Google Compute Engine vs Vultr
Both rent you a full KVM virtual machine that you set up yourself. Google Compute Engine bills per second and wraps the VM in a hyperscaler's quotas, firewalls and machine families, while Vultr sells plain servers at a fixed hourly price that is capped each month.
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.
Vultr
Vultr is a general-purpose cloud, and Cloud Compute is its line of KVM virtual servers.
A Vultr instance is a Linux or Windows VM you rent by size, with root, a public IPv4, local SSD or NVMe and a monthly transfer allowance. You choose shared vCPU plans (Regular, High Performance, High Frequency) or dedicated vCPU plans (Optimized Cloud Compute, VX1), and run your own software next to Vultr block storage, file systems, VPCs, Kubernetes, bare metal and GPUs. 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.
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 | Vultr: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Both are plain servers here, so you build the agent setup, preview URLs and copies yourself on either one; boat ships them on every machine. | 120th of 367, with limits $1,106 a month | 114th of 367, with limits $1,060 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 comes to $1,000 a month on Vultr against $1,433 on Compute Engine, and boat fits it fully at $657 with agents and HTTPS built in. | 177th of 366, with limits $1,433 a month | 144th of 366, with limits $1,000 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 short bursts far better, since it bills per second while Vultr bills every started hour. | 92nd of 345, with limits $133 a month | 168th of 345, with limits $1,000 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 | 92nd of 361, with limits $836 a month | 98th of 361, with limits $899 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 Rollouts that start and stop often suit Compute Engine's per-second billing much better than Vultr's hourly minimum. | 36th of 360, with limits $2,085 a month | 179th of 360, with limits $20,000 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 | 16th cheapest of 364 $263 a month | 47th cheapest of 364 $893 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 Per-second billing helps Compute Engine for CI jobs that end in minutes; neither documents /dev/kvm on the plans priced here, and boat has it on every machine. | 41st cheapest of 377 $359 a month | 91st cheapest of 377 $857 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Vultr is the cheaper 24/7 dev box at $40 a month against $109 on Compute Engine, since a flat monthly server is what it does best. | 82nd cheapest of 368 $109 a month | 28th cheapest of 368 $40 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 or a computer-use API, so you install and stream one yourself; boat streams a 60fps desktop out of the box. | 129th of 369, with limits $293 a month | 252nd of 369, with limits $1,190 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 | 300th of 367, with limits $894 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 | 175th of 346, with limits $89 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 | 72nd of 338, with limits $1,818 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 | 168th of 360, with limits $150 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 Both rent GPUs: Compute Engine has Nvidia up to B200 and GB200, Vultr has Nvidia and AMD MI300X to MI355X, and boat has none. | 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 | Vultr | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | A general cloud VM inside Google Cloud; you install and wire everything else | A general KVM 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 instance is a KVM VM with its own kernel | Every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel |
| Billing unit | Per second after a 1 minute minimum | Per started hour, capped at 672 hours a month on most plans | Per second from a monthly plan's usage credit |
| 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 | Root and Docker; virtualization documented only for VX1 and bare metal | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine |
| When it is stopped | CPU and memory stop billing; disks and external IPs keep billing | Billed in full until you destroy it | A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk |
| Snapshots | On demand or on a schedule you set | Manual snapshots that can take up to 30 minutes; paid scheduled backups | Automatic snapshots every minute and on stop |
| Pause and copy | Suspend keeps memory for up to 60 days; copies come from a machine image and a new boot | No suspend; copies come from a disk snapshot and a new deploy | Fork a running sandbox in one call (disk, no memory); resume reboots from disk |
| Reaching the machine | External IPv4 and any port; HTTPS needs your own certificate and a load balancer or web server | Public IPv4 on any port; HTTPS needs your own domain, proxy and certificates | 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 and keys | No agents preinstalled; secrets are read from inside the VM | No agents preinstalled; you put secrets on the server yourself | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more with a prompt, steer and events API; AI credentials proxy keeps keys outside |
| Outbound network rules | VPC egress firewall rules by IP and port; domain rules on Cloud NGFW Standard, a paid tier | Vultr Firewall filters incoming traffic only; outbound rules go in the guest | Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist |
| GPUs | Nvidia GPUs from T4 and L4 up to H100, H200, B200 and GB200 | Nvidia L40S, A100, H100, GH200 and B200, and AMD MI300X, MI325X and MI355X | None |
| Operating systems and CPUs | Linux and Windows Server on Intel, AMD and Arm | Linux and Windows Server (license fee); shared vCPU or dedicated AMD EPYC vCPU | Linux on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) hosts; Wine for Windows apps |
| Regions | 43 regions and 130 zones | 33 locations on six continents | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Google Compute Engine | Vultr | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | Not published | 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 | Not published | 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 | Not published | 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 | Yes | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Not published | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | Not published | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for Compute Engine or Vultr: neither was 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 either cloud depends on the machine family or plan you pick.
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 Vultr 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 | Vultr, 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) | $10 · 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 | $40 · 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) | $524 · 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) | $894 · Usage account | $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) | $5,960 · Usage account | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Google Compute Engine: Compute Engine bills each VM per second after a 1 minute minimum, 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.
Vultr: Each Vultr plan has a fixed hourly price billed by the started hour, capped at 672 hours a month on most plans. Billing runs from deploy to destroy, including while stopped; the prices here use the shared vCPU Regular plans.
Vultr: 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, some new projects also have a global CPU cap, and a free trial account cannot ask for more. Vultr does not publish how many instances a new account can run, so you ask support to raise it. Either way, 50 agents in parallel or 300 user sandboxes may need a request first, and on Compute Engine one agent that never stops reaches its $64 price only with a 3-year commitment. On boat the 1,000-job burst is queued: the $2,000 plan allows 90 starts a minute, 600 an hour and 2,400 a day.
| Scenario | Google Compute Engine | Vultr | 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 | None that bite |
| Sandboxes for your users | None that bite | None that bite | None that bite |
| 1,000 short jobs at once | None that bite | None that bite |
|
Which one should you use?
Use Google Compute Engine when
your jobs are short and bursty, you need egress rules, Arm, Windows or regions worldwide, and you already work inside Google Cloud.
- Per-second billing and memory suspend. Useful for jobs that run minutes, not hours: Compute Engine bills per second and can suspend a VM with its memory.
- Control over outbound traffic. Useful if you must limit where code connects: VPC egress rules, and domain rules on Cloud NGFW Standard.
- More machine families and regions. Useful if you need Arm, Windows or many places: Compute Engine has Intel, AMD and Arm VMs in 43 regions.
Use Vultr when
you want a plain server that runs all month at a simple capped price, AMD or Nvidia GPUs, or block storage and bare metal next to it.
- A simple, capped monthly price. Useful for servers that run all month: each Vultr plan has one hourly price, capped at 672 hours a month.
- AMD and Nvidia GPUs. Useful if you want AMD GPUs too: Vultr rents MI300X, MI325X and MI355X next to Nvidia H100 and B200.
- A small cloud around the server. Useful if the server must sit next to block storage, shared file systems, private networks and bare metal.
Where boat fits
Compute Engine and Vultr are both clouds for any kind of server, and boat is neither. If what you are really running is agents, each one on its own Linux machine, boat gives every agent a full VM that is already set up for that work, so you skip building the agent layer on top of either cloud.
Stops that keep the disk and bill nothing
Agents sit idle between tasks. A stopped Vultr instance bills in full until destroyed, and a stopped Compute Engine VM still bills its disks and IPs. boat saves the disk every minute and a stopped sandbox costs nothing.
/dev/kvm on every machine
An agent that builds Android apps needs an emulator. Compute Engine has no nested virtualization on E2, Arm or most AMD VMs, and Vultr documents it only for VX1 and bare metal. boat has /dev/kvm everywhere.
Agents, desktop and HTTPS ready
Both clouds hand you an empty server, so you install agents, keys, a desktop and TLS for each one. boat ships coding agents driven from outside, a credentials proxy, a 60fps desktop and HTTPS on 50 ports.
Use boat when the machines are for agents: a full VM each with /dev/kvm, coding agents you drive from outside, a desktop, HTTPS ports, minute snapshots, forks and stops that cost nothing. Compare it one to one: boat vs Google Compute Engine and boat vs Vultr.
Questions people ask
Is Google Compute Engine cheaper than Vultr?
It depends on the shape of the work. Vultr is cheaper for one agent on workdays ($10 against $31 a month) and for 50 agents in parallel ($524 against $1,291). Compute Engine is cheaper for sandboxes for your users ($378 against $894) and for 1,000 short jobs at once ($690 against $5,960), because it bills per second.
Which is faster, Compute Engine or Vultr?
We have no comparable measurement for either one. Both sell many machine families and plans, so speed depends on which you pick. boat did 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in the public StarSling run.
Can Compute Engine and Vultr run Docker and nested VMs?
Both run Docker, since each instance is a full KVM VM with root. Compute Engine supports nested virtualization only on some Intel families and N4D, not on E2, Arm or other AMD VMs, and Vultr documents it only for VX1 and bare metal. boat has /dev/kvm on every machine.
Do I pay for a stopped server?
On Vultr, yes, in full, until you destroy the instance. On Compute Engine, CPU and memory stop billing, but disks and external IPs keep billing while they exist. On boat, a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Which has more regions?
Compute Engine runs in 43 regions and 130 zones, and Vultr in 33 locations on six continents, both with many in Europe. boat runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France.
Is boat SOC 2 compliant?
SOC 2 is in progress. We're open about where we stand: live status at status.ascii.dev and our data retention policy at docs.boat.dev/data-retention.
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