Freestyle vs Ona
Freestyle is a VM service you drive from code: each agent or user gets a full Linux VM that can pause with its memory, fork and wake on the next request. Ona, formerly Gitpod and now part of OpenAI, is a cloud dev environment platform for engineers and its Codex agent, and new customers buy it through sales.
The companies and products
Freestyle
Freestyle sells full Linux virtual machines for AI agents, built for long running, complex tasks.
Each Freestyle VM is a KVM virtual machine with its own kernel, booted from an Ubuntu base snapshot with systemd, Docker and coding agent CLIs preinstalled. VMs can be paused with their memory, snapshotted while running, forked and woken by the next request, and every VM starts behind a default-deny firewall. It is built for teams that give each agent or each user its own machine, driven from a TypeScript SDK, a CLI or an API.
Ona
Ona, formerly Gitpod, is a platform for cloud dev environments and background coding agents, and is now part of OpenAI.
Ona is a different kind of product from boat: a dev-environment platform, not a sandbox API. Each task or developer gets an isolated VM built from a Dev Container config, which people open in a browser IDE, VS Code or JetBrains, and where Ona's Codex Agent can plan, code, test and open pull requests. It is built for engineering teams who want the same governed environment for every developer and agent; new customers run it in their own AWS or GCP account on an Enterprise contract.
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. “40th cheapest of 345” means 39 of the other 344 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 | Freestyle: price rank | Ona: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Freestyle and boat both give agents Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm; Ona documents no nested virtualization, and its SDK to start environments from code is Enterprise only. | 241st of 367, with limits $3,311 a month | 324th of 367, with limits $7,315 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB On Ona an always-on assistant needs auto-stop set to Never, because background work does not count as activity; Freestyle has no idle timeout unless you set one. | 263rd of 366, with limits $4,195 a month | 83rd of 366, with limits $8,504 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 Freestyle fits short code runs well, with VMs that pause with their memory and wake on the next request; Ona starts each environment from a Dev Container config. | 40th cheapest of 345 $482 a month | 335th of 345, with limits $5,320 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 Freestyle is built to give each of your users a VM; Ona is built for your own engineers, and its per-user policy defaults to 10 running environments. | 16th cheapest of 361 $1,358 a month | 330th of 361, with limits $5,988 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 Freestyle can snapshot a running VM with its memory and boot copies from it; Ona cannot copy an environment, and boat forks a running sandbox with its disk. | 107th of 360, with limits $6,600 a month | 283rd of 360, with limits $9,773 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 | 53rd cheapest of 364 $1,046 a month | 334th of 364, with limits $5,768 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 Freestyle's docs send sustained heavy CPU work elsewhere, Ona has no fork so each run starts from a prebuild, and boat did 2.8 times Freestyle's CPU work on the same benchmark. | 168th of 377, with limits $625 a month | 365th of 377, with limits $5,461 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Ona is a full cloud IDE with Dev Containers and prebuilds, Freestyle is a VM you reach over SSH or HTTPS, and boat adds a desktop to a full VM. | 98th cheapest of 368 $151 a month | 368th of 368, with limits $5,140 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 Freestyle nor Ona has a desktop ready to drive: Freestyle has guides to install one, Ona has none, and boat streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium. | 234th of 369, with limits $940 a month | 353rd of 369, with limits $5,691 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 | 257th of 367, with limits $482 a month | 150th of 367, with limits $5,346 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 | 278th of 346, with limits $482 a month | 146th of 346, with limits $5,468 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 | 183rd of 338, with limits $6,560 a month | 261st of 338, with limits $14,360 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 | 272nd of 360, with limits $482 a month | 93rd of 360, with limits $5,228 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 | Freestyle | Ona | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | A VM service for AI agents, driven from a TypeScript SDK, a CLI or an API | A cloud dev environment platform for engineers and its Codex agent | A sandbox API: full VMs for agents, with a desktop and coding agents built in |
| Isolation | Full KVM VM with its own kernel on bare metal servers | An isolated VM with dedicated compute per environment, built from a Dev Container config | Full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Yes; systemd is pid 1, Docker runs from boot, full KVM support | Docker and root inside the Dev Container; nested virtualization is not documented | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine |
| CPU benchmark (4 vCPU / 8 GB) | 9.64 runs/s | Not measured | 26.69 runs/s |
| Pause and resume | Pause saves memory and disk; a paused VM can wake on the next request | The disk persists across stops; stops after 30 idle minutes by default | Disk saved every minute and on stop; resume boots the machine again |
| Fork | Clone a running VM without pausing it; snapshots capture memory and disk | No environment copy; you can create a project from an environment's config | Fork a running sandbox into copies with its disk |
| Desktop, browser and computer use | Guides to install GNOME or Xvfb, VNC and Chromium yourself | Browser IDE plus VS Code and JetBrains; no graphical desktop inside the environment | Linux desktop streamed at 60fps, Chromium and computer use built in |
| Coding agents | claude, codex, opencode and openclaw preinstalled, driven through exec or a terminal | Codex Agent started from chat, a Linear issue or an automation; Claude Code you run yourself | Seven agents preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Driving it from code | SDK, CLI and API on every plan, from Free up | Python, TypeScript and Go SDK on the Enterprise plan only | API and SDK on every plan, including the trial |
| Keeping keys out of the sandbox | Credentials injected at the edge for HTTPS headers, Postgres and S3; the VM must trust the Freestyle CA | Secrets are injected into the environment as environment variables or files | Credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; switch a credential to another account when credits run out |
| Reaching the sandbox | HTTPS on free style.dev names or your own domain, forward auth, other public protocols | HTTPS URL per port for you, your organization or everyone; SSH; no raw TCP documented | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected by default; raw TCP |
| Outbound rules | Default-deny firewall with allow rules by IP, VM, VPC or exact domain | No provider-side allowlist documented | Open internet, no provider-side allowlist |
| GPUs | Private GPU sandboxes on Enterprise | GPU instance types on Enterprise runners in your own cloud, such as one NVIDIA A10G with 16 vCPU and 64 GB | None |
| Regions and deployment | Not listed; the docs name a San Jose, US data center | Enterprise runners in your own AWS or GCP account, in many regions; Ona Cloud in Frankfurt and North Virginia for existing Core subscribers | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Freestyle | Ona | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | No | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | No | Yes |
| Browser | No | Yes | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | No | Yes |
| SSH | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | Yes | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | Yes | No | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Memory fork | Yes | No | No |
| Custom image (Docker or snapshot) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | Yes | Yes | No |
| Wake on request | Yes | No | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | Yes | No | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | No | No | No |
| Egress allowlist | Yes | No | No |
| Secret proxy | Yes | No | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | Yes | No | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Agent harness API | No | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | No | No | No |
| GPU | Yes | Yes | No |
| Windows | No | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | No | No |
| Self-hosting | No | No | No |
| BYOC | No | Yes | No |
| Open source | No | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | Not published | Yes | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | No | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | Yes | No | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Not published | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | Not published | No | No |
| EU data residency | No | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
On the hpc-sandbox-benchmarks Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, Freestyle did 9.64 runs per second and boat did 26.69, so boat finished about 2.8 times as much CPU work in the same time. There is no comparable measurement for Ona: it was not in the public benchmark runs we use. This measures CPU speed only, not start time, where Freestyle advertises about 65 ms.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Ona has 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 | Freestyle, a month | Ona, 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 | $27 · Free | $5,030 · Enterprise (AWS Marketplace 12-month contract) · with limits | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $159 · Free | $5,140 · Enterprise (AWS Marketplace 12-month contract) · with limits | $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 | $2,139 · Pro | $6,521 · Enterprise (AWS Marketplace 12-month contract) · with limits | $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 | $581 · Pro | $5,432 · Enterprise (AWS Marketplace 12-month contract) · 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 | $1,305 · Pro · with limits | $5,955 · Enterprise (AWS Marketplace 12-month contract) · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Freestyle: Freestyle bills per second for the vCPU, RAM and disk allocated to a VM, busy or idle, after monthly allowances that are hard stops on Free. Hobby and Pro set a $50 or $500 monthly minimum that counts as usage, and a paused VM bills only for storage.
Ona: New Core subscriptions are closed, so the Ona prices here use its Enterprise listing on AWS Marketplace: a 12-month, $60,000 contract (about $5,000 a month), plus compute on your own cloud bill. Real Enterprise prices are negotiated with sales.
Ona: Plans start at $20 a month, and the whole fee is usage credit spent per second on running sandboxes. A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Limits in those scenarios
No Ona scenario fits as published, because a new customer can only buy Enterprise through sales, and the table assumes 3 environments at once since Ona publishes no Enterprise concurrency limit. Freestyle fits every scenario except 1,000 short jobs at once, because Pro allows 400 concurrent VMs. Freestyle has no idle timeout by default, so a VM bills until you pause it, while Ona stops an environment after 30 idle minutes unless auto-stop is set to Never. boat fits four of the five scenarios; the 1,000-job burst is queued, since its $2,000 plan queues starts above 90 a minute.
| Scenario | Freestyle | Ona | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays | None that bite |
| None that bite |
| One agent that never stops | None that bite |
| None that bite |
| 50 agents in parallel | None that bite |
| None that bite |
| Sandboxes for your users | None that bite |
| None that bite |
| 1,000 short jobs at once |
|
|
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Which one should you use?
Use Freestyle when
your code gives each agent or user its own VM that sleeps between requests and must resume with its memory, or when you need a default-deny firewall per VM.
- Memory pause, live fork and wake on request. Useful for VMs that sleep between requests: they resume the same processes and can wake on the next incoming traffic.
- Self-serve, built for code. Useful if your product starts a VM per agent or per user: there is a free plan and an SDK on every plan.
- Network controls. Every VM starts with no network access, and you allow exactly the IPs, VMs, VPCs or domains it may reach.
Use Ona when
your engineers want a governed cloud IDE shared with a Codex agent, inside your own AWS or GCP account or with a GPU.
- A full cloud IDE for your team. Useful if your engineers work in the same environments as their agents: browser, VS Code and JetBrains IDEs with Dev Containers and prebuilds.
- Runs in your own cloud. Useful if environments must run inside your own AWS or GCP account: Ona's Enterprise runners do that, in many regions.
- GPU environments. Useful if your agents need a GPU: Enterprise runners can use GPU instance types, such as an A10G VM with 16 vCPU and 64 GB.
Where boat fits
If you are comparing Freestyle and Ona because your code starts agents that do real work for hours, look at boat too. It gives each agent a full VM with /dev/kvm on faster CPUs, a desktop for computer use, and an API to drive the coding agents inside, on self-serve plans.
Almost three times Freestyle's CPU speed
On the same build-and-test benchmark at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, boat did 26.69 runs per second and Freestyle did 9.64, and Freestyle's docs send heavy CPU work elsewhere. Ona has no comparable measurement.
A desktop and a browser, ready
Computer-use agents need a screen. On Freestyle you install a desktop, VNC and Chromium yourself and build the click layer; Ona environments have no graphical desktop. boat streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium and computer use.
Agents you drive from outside
On Freestyle you start agent CLIs through exec and parse their output; Ona manages only Codex, and its SDK needs an Enterprise contract. boat has a prompt, steer and events API for seven agents and a credentials proxy for any HTTPS API.
Use boat when your agents do real work for hours: builds, tests, Docker, emulators, a desktop and a browser, on fast CPUs, with an API to drive the agents inside from outside. Compare it one to one: boat vs Freestyle and boat vs Ona.
Questions people ask
Is Freestyle cheaper than Ona?
In every scenario we priced, yes, using Ona's Enterprise listing on AWS Marketplace since new Core subscriptions are closed. One agent running all month is $159 on Freestyle against $5,140 on Ona, and 50 agents in parallel come to $2,139 against $6,521. On boat those are $26 and $317.
Which is faster, Freestyle or Ona?
Only Freestyle has a public CPU measurement: 9.64 runs per second on the hpc-sandbox-benchmarks test at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. Ona was not in the runs we use. boat did 26.69 on the same kind of test, about 2.8 times Freestyle's work.
Can Freestyle and Ona run Docker?
Yes. Freestyle VMs run systemd as pid 1 with Docker from boot and full KVM support, so Android emulators work too. Ona runs Docker inside the Dev Container, but nested virtualization is not documented.
Is Ona the same as Gitpod?
Yes. Gitpod renamed itself Ona in 2025 and moved from cloud dev environments to background coding agents, and Ona is now part of OpenAI.
Can I sign up for Ona or Freestyle today?
Freestyle is self-serve, with Free, Hobby and Pro plans plus Enterprise. Ona's billing docs say new Core subscriptions are no longer available, so new customers go through sales. boat's plans are self-serve, from a free trial up.
Can either run a computer-use agent?
Freestyle can, once you install a desktop, VNC and Chromium inside the VM using its guides. Ona environments have no graphical desktop. boat ships a 60fps desktop, Chromium and computer use in every sandbox.
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