GitHub Codespaces vs Unikraft Cloud

GitHub Codespaces is a dev environment: a Linux dev container on its own VM, opened from a GitHub repository, that stops after 12 hours at most. Unikraft Cloud turns a Dockerfile into a small Firecracker microVM that boots in milliseconds, sleeps when idle and wakes on the next request.

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

Unikraft Cloud

Unikraft Cloud is a microVM cloud from Unikraft Inc. that runs any Dockerfile-based workload as a minimal Linux microVM with millisecond cold starts and scale-to-zero.

Your Dockerfile becomes the VM image at build time, and each instance runs on a heavily customized Firecracker VMM, so it boots in milliseconds and can go into standby when no traffic arrives. It is a general compute platform built for dense, bursty work such as HTTP services, headless browsers and agent fleets, sold as flat self-serve plans plus Enterprise dedicated hosts, on-prem and bring your own cloud. It is not a dev machine you log into: instances are reached through services, the CLI and a sandbox plugin for commands and files.

Isolation: Linux microVM per instance on a customized Firecracker VMM; full VMs on Enterprise
Plans: Hobby free, Team $39/mo, Pro $199/mo, Enterprise custom; each caps running instances, vCPUs and memory
Running capacity: 2 / 8 / 24 running instances with 4 / 8 / 32 GiB memory in total on Hobby / Team / Pro
Regions: Dallas, Frankfurt, San Francisco, Singapore and Washington DC by default; more metros on request
Self-hosting: Dedicated host fleet, on-prem and BYOC on Enterprise
Compliance: SOC2, HIPAA and audit logs listed on Enterprise
Open source: The unikraft CLI is open source; the cloud platform is commercial

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	Unikraft Cloud: price rank	boat: price rank
Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Codespaces gives you Docker inside a dev container but stops at 12 hours, Unikraft documents no container runtime inside an instance, and boat is a full VM with Docker and /dev/kvm.	274th of 367, with limits $4,618 a month	Can't run it	3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month
Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An always-on assistant hits the 12-hour cap on Codespaces and the shared 8 GiB Team pool on Unikraft, while a boat sandbox runs until you stop it.	309th of 366, with limits $6,970 a month	Can't run it	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 Short runs that sleep between calls are the shape Unikraft is built for, though self-serve plans cap you at 24 running instances; each codespace builds a dev container on a new VM.	288th of 345, with limits $619 a month	Can't run it	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 on a published self-serve plan: GitHub does not publish how many codespaces can run at once, and Unikraft Pro holds 24 running instances.	281st of 361, with limits $1,964 a month	Can't run it	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	Can't run it	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	295th of 364, with limits $1,519 a month	Can't run it	10th cheapest of 364 $200 a month
CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month Codespaces has no fork or snapshot API, and on Unikraft nested virtualization is Enterprise only, so CI jobs that need copies of a warm machine or /dev/kvm fit boat better.	314th of 377, with limits $909 a month	Can't run it	4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month
24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Unikraft keeps a box around all month on its $39 Team pool but has no SSH yet, while Codespaces is a polished VS Code box that stops after 12 hours.	130th of 368, with limits $270 a month	219th of 368, with limits $39 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 graphical desktop built in; boat streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium for computer use.	267th of 369, with limits $1,367 a month	Can't run it	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 Unikraft can run your own headless Chrome from a Dockerfile, Codespaces has no browser built in, and boat gives each sandbox Chromium on a desktop.	275th of 367, with limits $678 a month	Can't run it	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	Can't run it	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	Can't run it	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	267th of 360, with limits $445 a month	Can't run it	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	Unikraft Cloud	boat
What it is	A cloud dev environment for a GitHub repository, opened in VS Code, the browser or JupyterLab	A microVM cloud that runs Dockerfile-based workloads with millisecond cold starts and scale-to-zero	A sandbox you drive from code: full VMs with coding agents and a desktop built in
Isolation	A Docker container on its own newly built VM, with its own virtual network	Minimal Linux microVM on a customized Firecracker VMM; full VMs on Enterprise	Full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts
How long it runs	Stops after 30 idle minutes by default and after 12 hours at most, even while in use	No published session cap; goes into standby when idle and wakes on traffic	Runs until you stop it; no session cap on paid plans
Machine size	2, 4, 8, 16 or 32 cores, with 4 GB of memory per core	Plan pool shared by all running instances: 2 vCPU / 4 GiB, 8 vCPU / 8 GiB or 24 vCPU / 32 GiB	4 vCPU / 8 GB by default, up to 16 vCPU / 32 GB per sandbox on the $100 plan and above
Docker inside	Docker and sudo inside the dev container	The Dockerfile becomes the VM image; no container runtime inside documented	Docker, systemd and root, like any Ubuntu machine
Nested virtualization	/dev/kvm is not documented	Yes, with a per-instance flag and permission, Enterprise only	/dev/kvm on every plan, for Android emulators and VMs
Logging in	SSH and the GitHub CLI, plus VS Code and the browser	No SSH yet; commands and files go through the sandbox plugin and CLI	SSH into every sandbox, or drive it through the API
Idle and wake	Stops when idle; you start it again from the editor, CLI or API	Standby after a 1 second idle cooldown by default; incoming traffic wakes it in milliseconds, with memory kept in stateful mode	Disk saved every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing and is started by API
Fork and checkpoints	No copy or snapshot endpoint; new codespaces start from a repo, branch, pull request or prebuild	Checkpoint memory and volumes of a running microVM, then start new instances from it	Fork a running sandbox with its disk; named snapshots as templates
Desktop and browser	Editor and terminal; no graphical desktop	None built in; you can run your own headless browser from a Dockerfile	60fps Linux desktop with Chromium, computer use and browser control
Coding agents	GitHub Copilot as a VS Code extension; other agents you install yourself	None preinstalled; you bring the agent in your own image	Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API
Keeping API keys out	Secrets are copied into the codespace as environment variables	Network shield can inject secrets into traffic, Enterprise only, limited access	Credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API, on every plan
Inbound access	A URL per forwarded port, private, organization or public; no public IP	Services on its load balancer: HTTP, HTTPS and TLS-wrapped TCP; no public IP per instance	HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; dedicated IPv4 or IPv6
Regions	US East, US West, Europe West and Southeast Asia	Dallas, Frankfurt, San Francisco, Singapore and Washington DC, more on request	EU only: Germany, Finland, France

Every feature Battleships tracks (43)

Feature	GitHub Codespaces	Unikraft Cloud	boat
Full VM (own kernel)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Docker inside	Yes	No	Yes
Nested virtualization	No	Yes	Yes
Root	Yes	Yes	Yes
Systemd	Not published	Not published	Yes
Desktop GUI	No	No	Yes
Browser	No	No	Yes
Computer-use API	No	No	Yes
SSH	Yes	No	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	Yes	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	Not published	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	No	Yes
Agent harness API	No	No	Yes
MCP server	No	No	No
GPU	No	Yes	No
Windows	No	No	No
Arm64	No	Yes	No
Self-hosting	No	Yes	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	No	Yes
Audit logs	Yes	Yes	No
SSO	Yes	No	No
SOC 2	Yes	Yes	No
HIPAA	No	Yes	No
EU data residency	Yes	Yes	Yes
Zero data retention	Not published	Not published	Yes

Performance

GitHub CodespacesNot measured

Unikraft CloudNot measured

boat26.69 runs/s

There is no comparable CPU measurement for GitHub Codespaces or Unikraft Cloud: neither was in the public 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. Unikraft states cold starts under 10 ms, which is its own figure and measures start time, not CPU speed.

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 Unikraft Cloud 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	Unikraft Cloud, 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	$39 · Hobby	$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	$39 · Hobby	$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	Can't run it	$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	Can't run it	$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	Can't run it	$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 of storage while it exists, stopped too. Personal accounts get a free monthly quota and organizations do not.

Unikraft Cloud: Unikraft charges a flat monthly fee for a pool of running capacity: free for 2 vCPU / 4 GiB, $39 for 8 vCPU / 8 GiB, $199 for 24 vCPU / 32 GiB. It publishes no per-hour rate, so anything bigger is an Enterprise quote.

Unikraft Cloud: 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

Every codespace stops after 12 hours at most, so it does not fit the always-on scenario without a restart script, and GitHub does not publish how many can run at once, so 300 user sandboxes and 1,000 short jobs are not confirmed. Unikraft's limits are shared pools: the Team plan's 8 vCPU and 8 GiB hold one 4 vCPU / 8 GB agent, so 50 agents, user sandboxes and the burst need an Enterprise contract. boat has no session cap on paid plans, but at 1,000 short jobs at once its $2,000 plan queues starts.

Scenario	GitHub Codespaces	Unikraft Cloud	boat
One coding agent, workdays	None that bite	flat pool: the tier is billed whether used or not disk beyond 0 GiB: price unknown egress price not published	None that bite
One agent that never stops	Personal account: GitHub Free: sessions capped at 12 h	flat pool: the tier is billed whether used or not disk beyond 0 GiB: price unknown 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)	no pool tier with 200 vCPU / 400 GiB for 50 VMs no published per-resource rate	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)	no pool tier with 600 vCPU / 1,200 GiB for 300 VMs no published per-resource rate	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)	no pool tier with 2,000 vCPU / 4,000 GiB for 1,000 VMs no published per-resource rate	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 dev container from any repo, branch or pull request.
A full editor with big machines. Useful for developers who want VS Code in the browser on up to 32 cores, with SSH and port forwarding.
Free hours for personal accounts. Useful for occasional personal work: a GitHub Free account includes 120 core-hours and 15 GB-month each month.

Use Unikraft Cloud when

you run many small services or headless browsers that sleep most of the time and must wake in milliseconds, or want GPUs, on-prem or your own cloud under an Enterprise contract.

Millisecond starts and scale-to-zero. Best for many small services that sleep most of the time and must answer the next request in milliseconds.
A flat monthly price. Useful if you want a fixed bill: a pool of running capacity for a flat fee, with sleeping instances not counted.
GPUs, arm64 and your own hardware. Enterprise customers can get NVIDIA GPUs, arm64 hosts, egress filtering, dedicated hosts, on-prem or their own cloud.

Where boat fits

If what you are really running is AI agents that work for hours, neither is built for it: Codespaces is a dev box for people that stops at 12 hours, and Unikraft is tuned for small services that sleep. boat gives each agent a full VM that keeps running, with Docker, /dev/kvm, a desktop and coding agents you drive from outside.

Machines that keep running and fork

A codespace stops at 12 hours even in use, so you need a restart script, and it cannot be copied. Unikraft can checkpoint, but its Team pool of 8 GiB fits one 4 vCPU / 8 GB agent. boat runs until you stop it and forks while running.

A whole machine: Docker, /dev/kvm and a desktop

Codespaces documents no /dev/kvm and no desktop; Unikraft documents no Docker inside, has no SSH yet and keeps nested virtualization for Enterprise. Every boat sandbox has root, systemd, Docker, /dev/kvm, SSH and a 60fps desktop with Chromium.

Agents driven from outside, keys kept out

On Codespaces your API key sits in an environment variable any code can read; on Unikraft secret injection is Enterprise only. boat ships Claude Code, Codex and more with a prompt, steer and events API, and keeps real keys in a credentials proxy.

Use boat when your agents need a real machine that keeps running: Docker, /dev/kvm, a desktop and a browser, coding agents you drive from outside, and fleets of full-size sandboxes without a sales call. Compare it one to one: boat vs GitHub Codespaces and boat vs Unikraft Cloud.

Questions people ask

Is GitHub Codespaces cheaper than Unikraft Cloud?

For one coding agent on workdays, Codespaces comes to $51 a month and Unikraft's Team pool to $39 a month, with boat at $20. For one agent that never stops, Unikraft stays at $39 against $270 on Codespaces, which also needs a restart every 12 hours; boat is $26. For 50 agents, Codespaces is $3,019 a month and no self-serve Unikraft plan is big enough.

Which is faster?

Neither has a comparable CPU measurement in the benchmarks we use. Unikraft is far faster to start: its microVMs cold boot in milliseconds and wake on the next request, while a codespace builds a dev container on a new VM, which prebuilds speed up.

Can I run Docker in GitHub Codespaces or Unikraft Cloud?

In Codespaces, yes: Docker works inside the dev container and you have sudo. Unikraft uses your Dockerfile to build the VM image and does not document a container runtime inside a running instance. Every boat sandbox has Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm.

Can I SSH into them?

You can SSH into a codespace through the GitHub CLI. Unikraft has no SSH yet; you run commands and move files through its sandbox plugin and CLI. You can SSH into every boat sandbox.

Can I run an AI agent 24/7 on either?

Not on Codespaces without restarts, since every codespace stops after 12 hours at most. Unikraft has no published session cap, but a 4 vCPU / 8 GB agent fills its Team pool. A boat sandbox runs until you stop it, with no session cap on paid plans.

Try boat

Install the CLI, then run boat new.

7-day free trial