Google Compute Engine vs Contabo
Google Compute Engine is a hyperscaler: you start VMs from an API, pay per second while they run, and pick from many machine families and 43 regions. Contabo rents a KVM server by the month at a very low flat price, and you set it up and keep it running yourself.
The companies and products
Google Compute Engine
Google Compute Engine is Google Cloud's general-purpose VM service, not a sandbox product: you rent virtual machines by the second and set them up yourself.
You pick a machine type (E2, N2D, C3D, Arm T2A, GPU families and more), a boot image and a network, and Compute Engine boots a KVM-based VM with its own kernel and root access. Disks are Persistent Disk or Hyperdisk volumes, traffic goes through VPC firewall rules, and anything agent-specific (agents, desktops, HTTPS URLs, key handling) is yours to build. It is built for every kind of server workload, from websites to GPU training, across Google Cloud's worldwide regions.
Contabo
Contabo is a German hosting company, founded in Munich in 2003, that rents VPS, dedicated-core VDS, GPU and dedicated servers by the month.
A Contabo Cloud VPS is a KVM virtual machine with shared vCPU cores, a fixed RAM allocation, a static IPv4 and root access, which you order, pay for and then manage yourself. It is a VPS host, not a sandbox product: there is no per-second billing, no agent tooling and no managed HTTPS in front of the server. It fits people who want one cheap server that runs all month in a region of their choice.
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. “16th cheapest of 364” means 15 of the other 363 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 | Google Compute Engine: price rank | Contabo: 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 starts and stops many machines a day; Compute Engine bills that per second, Contabo bills each server for a whole month, and boat ships the agent setup ready. | 120th of 367, with limits $1,106 a month | 79th of 367, with limits $660 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 is cheaper on Contabo ($330 a month) than on Compute Engine ($1,433), while boat ($657) adds snapshots every minute and an agent API. | 177th of 366, with limits $1,433 a month | 95th of 366, with limits $330 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 Compute Engine handles bursts of short code runs better than Contabo, whose monthly rent makes each parallel slot a full month's server. | 92nd of 345, with limits $133 a month | 159th of 345, with limits $660 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 Sandboxes for your users need fast starts and stops: Compute Engine can do it if you build the tooling, Contabo needs a monthly server per slot, and boat ranks 1st. | 92nd of 361, with limits $836 a month | 153rd of 361, with limits $1,980 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 | 36th of 360, with limits $2,085 a month | 108th of 360, with limits $6,600 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 Agent evals fit Compute Engine well because VMs bill per second; on Contabo each parallel machine is a full month's rent. | 16th cheapest of 364 $263 a month | 177th of 364, with limits $1,650 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 CI runners fit Compute Engine's per-second billing better than Contabo's monthly rent, and boat adds /dev/kvm on every machine for Android or VM builds. | 41st cheapest of 377 $359 a month | 133rd cheapest of 377 $2,980 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB For one box that runs all month, Contabo ranks 1st: its flat monthly rent is far below Compute Engine's on-demand rate, and boat sits in between. | 82nd cheapest of 368 $109 a month | Cheapest of 368 $6.6 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 ships a desktop: both give you a headless Linux server to set up yourself, while boat streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium out of the box. | 129th of 369, with limits $293 a month | 140th of 369, with limits $330 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 | 212th of 367, with limits $244 a month | 232nd of 367, with limits $330 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 | 218th of 346, with limits $179 a month | 258th of 346, with limits $330 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 | 108th of 338, with limits $2,978 a month | 184th of 338, with limits $6,600 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 | 152nd of 360, with limits $120 a month | 321st of 360, with limits $1,320 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 | Google Compute Engine | Contabo | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | General cloud VMs from a hyperscaler, started by API | Monthly-rented VPS and VDS servers you order and set up yourself | Sandbox VMs for agents, started and stopped from an API |
| Billing | Per second after a 1 minute minimum; disks and IPs bill while stopped | Flat monthly rent, minimum first term of one month; no hourly billing | Monthly plan from $20 turned into credit, spent per second; a stopped sandbox costs nothing |
| Starting a machine | A VM from the API, with a full boot | Order and pay, then provisioning takes a few minutes; orders can need identity checks | A new sandbox from the API in seconds |
| Isolation | Full KVM-based VM with its own kernel | KVM VM; Cloud VPS shares vCPU cores, Cloud VDS has dedicated cores | Full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Docker, root and systemd; nested KVM only on some Intel families and N4D, not on E2, Arm or other AMD VMs | Full root, you install Docker; nested virtualization not on any VPS plan, only on Cloud VDS | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine |
| Saved state | Persistent disks kept and billed while stopped; snapshots on demand or on a schedule you set | 1 to 5 manual disk snapshots by plan, kept 30 days, restored in place; none on Cloud VDS | Snapshots every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing |
| Pause and fork | Suspend keeps memory for up to 60 days; cloning means a machine image and a new VM | No pause and no fork; custom images upload as ISO or QCOW2 | Fork a running sandbox; resume reboots from disk (no memory snapshots) |
| Coding agents | None preinstalled; you install agents and drive them over SSH | None built in; 1-Click images for apps like n8n, Ollama and OpenClaw | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Keeping keys out of the machine | No credential proxy; service account tokens and Secret Manager values are read inside the VM | None; secrets live inside the server | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; switch a credential to another account when credits run out |
| Desktop and computer use | No managed desktop, browser or computer-use API on Linux VMs | Headless server; a VNC console for setup and rescue | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream |
| Reaching the machine | External IPv4 and any port through firewall rules; HTTPS needs your own certificate and a load balancer or web server | Static IPv4 and a /64 IPv6, all ports; domains and TLS are yours to set up | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; dedicated IPv6 or IPv4 |
| Outbound network rules | VPC egress firewall rules by IP and port; domain rules on Cloud NGFW Standard, a paid tier | No provider-side egress allowlist | Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist |
| GPUs and Windows | Nvidia GPUs from T4 and L4 up to H100, H200, B200 and GB200; Windows Server images | GPU VPS with an Nvidia RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell; Windows Server as a licensed add-on | No GPUs and no Windows guests; Wine for Windows apps |
| Regions | 43 regions and 130 zones worldwide | 11 locations: EU, UK, US, Singapore, Japan, India and Australia | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Google Compute Engine | Contabo | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | 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 | Yes | No | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | Yes | No | 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 | No | 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 | No | No | No |
| GPU | Yes | Yes | No |
| Windows | No | Yes | No |
| Arm64 | Yes | 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 | Yes | Not published | No |
| SSO | Yes | No | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | No | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | No | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable CPU measurement for Compute Engine or Contabo: neither was in the public StarSling benchmark run we use. In that run, a Node.js build-and-test loop on 2026-09-29, boat did 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. Compute Engine speed depends on the machine family you pick, and Contabo's Cloud VPS shares vCPU cores, so heavy, sustained load can slow down.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Google Compute Engine and Contabo 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 | Google Compute Engine, a month | Contabo, 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 | $31 · Pay-as-you-go billing account (no plan fee) | $7 · Usage account | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $64 · Pay-as-you-go billing account (no plan fee) · with limits | $7 · 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 | $1,291 · Pay-as-you-go billing account (no plan fee) | $330 · 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 | $378 · Pay-as-you-go billing account (no plan fee) | $1,980 · 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 | $690 · Pay-as-you-go billing account (no plan fee) | $6,600 · Usage account · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Google Compute Engine: Compute Engine bills each VM per second after a 1 minute minimum at its list rate, here E2 sizes on demand in us-central1, with no platform fee. Disks and external IPs bill on top, also while stopped, and lower always-on rates need a 1-year or 3-year commitment.
Contabo: Contabo charges a flat monthly rent per server, busy or idle, and its listed prices assume a 24-month term. Each machine you need at the same time is a full month's rent, so short bursts still pay for the whole month.
Contabo: 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
Compute Engine caps vCPUs per region with quotas that vary by project, so 50 agents or 300 user sandboxes may need a quota request, and one agent that never stops reaches the price shown only with a 3-year commitment. Contabo publishes no limit on how many servers one account can run, so 300 sandboxes for your users or 1,000 short jobs at once are not confirmed, and each would mean renting that many servers for a full month. On boat, the 1,000-job burst is the one that does not fit: start limits queue it.
| Scenario | Google Compute Engine | Contabo | 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 | None that bite |
|
|
Which one should you use?
Use Google Compute Engine when
you need per-second billing for bursty work, GPUs, Windows, egress rules or regions all over the world, and you have people to build the tooling on top.
- Per-second billing for short work. Useful for jobs that run minutes or hours: Compute Engine bills per second after a 1 minute minimum, so idle hours cost no CPU.
- Big GPUs and many machine families. Useful for training or heavy inference: Compute Engine rents Nvidia GPUs up to H100, H200 and B200, plus Intel, AMD and Arm VMs.
- Regions and network rules. Useful if you need 43 regions worldwide, egress firewall rules, or a VM that resumes with its memory intact.
Use Contabo when
you want one cheap server that runs all month, a single GPU or Windows box, and you are happy to set it up and run it yourself.
- One cheap server that runs all month. Useful for one always-on box: a flat monthly rent buys a 4 vCPU / 8 GB VPS with a static IPv4.
- Simple flat bill. Useful if you want a fixed monthly rent per server, with unmetered inbound traffic, instead of metered disks, IPs and egress.
- GPU and Windows on a VPS budget. Useful if you need one GPU or Windows Server: Contabo rents RTX PRO 6000 servers and Windows Server licenses.
Where boat fits
Both Compute Engine and Contabo hand you a plain Linux server and leave the agent setup to you. If what you are really running is agents, boat gives each one a ready, full VM from an API, saved every minute, with coding agents, a desktop and HTTPS URLs already there.
/dev/kvm and Docker on every machine
Android emulators and Firecracker need /dev/kvm. Compute Engine leaves it off on E2, Arm and most AMD VMs, and Contabo has none on any VPS plan, so you pay for Intel VMs or move up to Cloud VDS.
Saved every minute, forked while running
Agents sometimes wreck an install. Contabo gives 1 to 5 manual snapshot slots, and Compute Engine needs a machine image and a fresh boot per copy while parked disks keep billing. boat snapshots every minute and forks a running sandbox.
Agents, keys, desktop and URLs ready
On both you install every agent, keep its API keys on a disk it can read, set up a desktop to stream, and add TLS for each URL. boat ships agents with an API, a credentials proxy, a 60fps desktop and HTTPS on 50 ports.
Use boat when agents start, stop and fork machines all day: each sandbox is a full VM from an API in seconds with /dev/kvm, saved every minute, with coding agents, a desktop and HTTPS URLs ready. Compare it one to one: boat vs Google Compute Engine and boat vs Contabo.
Questions people ask
Is Contabo cheaper than Google Compute Engine?
For one server that stays on, yes by far: one agent that never stops is $7 a month on Contabo, and $64 on Compute Engine only with a 3-year commitment. For bursty work it flips: 300 sandboxes for your users come to $378 on Compute Engine against $1,980 on Contabo, and 1,000 short jobs to $690 against $6,600. boat comes to $200 for the user sandboxes.
Which is faster, Compute Engine or Contabo?
We have no comparable CPU measurement for either. Compute Engine speed depends on the machine family you pick, while Contabo's Cloud VPS shares vCPU cores and only Cloud VDS has dedicated cores. boat measured 26.69 runs per second on a public Node.js benchmark at 4 vCPU / 8 GB.
Does Contabo have hourly billing like Compute Engine?
No. Contabo rents servers by the month with a minimum first term of one month, and its listed prices assume a 24-month term. Compute Engine bills per second after a 1 minute minimum, and boat bills per second while a sandbox runs.
Can Compute Engine and Contabo run Docker and nested virtualization?
Both give you root, so Docker runs on either. Nested virtualization works on Compute Engine only on some Intel families and N4D, not on E2, Arm or other AMD VMs, and on Contabo only on Cloud VDS, not on any VPS plan. Every boat sandbox has Docker and /dev/kvm.
Where do Compute Engine, Contabo and boat run?
Compute Engine runs in 43 regions and 130 zones worldwide. Contabo has 11 locations in the EU, the UK, the US, Singapore, Japan, India and Australia. boat runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France, with EU data residency.
Can I run Claude Code on Compute Engine or Contabo?
Yes, on both you install it yourself, run it over SSH and keep your API key on the server. boat preinstalls Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and others, drives them through an API, and keeps real keys out of the sandbox with its credentials proxy.
Try boat
Install the CLI, then run boat new.
7-day free trial
More comparisons
- boat vs Google Compute Engine
- boat vs Contabo
- AWS EC2 vs Google Compute Engine
- Google Compute Engine vs Azure Virtual Machines
- Google Compute Engine vs Oracle Cloud
- Google Compute Engine vs DigitalOcean
- Google Compute Engine vs Hetzner Cloud
- Google Compute Engine vs Vultr
- Google Compute Engine vs Linode
- Google Compute Engine vs Scaleway
- Google Compute Engine vs OVHcloud
- Google Compute Engine vs IONOS Cloud