used or not. | 235th of 345, with limits $175 a month | Can't run it | 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 For sandboxes you hand to your users, exe.dev Personal stops at 50 VMs at once and Unikraft Pro at 24 running instances; boat runs hundreds at once. | 257th of 361, with limits $1,226 a month | Can't run it | 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 | 265th of 360, with limits $5,250 a month | Can't run it | 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 | 283rd of 364, with limits $1,050 a month | Can't run it | 10th cheapest of 364 $200 a month |
| CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month CI jobs that build images need Docker inside; exe.dev has it, Unikraft does not document it, and both keep nested virtualization for Enterprise, while boat has /dev/kvm on every plan. | 288th of 377, with limits $504 a month | Can't run it | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Both can keep a box running all month, but exe.dev gives you SSH, root and Docker, while Unikraft has no SSH yet; boat adds a desktop in the browser. | 25th cheapest of 368 $35 a month | 219th of 368, with limits $39 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 Computer-use agents need a screen; exe.dev and Unikraft are both headless, and boat streams a 60fps desktop. | 240th of 369, with limits $1,055 a month | Can't run it | 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 On exe.dev and Unikraft you run your own headless browser; boat gives each sandbox Chromium on a desktop out of the box. | 130th of 367, with limits $530 a month | Can't run it | 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 | 124th of 346, with limits $278 a month | Can't run it | 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 | 166th of 338, with limits $5,490 a month | Can't run it | 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 | 60th of 360, with limits $263 a month | Can't run it | 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 | exe.dev | Unikraft Cloud | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isolation | KVM VM with Cloud Hypervisor; you can't choose the kernel | Minimal Linux microVM on a customized Firecracker VMM | Full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts |
| Start time and idle | Boots from a container image in about two seconds; pool VMs run until you stop them | Cold boots in milliseconds, goes into standby after a short idle cooldown and wakes on the next request | Boots a full machine; a stopped sandbox costs nothing and starts again from its saved disk |
| Docker and systemd inside | Yes, root, systemd and Docker | Runs as root; the Dockerfile becomes the VM image, with no container runtime inside documented | Yes, Docker, systemd and root, like any Ubuntu machine |
| SSH | Yes, brokered SSH | Not yet; commands and files go through the sandbox plugin and CLI | Yes, into every sandbox |
| Custom images | Boot from your own Docker image | Your Dockerfile is built into the VM image | Templates from named snapshots; no Dockerfile or OCI images |
| Saved state | Disk persists and is streamed to a second server; no snapshots | Stateful standby snapshots memory; checkpoints of a running microVM start new instances | Disk snapshot every minute while running and on stop; fork a running sandbox |
| Nested virtualization | Enterprise only | Enterprise only, with a per-instance flag | Yes, /dev/kvm on every plan |
| Desktop and computer use | Headless; no desktop or screen streaming | None built in; you can run your own headless browser | 60fps desktop with Chromium, computer use and browser control |
| Coding agents | Claude Code, Codex, Pi and Shelley preinstalled; only Shelley takes prompts through the API | None preinstalled; you bring the agent in your own image | Seven agents preinstalled, with one API to prompt, steer and stream events |
| Keeping API keys out of the sandbox | Integrations inject secrets at the network edge for any HTTP host | Network shield can inject secrets, Enterprise only, limited access | Credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API, on every plan |
| Inbound traffic | HTTPS proxy for ports 3000 to 9999, one of them public; no public IP or raw TCP | Load balancer services: HTTP on 80, HTTPS on 443, TLS-wrapped TCP on other ports | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected by default; raw TCP; dedicated IPv4 or IPv6 |
| Running capacity, self-serve | Personal: one pool up to 16 vCPU and 50 VMs, plus up to 50 standalone VMs | Pro: 24 running instances sharing 24 vCPU / 32 GiB, plus 5,000 in standby | 100 to 2,000 sandboxes at once by plan, up to 16 vCPU / 32 GB each |
| Regions | 9 regions in the US, Europe, Asia and Australia | Dallas, Frankfurt, San Francisco, Singapore and Washington DC, more on request | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
| Enterprise extras | SSO and roles on Work; dedicated hardware and BYOC on Enterprise; an MCP server | NVIDIA GPUs, arm64, egress filtering, dedicated hosts, on-prem or BYOC on Enterprise | Org seats, scoped API keys, spend limits, usage per sandbox |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | exe.dev | Unikraft Cloud | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | No | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | No | Yes |
| Browser | Yes | No | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | No | Yes |
| SSH | Yes | No | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | Yes | Yes |
| Fork/clone | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Memory fork | No | Yes | No |
| Custom image (Docker or snapshot) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | No | Yes | No |
| Wake on request | No | Yes | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | No | Not published | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | No | No | No |
| Egress allowlist | No | Yes | No |
| Secret proxy | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | Yes | No | Yes |
| Agent harness API | Yes | No | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes | No | No |
| GPU | No | Yes | No |
| Windows | No | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | Yes | No |
| Self-hosting | No | Yes | No |
| BYOC | Yes | Yes | No |
| Open source | No | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Yes | No |
| SSO | Yes | No | No |
| SOC 2 | No | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | No | Yes | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
Neither exe.dev nor Unikraft Cloud is in the hpc-sandbox-benchmarks run, so there is no comparable CPU measurement for either of them. boat scored 26.69 runs per second on that Node.js loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. Unikraft states cold starts under 10 ms, which is its own figure and measures start time, not CPU speed.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. exe.dev and Unikraft 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 | exe.dev, a month | Unikraft 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 | $35 · Personal | $39 · Hobby | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $35 · Personal | $39 · Hobby | $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 | $1,848 · Personal | Can't run it | $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 | $530 · Personal · with limits | Can't run it | $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 | $1,050 · Personal · with limits | Can't run it | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
exe.dev: exe.dev sells reserved pools that your VMs share, billed whether they are busy or idle; a 4 vCPU / 8 GiB Personal pool is $35 a month. Standalone VMs bill per second at $0.105 per 2 vCPU / 4 GiB per hour.
Unikraft Cloud: Unikraft charges a flat monthly fee for a pool of running capacity: free for 2 vCPU / 4 GiB, $39 for 8 vCPU / 8 GiB, $199 for 24 vCPU / 32 GiB, with sleeping instances not counted. It publishes no per-hour rate, so anything bigger is an Enterprise quote.
Unikraft Cloud: Plans start at $20 a month, and the whole fee is usage credit. You pay per second while a sandbox runs, and a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Limits in those scenarios
For one agent both fit: $35 a month on exe.dev and $39 on Unikraft's Team pool, against $20 to $26 on boat. Unikraft has no self-serve pool big enough for 50 agents, 300 user sandboxes or 1,000 short jobs, so those need an Enterprise quote. exe.dev runs the 50 agents for $1,848 a month, but its Personal plan stops at 50 VMs at once, so 300 or 1,000 at once do not fit. boat fits all but the burst, where start-rate limits queue starts even on the $2,000 plan.
| Scenario | exe.dev | Unikraft Cloud | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays |
|
| None that bite |
| One agent that never stops |
|
| None that bite |
| 50 agents in parallel | None that bite |
| None that bite |
| Sandboxes for your users |
|
| None that bite |
| 1,000 short jobs at once |
|
|
|
Which one should you use?
Use exe.dev when
you want a persistent Linux VM you SSH into, with Docker and coding agents ready, in regions around the world.
- A dev box you log into. For people who want to SSH into one persistent VM with root, systemd and Docker and keep working there for months.
- Coding agents ready to go. exe.dev preinstalls Claude Code, Codex, Pi and its own Shelley agent, so an agent can start work on a fresh VM.
- Nine regions and team controls. Useful for teams far from Europe or the US coasts, with SSO and roles on Work and an MCP server for VMs.
Use Unikraft Cloud when
you run many small services or headless browsers that sleep most of the time and must wake in milliseconds, or want GPUs or on-prem under Enterprise.
- Millisecond starts and scale-to-zero. Best for many small services that sleep most of the time and must answer the next request in milliseconds.
- Memory checkpoints. Stateful standby and checkpoints keep a running microVM's memory, so apps come back with warm caches or clone from a running one.
- GPUs and your own hardware. Enterprise customers can get NVIDIA GPUs, arm64 hosts, egress filtering, dedicated hosts, on-prem or their own cloud.
Where boat fits
If what you are running is coding or computer-use agents, look at boat. exe.dev gives agents a good VM but no screen and no snapshots, and Unikraft is built for small services that sleep, not machines an agent works in. boat gives every sandbox a full VM, a desktop, state saved every minute and fleets of hundreds without a sales call.
A full machine with /dev/kvm
Agents run docker compose, emulators and VMs. Unikraft documents no Docker inside and has no SSH yet, and both keep nested virtualization for Enterprise contracts. boat has Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm on every plan.
A screen and saved state
exe.dev and Unikraft are headless, so a computer-use agent has nothing to look at until you build and stream a desktop yourself. exe.dev also has no snapshots, so one bad agent step can cost a session's work.
Fleets and agents you drive from outside
Fifty 4 vCPU agents is above every Unikraft self-serve pool, and exe.dev Personal stops at 50 VMs at once, with only Shelley taking API prompts. boat runs hundreds at once and drives agents inside from outside through one API.
Use boat when your agents need a real machine to work in: Docker, /dev/kvm, a desktop and a browser, state saved every minute, and fleets of full-size sandboxes you drive from outside. Compare it one to one: boat vs exe.dev and boat vs Unikraft Cloud.
Questions people ask
Is exe.dev cheaper than Unikraft Cloud?
For one 4 vCPU / 8 GB agent, slightly: $35 a month on exe.dev against $39 for the Unikraft Team pool it needs. For 50 agents exe.dev costs $1,848 a month, while no self-serve Unikraft plan is big enough, so that is an Enterprise quote. boat runs the same 50 agents for $317 a month.
Which is faster, exe.dev or Unikraft Cloud?
Neither has a comparable CPU measurement, so we can't say which runs code faster. Unikraft starts faster: its microVMs cold boot in milliseconds and wake on request, while an exe.dev VM takes about two seconds to boot.
Can exe.dev and Unikraft Cloud run Docker?
exe.dev VMs have root, systemd and Docker inside. Unikraft builds your Dockerfile into the VM image, and its docs do not describe running a container runtime inside an instance. boat sandboxes run Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm on every plan.
Can I SSH into exe.dev and Unikraft Cloud?
Yes on exe.dev, through its brokered SSH. Not yet on Unikraft, which announced SSH as coming soon; today you use its sandbox plugin and CLI. You can SSH into every boat sandbox.
Do exe.dev or Unikraft Cloud have a desktop for computer use?
No, both are headless. boat gives every sandbox a 60fps desktop with Chromium and APIs for computer use and browser control.
Which has more regions?
exe.dev, with nine regions across the US, Europe, Asia and Australia. Unikraft runs in Dallas, Frankfurt, San Francisco, Singapore and Washington DC by default. boat runs only in the EU, with EU data residency.
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