GitHub Codespaces vs Islo

GitHub Codespaces is a cloud dev environment for people: a dev container opened from a GitHub repository in VS Code, which stops after 12 hours at most. Islo is a sandbox for coding agents: a microVM per agent with no session cap, a gateway that controls and logs outbound traffic, and agents preinstalled.

The companies and products

GitHub Codespaces

GitHub Codespaces is GitHub's cloud development environment: a ready-to-code Linux machine for a repository, opened in the browser, VS Code or the GitHub CLI.

Codespaces is a different kind of product from boat: a dev environment for people working on a GitHub repository, not a sandbox API for agents. Each codespace is a Docker container built from the repo's dev container config, running on its own newly built VM on Azure, with 2 to 32 cores. It is built for developers and teams who want every contributor to start from the same setup, with prebuilds, port forwarding and GitHub billing.

Isolation: A Docker container on its own newly built VM, with its own virtual network
Operating system: Linux only; Windows and macOS are not supported for the remote container
Machine sizes: 2, 4, 8, 16 or 32 cores, with 4 GB of memory per core
Lifetime: Stops after 30 idle minutes by default (5 to 240), and after 12 hours at most even while in use
Regions: US East, US West, Europe West and Southeast Asia
Free usage: Personal Free accounts get 120 core-hours and 15 GB-month a month, Pro 180 and 20; organizations get no free quota
Compliance: GitHub Enterprise Cloud lists SOC 1, SOC 2 and SOC 3 reports and ISO 27001

Islo

Islo is an agent sandbox from Incredibuild: each coding agent gets its own microVM, with network rules and credentials handled at a gateway.

An Islo sandbox is a Linux microVM with its own kernel, built from a container image, with Claude Code, Cursor CLI and Codex preinstalled. Outbound traffic can pass through a gateway that allows or blocks hosts, injects credentials and logs every request. It is built for teams that run coding agents, evals and RL rollouts in the background, on Islo's cloud or in their own cloud account.

Maker: Incredibuild, a build acceleration company based in Tel Aviv
Launched: May 4, 2026
Isolation: A microVM with its own kernel for each agent computer
Regions: US West on Islo's cloud; BYOC puts the control plane and sandboxes in your own cloud account
Billing: CPU per core, memory per GB and disk per GB while a sandbox runs, billed per hour; signup credits with no card
Compliance: No certification named on its site; compliance documents on request from support

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. “274th cheapest of 367” means 273 of the other 366 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	GitHub Codespaces: price rank	Islo: price rank	boat: price rank
Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Both run Docker inside, but neither documents /dev/kvm, and Codespaces adds a 12-hour stop; boat has Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine.	274th of 367, with limits $4,618 a month	326th of 367, with limits $7,402 a month	3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month
Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB Islo fits an always-on assistant, since it has no session cap and can pause with memory, while every codespace stops after 12 hours at most; boat also runs until you stop it.	309th of 366, with limits $6,970 a month	30th cheapest of 366 $9,928 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	288th of 345, with limits $619 a month	153rd of 345, with limits $503 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 Neither fits 300 user sandboxes at once out of the box: Islo's Team plan is reported at 50 running, and GitHub does not publish its limit.	281st of 361, with limits $1,964 a month	171st of 361, with limits $3,160 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	282nd of 360, with limits $9,489 a month	167th of 360, with limits $15,265 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 Islo has a Harbor integration and gateway rules that stop trials from looking up answers; Codespaces is built around a person and a repository.	295th of 364, with limits $1,519 a month	198th of 364, with limits $2,456 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 Islo can snapshot a running sandbox and start new ones from it, while Codespaces starts each run from the repo or a prebuild; boat forks running sandboxes.	314th of 377, with limits $909 a month	119th cheapest of 377 $1,507 a month	4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month
24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Codespaces is a polished VS Code box per repo but stops after 12 hours, while Islo and boat keep a machine running until you stop it.	130th of 368, with limits $270 a month	112th cheapest of 368 $402 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 Codespaces nor Islo has a graphical desktop or a computer-use API, while boat streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium.	267th of 369, with limits $1,367 a month	310th of 369, with limits $2,210 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	275th of 367, with limits $678 a month	113th of 367, with limits $1,105 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	310th of 346, with limits $922 a month	66th cheapest of 346 $748 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	280th of 338, with limits $18,637 a month	265th of 338, with limits $14,966 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 Codespaces recreates every copy from the repository, Islo starts copies from a snapshot of files, and boat forks one prepared machine while it runs.	267th of 360, with limits $445 a month	47th of 360, with limits $746 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	GitHub Codespaces	Islo	boat
What it is	A cloud dev environment for people, opened from a GitHub repository in VS Code, the browser or JupyterLab	A sandbox for coding agents, driven from the CLI and API	A sandbox you drive from code, with full VMs, a desktop and coding agents built in
Isolation	A Docker container on its own newly built VM, with its own virtual network	Every sandbox is a microVM with its own kernel	Every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel
How long it runs	Stops after 30 idle minutes by default (up to 240) and after 12 hours at most, even while in use	No published session cap; runs until you stop it or a pause timer you set fires	Runs until you stop it; no session cap on paid plans
Docker and nested virtualization	Docker and sudo inside the dev container; /dev/kvm not documented	Docker inside and sudo; no /dev/kvm or nested virtualization documented	Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine
Desktop and computer use	VS Code, JupyterLab and a terminal; no graphical desktop	A browser inside the sandbox for testing; no desktop or computer-use API	60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream
Pause and resume	Files kept on stop with storage billed; stopped codespaces are deleted after 30 days by default	Pause keeps files, processes and memory; resumes on the next exec, file access or webhook	Snapshots every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox keeps its disk and costs nothing
Fork and snapshots	No copy or snapshot endpoint; new codespaces start from a repo, branch, pull request or prebuild	Snapshot a running sandbox's files, then start new sandboxes from it	Fork a running sandbox into copies with its files; named snapshots as templates
Starting point	Dev container config in the repository, with prebuilds built by GitHub Actions	A container image	Named snapshots (templates), shareable by code; no Dockerfile builds
Coding agents	GitHub Copilot as a VS Code extension; other agents you install and run yourself	Claude Code, Cursor CLI and Codex preinstalled; factory lines run agent steps with events, steer and follow-ups	Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API
Keeping keys out of the sandbox	Secrets are copied into the codespace as environment variables	Gateway injects stored credentials into outbound requests for any host	AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register; switch a credential to another account when credits run out
Outbound internet	Open internet; GitHub says there is no way to restrict it	Gateway rules by host, path and HTTP method, default deny, and a log of every request	Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist
Reaching the sandbox	A URL per forwarded port, private, organization or public; SSH and CLI tunnels; no public IP	HTTPS share links that anyone with the URL can open, expiring after 24 hours by default; SSH and port-forward through the CLI	HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; its own IP
Sandboxes at once	GitHub says there are limits but does not publish them	Free 5 and Team 50 running sandboxes per launch coverage; paused ones do not count	100 to 2,000 running sandboxes by plan, raised by adding seats
Regions	US East, US West, Europe West and Southeast Asia	US West, or inside your own cloud account with BYOC	EU only: Germany, Finland, France, with EU data residency

Every feature Battleships tracks (43)

Feature	GitHub Codespaces	Islo	boat
Full VM (own kernel)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Docker inside	Yes	Yes	Yes
Nested virtualization	No	No	Yes
Root	Yes	Yes	Yes
Systemd	Not published	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	No	Yes	Yes
Fork/clone	No	Yes	Yes
Live fork (no pause)	No	Yes	Yes
Memory fork	No	No	No
Custom image (Docker or snapshot)	Yes	Yes	Yes
≥24 h sessions	No	Yes	Yes
Idle auto-stop	Yes	Yes	No
Wake on request	No	Yes	No
HTTPS preview URLs	Yes	Yes	Yes
Raw TCP inbound	No	No	Yes
Public IPv4	No	No	No
Egress allowlist	No	Yes	No
Secret proxy	No	Yes	Yes
Secret proxy for any API	No	Yes	Yes
Preinstalled agents	No	Yes	Yes
Agent harness API	No	Yes	Yes
MCP server	No	No	No
GPU	No	No	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	Not published	Not published	Yes
Spend limits	Yes	Not published	Yes
Usage per sandbox (API)	No	Yes	Yes
Audit logs	Yes	Yes	No
SSO	Yes	Yes	No
SOC 2	Yes	Not published	No
HIPAA	No	Not published	No
EU data residency	Yes	No	Yes
Zero data retention	Not published	Not published	Yes

Performance

GitHub CodespacesNot measured

IsloNot measured

boat26.69 runs/s

There is no comparable measurement for GitHub Codespaces or Islo: neither was in the public benchmark runs we use. In StarSling's run of 2026-09-29, boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) hosts.

Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. GitHub Codespaces and Islo 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	GitHub Codespaces, a month	Islo, 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	$51 · Personal account: GitHub Free	$101 · Free	$20 · $20/mo
One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month	$270 · Personal account: GitHub Free · with limits	$420 · Free	$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	$3,019 · Personal account: GitHub Free	$4,863 · Team	$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	$850 · Personal account: GitHub Free · with limits	$1,382 · Team · 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	$1,889 · Personal account: GitHub Free · with limits	$3,053 · Team · with limits	$2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits

GitHub Codespaces: Codespaces bills $0.09 per core-hour while a codespace is active, plus $0.07 per GB-month for storage while it exists, stopped too. There is no 4-core 8 GB machine, so 4 vCPU / 8 GB jobs are priced on the 4-core 16 GB one; personal accounts get a free monthly quota.

Islo: Islo bills each CPU core and each GB of memory and disk while a sandbox runs, per hour, with no plan fee. An idle sandbox bills until a pause timer set at creation fires, and egress has no published price.

Islo: 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

Every codespace stops after 12 hours at most, so it does not fit the always-on scenario without a script that restarts it, and running processes end at each stop. Islo has no session cap, but its Team plan is reported at 50 running sandboxes, so 300 user sandboxes and 1,000 short jobs need a custom contract. GitHub does not publish how many codespaces can run at once, so those two show as not confirmed. On boat the 1,000-job burst gets queued and needs more starts per day than the $2,000 plan allows.

Scenario	GitHub Codespaces	Islo	boat
One coding agent, workdays	None that bite	egress price not published	None that bite
One agent that never stops	Personal account: GitHub Free: sessions capped at 12 h	egress price not published	None that bite
50 agents in parallel	how many machines can run at once: limit not published, probably fine at 50 (the typical published limit is 50)	egress price not published	None that bite
Sandboxes for your users	not confirmed: how many machines can run at once (you need 300; the typical published limit is 50)	Team: max 50 concurrent egress price not published	None that bite
1,000 short jobs at once	not confirmed: how many machines can run at once (you need 1,000; the typical published limit is 50)	Team: max 50 concurrent egress price not published	max 2,400 starts/day (needs ~6,667) max 600 starts/hour (needs ~1,000) bursts above 90 starts/min are queued (a burst of 333 takes ~4 min to start)

Which one should you use?

Use GitHub Codespaces when

your developers want a ready VS Code environment for a GitHub repository, opened from a branch or pull request, in the US, EU or Asia.

Built into GitHub. Useful if your team lives on GitHub: open a ready codespace from any repo, branch or pull request, in VS Code or the browser.
Free hours for personal accounts. Useful for occasional personal work: a GitHub Free account includes 120 core-hours and 15 GB-month of storage each month.
Regions in the US, EU and Asia. Useful if your developers are spread out: codespaces run in US East, US West, Europe West and Southeast Asia.

Use Islo when

your coding agents run unattended for hours and you need per-host egress rules with a log of every call, pause with memory, or a US region or your own cloud.

Agents that run as long as they need. Useful for unattended agents: an Islo sandbox has no session cap and comes with Claude Code, Cursor CLI and Codex.
Egress rules and request logs. Useful if you must control what agents reach: Islo allows or blocks each host, path and method, and logs every call.
Pause with memory, wake on request. Useful for agents that sit idle between tasks: Islo pauses them with memory kept and resumes on the next request.

Where boat fits

If what you are really running is coding agents, Codespaces is a tool for people and Islo is a headless agent sandbox. Look at boat when your agents need a screen, /dev/kvm or ports others can reach, or when you want to fork a running machine and run hundreds at once.

A desktop agents can see and use

Neither Codespaces nor Islo has a graphical desktop or a computer-use API. An agent that must check a UI or click through a real app would need a VNC stack you install yourself; boat streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium.

A full VM with /dev/kvm and systemd

Both run Docker, but neither documents /dev/kvm, so Android emulators, Firecracker and VMs inside the sandbox stop at the first boot. Every boat machine has root, systemd, Docker and /dev/kvm.

Ports to host on and forks of running machines

Codespaces has no public IP and no copy endpoint, and Islo share links are open to anyone with the URL and expire after 24 hours. boat serves up to 50 token-protected HTTPS ports plus raw TCP, and forks a running sandbox.

Use boat when your agents need more than a shell: a desktop for computer use, /dev/kvm for emulators, ports you can host on, forks of running machines and up to 2,000 sandboxes at once in the EU. Compare it one to one: boat vs GitHub Codespaces and boat vs Islo.

Questions people ask

Is GitHub Codespaces cheaper than Islo?

In the scenarios we priced, yes: one coding agent on workdays is $51 a month on Codespaces and $101 on Islo, and 50 agents in parallel come to $3,019 against $4,863. One agent running all month is $270 against $420, but Codespaces only gets there with a restart every 12 hours. boat comes to $20, $317 and $26 for the same three.

Which is faster, Codespaces or Islo?

We cannot say: neither was in the public CPU benchmark runs we use. boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in StarSling's run of 2026-09-29.

Can I run an AI agent 24/7 on Codespaces or Islo?

On Islo, yes: it publishes no session cap, and a sandbox can pause with memory and wake on the next request. A codespace stops after 12 hours at most, even while in use, so it needs restarts. A boat sandbox runs until you stop it, with no session cap on paid plans.

Can Codespaces and Islo run Docker?

Yes, both run Docker inside with sudo. Neither documents /dev/kvm or nested virtualization, so Android emulators and microVMs are not a supported setup. Every boat machine has Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm.

Can I limit what an agent reaches on the internet?

On Islo, yes: a gateway profile allows or denies traffic by host, path and HTTP method and logs each request. GitHub says there is no way to restrict outbound traffic from a codespace. boat has open internet, while its credentials proxy keeps real API keys out of the sandbox.

Where do Codespaces and Islo run?

Codespaces runs in US East, US West, Europe West and Southeast Asia. Islo runs in US West, or inside your own cloud account with BYOC. boat runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France, with EU data residency.

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