Google Compute Engine vs DigitalOcean
Google Compute Engine is a hyperscaler: 43 regions, many machine families, Windows Server, Arm and Nvidia GPUs up to GB200, with quotas and commitments to manage. DigitalOcean Droplets are plain Linux VMs with a fixed hourly price capped each month, but a new team can only run 3 at once and a powered-off Droplet is billed in full.
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.
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.
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 | DigitalOcean: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month | 120th of 367, with limits $1,106 a month | 134th of 367, with limits $1,187 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB For always-on AI employees, DigitalOcean ranks 35th and Compute Engine 177th; both leave the agent setup to you, and boat ranks 5th with agents built in. | 177th of 366, with limits $1,433 a month | 35th of 366, with limits $1,429 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 | 92nd of 345, with limits $133 a month | 63rd of 345, with limits $60 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 fit neither cloud out of the box: a new DigitalOcean team runs 3 Droplets at once and Compute Engine has per-region CPU quotas; boat ranks first. | 92nd of 361, with limits $836 a month | 54th of 361, with limits $421 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 | 31st of 360, with limits $1,786 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 suit Compute Engine better here, at 16th against DigitalOcean's 106th, and boat ranks 10th. | 16th cheapest of 364 $263 a month | 106th of 364, with limits $357 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 For CI runners, Compute Engine ranks 41st and DigitalOcean 146th; on both you run the runner software yourself, and boat ranks 4th with /dev/kvm on every machine. | 41st cheapest of 377 $359 a month | 146th of 377, with limits $171 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Both fit a 24/7 dev box; DigitalOcean ranks 39th and Compute Engine 82nd, and boat ranks 18th with snapshots every minute. | 82nd cheapest of 368 $109 a month | 39th 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 cloud has a desktop or computer-use API on its Linux VMs, so you install and stream one yourself; boat ranks 6th with a 60fps desktop ready. | 129th of 369, with limits $293 a month | 117th of 369, with limits $263 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 For browser-use agents, DigitalOcean ranks 56th and Compute Engine 212th, and boat ranks 7th with Chromium and browser control in each sandbox. | 212th of 367, with limits $244 a month | 56th of 367, with limits $147 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 | 88th of 346, with limits $175 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 | 69th of 338, with limits $1,786 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 | 22nd of 360, with limits $199 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 the two clouds fit GPU work: Compute Engine rents Nvidia GPUs up to B200 and GB200, DigitalOcean rents Nvidia and AMD GPU Droplets, and boat has no GPUs. | 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 | DigitalOcean | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | A general cloud VM from a hyperscaler; you install and wire everything else | A general Linux server you set up and run yourself | An agent sandbox: a full VM with agents, desktop, URLs and snapshots set up |
| Isolation | Every instance is a full KVM-based VM with its own kernel | Every Droplet is a full VM with its own kernel | Every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Docker, root and systemd on any VM; nested KVM only on some Intel families and N4D, not on E2, Arm or other AMD VMs | Root and Docker; nested VMs are mentioned in the live migration docs but not listed as a feature | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine, documented |
| CPU | Many families, from E2 to the latest Intel and AMD chips; no comparable measurement | Basic plans share hyper-threads with other Droplets; dedicated CPU plans cost more; no comparable measurement | Dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) hosts; 26.69 runs/s at 4 vCPU / 8 GB |
| Stopping | A stopped VM stops CPU and memory charges; disks and external IPs keep billing | A powered-off Droplet is billed in full; you destroy it to stop paying | A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk |
| Snapshots | Disk snapshots on demand or on a schedule you set | On-demand disk snapshots, billed by size; paid scheduled backups | Automatic snapshots every minute and on stop |
| Pause and fork | Suspend keeps memory for up to 60 days; cloning means a machine image (disks, not memory) and a new VM | Take a live snapshot, then create new Droplets from it (disk, no memory); no suspend | Fork a running sandbox in one call (disk, no memory); resume reboots from disk |
| Reaching the machine | External IPv4 and any port through firewall rules; HTTPS needs your own certificate and a load balancer or web server | Public IPv4 and IPv6 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 | No managed desktop, browser or computer-use API on Linux VMs | Headless Linux; you install a desktop and VNC yourself | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream |
| Coding agents | None preinstalled; you install agents and drive them over SSH or startup scripts | None on Droplets; the separate Harness Runtime product runs agents in microVMs | 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 from inside the VM | No credentials proxy for Droplets; you put secrets on the server yourself | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; switch a credential to another account when credits run out |
| Outbound network rules | VPC egress firewall rules by IP and port; domain rules on Cloud NGFW Standard, a paid tier | Free cloud firewalls with outbound rules by IP range, Droplet or tag | Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist |
| GPUs, Windows and Arm | Nvidia GPUs from T4 and L4 up to H100, H200, B200 and GB200; Windows Server; Arm machine types | Nvidia and AMD GPU Droplets, on demand, reserved or spot; Linux on x86 only | No GPUs; Linux on x86, with Wine for Windows apps |
| Regions | 43 regions and 130 zones worldwide, including many in the EU | 16 datacenters in 13 regions across the US, Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Google Compute Engine | DigitalOcean | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | 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 | Yes | No | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | No | 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 | No | Yes | No |
| GPU | Yes | Yes | No |
| Windows | No | No | 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 | No | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | Yes | 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
There is no comparable measurement for either cloud: neither Compute Engine nor DigitalOcean Droplets were part of the public StarSling benchmark run we use. In that run, on 2026-09-29, boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. Speed on both clouds depends on the plan you pick, and DigitalOcean's Basic plans share hyper-threads with other Droplets.
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 DigitalOcean 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 | DigitalOcean, 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) | $13 · Pay as you go | $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 | $48 · Pay as you go | $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) | $629 · Pay as you go · 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 | $378 · Pay-as-you-go billing account (no plan fee) | $179 · Pay as you go · 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) | $357 · Pay as you go · 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 rates need a 1-year or 3-year commitment.
DigitalOcean: Each Droplet size has a fixed hourly price, billed per second with a 60 second minimum and capped at 672 hours a month, with a transfer allowance included. Billing runs from create to destroy, including while powered off, and snapshots and backups cost extra.
DigitalOcean: 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, and only Basic shared CPU plans up to $48, so 50 agents in parallel, sandboxes for your users and the 1,000-job burst do not fit until you reach a higher tier, such as Tier 5 with 100 Droplets. Compute Engine fits those scenarios on price, but its per-region CPU quotas vary by project and may need a request first, and a free trial account cannot ask for more. Its one-agent-that-never-stops price only holds with a 3-year commitment. On boat, the 1,000-job burst is the one that does not fit: the $2,000 plan allows 90 starts a minute, 600 an hour and 2,400 a day, so the burst is queued.
| Scenario | Google Compute Engine | DigitalOcean | 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 |
| 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 Windows Server, Arm, Nvidia GPUs up to GB200, regions all over the world, or large fleets that grow past a small team's limits, and you can manage quotas and commitments.
- Windows, Arm and the biggest Nvidia GPUs. Pick Compute Engine if you need Windows Server, Arm machines, or Nvidia GPUs up to B200 and GB200.
- Regions almost everywhere. Pick Compute Engine if you need machines near users worldwide: it runs 43 regions and 130 zones.
- Stopping stops most of the bill. Pick Compute Engine if VMs sit stopped a lot: CPU and memory charges end, and only disks and IPs keep billing.
Use DigitalOcean when
you want plain Linux servers with fixed, capped prices, a few long-lived machines that run all month, AMD or Nvidia GPU Droplets, and a simpler cloud to learn.
- Flat prices with a monthly cap. Pick DigitalOcean if you want one fixed hourly price per Droplet, billed per second and capped at 672 hours a month.
- Lower prices without a commitment. Pick DigitalOcean if you want low list prices: one agent running all month is cheaper than Compute Engine, with no multi-year term.
- AMD GPUs and free firewalls. Pick DigitalOcean if you want AMD as well as Nvidia GPU Droplets, and free cloud firewalls that limit outbound traffic.
Where boat fits
Compute Engine and DigitalOcean are general clouds, and both hand you an empty VM. If what you are really running is agents, boat gives each one a full VM that is ready to work: coding agents with an API, /dev/kvm, a desktop, HTTPS URLs and a disk saved every minute. Stay on either cloud for GPUs, Windows or regions outside the EU.
A disk saved every minute, free to park
Agents sit idle between tasks. A stopped Compute Engine VM still bills its disk and IP, and a powered-off Droplet bills in full, so you destroy and recreate it from a snapshot and lose what changed since.
/dev/kvm and forks on every machine
Compute Engine has no nested virtualization on E2, Arm or most AMD VMs, and DigitalOcean does not list it as a feature. Copying a VM on either means an image and a fresh boot; boat forks a running sandbox in one call.
Agents, desktop and HTTPS ready
On both clouds you install, prompt and watch each agent yourself, keep its keys inside the VM, add a desktop for computer use, and set up certificates and a load balancer before anyone can open an HTTPS link.
Use boat when what you are running is agents and you want each one on a ready, full VM: coding agents with an API, keys kept outside, /dev/kvm, a desktop, HTTPS URLs, snapshots every minute, forks and stops that cost nothing. Compare it one to one: boat vs Google Compute Engine and boat vs DigitalOcean.
Questions people ask
Is Google Compute Engine cheaper than DigitalOcean?
Not in our small scenarios. One coding agent on workdays comes to $13 a month on DigitalOcean against $31 on Compute Engine, and one agent that never stops to $48 against $64, where Compute Engine's figure needs a 3-year commitment. For 50 agents in parallel, Compute Engine is $1,291 a month and DigitalOcean $629, but DigitalOcean needs a higher tier first; boat comes to $317.
Which is faster, Compute Engine or DigitalOcean?
We have no comparable measurement for either: neither was part of the StarSling benchmark run where boat did 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. On both clouds speed depends on the machine family or plan you pick.
Can Compute Engine and DigitalOcean run Docker and nested VMs?
Both run Docker, since each machine is a full VM with root. Compute Engine supports nested virtualization only on some machine types, not on E2, Arm or AMD VMs except N4D, and DigitalOcean mentions nested VMs only in its live migration docs. On boat, Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm are documented on every machine.
Do I pay for a stopped VM?
On Compute Engine, a stopped VM stops CPU and memory charges, but its disks and external IPs keep billing. On DigitalOcean, a powered-off Droplet is billed in full until you destroy it. On boat, a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
How many machines can I run at once?
A new DigitalOcean team can run 3 Droplets at once, and Tier 5 allows 100. Compute Engine sets per-region CPU quotas that vary by project, and free trial accounts cannot ask for more. boat allows 100 to 2,000 sandboxes by plan, with limits on starts per minute.
Where does my data run?
Compute Engine runs in 43 regions worldwide and DigitalOcean in 13, both including Europe. boat runs only in the EU (Germany, Finland and France), with EU data residency.
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