Hetzner Cloud vs OVHcloud

Both rent plain Linux VMs that you set up and run yourself, and both bill until you delete them. Hetzner Cloud bills every started hour with a monthly cap and lists lower prices for small servers, while OVHcloud bills by the second after one minute and adds GPUs, Windows and more regions.

The companies and products

Hetzner Cloud

Hetzner is a German hosting company founded in 1997; Hetzner Cloud rents virtual servers, storage and networking by the hour.

A Hetzner Cloud server is a Linux VM picked from shared vCPU lines (cost-optimized CX and CAX, regular CPX) or dedicated vCPU (CCX), with local NVMe disk, a public IP and up to 20 TB of traffic in the EU. You add volumes, private networks, firewalls and load balancers, and run everything yourself through the Console, the Cloud API, the hcloud CLI or Terraform. It is general infrastructure, not an agent sandbox, so this page compares the two where they overlap: giving an agent its own Linux machine.

Founded: 1997, in Germany
Product: Virtual machines on Hetzner's physical servers, with root and your own OS image
Billing: Hourly with a monthly cap; every started hour is billed, and a server bills until you delete it, even when it is off
Pricing change: New prices for new orders and rescales since 15 June 2026; older servers keep their old price until rescaled
Locations: Falkenstein and Nuremberg (Germany), Helsinki (Finland), Ashburn and Hillsboro (US), Singapore
Stock: The cheapest CX and CAX servers show "This product is currently unavailable. Please check back later."
Certifications: ISO/IEC 27001:2022

OVHcloud

OVHcloud is a French cloud provider; its Public Cloud rents OpenStack virtual machines, storage and networking by the second.

A Public Cloud instance is a Linux or Windows VM picked from families such as General Purpose (B3), Compute (C3), Memory (R3), GPU and the shared-resource Discovery range (D2). You run your own software on it, next to OVHcloud products like private networks, gateways, load balancers, Kubernetes and object storage, through a Control Panel, an API or OpenStack tools. It is general infrastructure, not an agent sandbox, so this page compares the two where they overlap: giving an agent its own Linux machine.

Product: OpenStack instances: fully isolated VMs on shared physical hosts, with Linux and Windows Server images
Billing: Every second is billed after a 1-minute minimum; instances bill until you delete them
Pricing change: Since 2026-10-01, local storage and public IPv4 are billed on top of B3, C3 and R3 instances
Regions: Europe, North America (Canada and the US) and Asia-Pacific (Singapore, Sydney), plus Local Zones
Quotas: Raised in steps of 20, 50, 100 and 200 VMs by buying prepaid credit; more through support
GPUs: Nvidia L4 and L40S instances by the hour, among others
Certifications: Lists ISO 27001/27017/27018, SOC 1, 2 and 3, HDS, PCI DSS and HIPAA in its US datacentres

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. “51st cheapest of 364” means 50 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	Hetzner Cloud: price rank	OVHcloud: price rank	boat: price rank
Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Both give an agent a full Linux VM with root and Docker, but neither gives reliable nested virtualization, and both start as an empty OS image; boat comes with /dev/kvm, coding agents and free stops.	46th of 367, with limits $287 a month	90th of 367, with limits $814 a month	3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month
Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB	94th of 366, with limits $325 a month	136th of 366, with limits $934 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 OVHcloud fits short runs much better than Hetzner Cloud, because it bills by the second after one minute while Hetzner bills every started hour in full.	156th of 345, with limits $649 a month	56th of 345, with limits $43 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 Both need a quota raise first for 300 user sandboxes: Hetzner reviews requests by hand, and 600 vCPU is past OVHcloud's largest self-serve quota of 512 vCPU; boat allows 100 to 2,000 sandboxes by plan.	46th of 361, with limits $314 a month	43rd of 361, with limits $299 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 Many short rollouts suit OVHcloud's per-second billing far better than Hetzner's full-hour rounding.	104th of 360, with limits $6,490 a month	27th of 360, with limits $1,280 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	51st cheapest of 364 $1,010 a month	99th of 364, with limits $231 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 Both run Docker builds on a full VM where you run the runner software yourself, and a ten-minute job on Hetzner is billed as a full hour.	83rd cheapest of 377 $788 a month	29th cheapest of 377 $300 a month	4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month
24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB All three fit a 24/7 dev box: Hetzner and OVHcloud are classic always-on servers, and a boat machine keeps its disk with snapshots every minute.	32nd cheapest of 368 $42 a month	23rd cheapest of 368 $34 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 Hetzner nor OVHcloud has a desktop built in, so you install the desktop, the browser and the control loop yourself; boat streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium and computer use.	134th of 369, with limits $320 a month	108th of 369, with limits $231 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 On both clouds you install and run the browser stack yourself; boat ships Chromium and browser control in every sandbox.	227th of 367, with limits $312 a month	174th of 367, with limits $128 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	157th of 346, with limits $62 a month	159th of 346, with limits $65 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	45th of 338, with limits $1,248 a month	47th of 338, with limits $1,290 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	114th of 360, with limits $52 a month	120th of 360, with limits $64 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	Hetzner Cloud	OVHcloud	boat
What you get	A general Linux VM with its own kernel, set up and run by you	A general OpenStack VM with its own kernel, set up and run by you	A sandbox API for agents, on full VMs with their own kernel
CPU speed (Node.js build-and-test, 4 vCPU / 8 GB)	8.88 runs/s on a shared CX33; CPX and CCX not measured	No comparable measurement	26.69 runs/s on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) hosts
Docker and nested virtualization	Root and Docker; nested virtualization is "not possible on cloud server"	Root and Docker; the vmx flag is passed, but a live migration can make the guest kernel panic	Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine, documented
Billing unit	Every started hour is billed in full, with a monthly cap	Every second, after a 1-minute minimum	Per second from a monthly plan's usage credit, from $20
Stopping	A powered-off server bills at the full rate until you delete it	Turned-off and paused instances bill at the same rate; shelving bills only a disk snapshot	A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk
Snapshots	Snapshots you take yourself, or daily backups in 7 slots for 20% of the server price	On-demand instance backups, or a schedule such as daily backups keeping the last 7 or 14	Automatic snapshots every minute and on stop
Fork	Take a snapshot, then create a new server from it (disk, no memory)	Take an instance backup, then create a new instance from it (disk, no memory)	Fork a running sandbox in one call (disk, no memory)
Reaching the machine	Public IPv4 and IPv6 on any port; HTTPS needs your own certificates or a paid load balancer	Public IPv4 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	None built in; a VNC console for admin	None built in; you install a desktop and connect over SSH or RDP	60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream
Coding agents	None; you install and drive agents yourself, for example over SSH	None; you install and drive agents yourself, for example over SSH	Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API
Keeping keys out of the machine	No credentials proxy; secrets go on the server	No credentials proxy; secrets live on the instance	AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register; switch a credential to another account when credits run out
Outbound rules	Free Cloud Firewalls with inbound and outbound rules by IP, port and protocol	Security groups with inbound and outbound rules by IP range, port and protocol	Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist
GPUs and Windows	No GPU servers and no Windows images listed	Nvidia GPU instances such as L4 and L40S; Windows Server images with the license included	No GPUs; no Windows guests (Wine for Windows apps)
Regions	Germany and Finland, plus Ashburn, Hillsboro and Singapore	Europe, Canada, the US, Singapore and Sydney, plus Local Zones	EU only: Germany, Finland, France

Every feature Battleships tracks (43)

Feature	Hetzner Cloud	OVHcloud	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	Yes	Yes
Automatic snapshots	No	Yes	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	No	No
GPU	No	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)	No	No	Yes
Audit logs	Not published	Not published	No
SSO	No	Yes	No
SOC 2	No	Yes	No
HIPAA	No	Yes	No
EU data residency	Yes	Yes	Yes
Zero data retention	Not published	Not published	Yes

Performance

Hetzner Cloud8.88 runs/s

OVHcloudNot measured

boat26.69 runs/s

In StarSling's public benchmark at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts. The only Hetzner number comes from a 2026-08-24 run on a shared Hetzner CX33, which did 8.88 runs per second, about a third of boat's speed; Hetzner's CPX and CCX servers were not measured. OVHcloud has no comparable measurement, and its results would depend on the family, since B3 and C3 have dedicated resources and Discovery (D2) instances share theirs.

Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Hetzner Cloud measured on: Shared vCPU, Cost-Optimized (CX, Intel/AMD), EU. OVHcloud has 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	Hetzner Cloud, a month	OVHcloud, 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	$3 · Pay-as-you-go (postpaid) · with limits	$8 · Usage account	$20 · $20/mo
One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month	$10 · Pay-as-you-go (postpaid) · with limits	$34 · 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	$141 · Pay-as-you-go (postpaid) · with limits	$406 · 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	$312 · Pay-as-you-go (postpaid) · with limits	$128 · 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	$2,080 · Pay-as-you-go (postpaid) · with limits	$256 · Usage account · with limits	$2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits

Hetzner Cloud: Hetzner bills each server by the hour, rounding every started hour up, with a monthly cap, and keeps billing until you delete it, even when it is off. The prices here use the shared CX line, which is currently out of stock, plus the public IPv4; there is no free tier and no reserved discount.

OVHcloud: OVHcloud bills every second an instance exists, after a 1-minute minimum, until you delete it; shelved instances bill only their snapshot. The prices here use the shared Discovery d2 instances; dedicated B3, C3 and R3 instances bill local storage and a public IPv4 on top since October 2026, and Savings Plans take 15% or 30% off them.

OVHcloud: 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 Hetzner scenario here is priced on the CX line, which Hetzner's site marks as currently unavailable, so none of them fit as priced today, and its per-project server limits are not published and are raised by hand. OVHcloud raises quotas in steps of 20, 50, 100 and 200 VMs by buying prepaid credit, so 300 user sandboxes (600 vCPU) or 1,000 jobs at once go past its 512 vCPU self-serve limit and need support first. Its cheap Discovery instances also share their CPU, so heavy builds can slow down. On boat the limit is a sandbox count (100 to 2,000 by plan) plus starts per minute, so the 1,000-job burst gets queued and needs more starts per day than the $2,000 plan allows.

Scenario	Hetzner Cloud	OVHcloud	boat
One coding agent, workdays	stock-limited: all CX types "currently unavailable" on hetzner.com (2,026-09-28)	None that bite	None that bite
One agent that never stops	stock-limited: all CX types "currently unavailable" on hetzner.com (2,026-09-28)	None that bite	None that bite
50 agents in parallel	stock-limited: all CX types "currently unavailable" on hetzner.com (2,026-09-28)	how many machines can run at once: limit not published, probably fine at 50 (the typical published limit is 50)	None that bite
Sandboxes for your users	stock-limited: all CX types "currently unavailable" on hetzner.com (2,026-09-28)	not confirmed: how many machines can run at once (you need 300; the typical published limit is 50)	None that bite
1,000 short jobs at once	stock-limited: all CX types "currently unavailable" on hetzner.com (2,026-09-28)	not confirmed: how many machines can run at once (you need 1,000; the typical published limit is 50) shared vCPUs (no guaranteed share of a core): heavy, sustained CPU use can be slowed by other tenants	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 Hetzner Cloud when

you want plain long-lived Linux servers at low list prices with a monthly cap, plenty of included EU traffic, or big dedicated machines up to 48 vCPU.

Low list prices for steady servers. Useful for servers that run all month: a 4 vCPU / 8 GB CX server lists at $10 a month, when in stock.
A monthly cap and lots of traffic. Useful for always-on servers: hourly billing stops at a monthly cap, and each EU server includes 20 TB of traffic.
Big dedicated machines. Useful for heavy single machines: dedicated vCPU servers go up to 48 vCPU and 192 GB (CCX63).

Use OVHcloud when

you run many short jobs that suit per-second billing, or need GPUs, Windows servers, or regions in Canada, Singapore or Sydney.

Billing by the second. Useful for short or bursty jobs: OVHcloud bills every second after a 1-minute minimum, not every started hour.
GPUs and Windows. Useful if your agents need models or Windows: OVHcloud rents Nvidia L4 and L40S instances and Windows Server images.
More regions. Useful if your users are spread out: OVHcloud also runs in Canada, the US, Singapore and Sydney, plus Local Zones.

Where boat fits

Hetzner Cloud and OVHcloud are general clouds, not agent sandboxes. If what you are really running is agents, each on its own Linux machine, boat gives every agent a full VM that is ready to work, with /dev/kvm, coding agents, a desktop and snapshots every minute built in. Pick one of the two clouds when you need GPUs, Windows, regions outside the EU or big long-lived servers.

Nested VMs that run and stay up

Agents that test Android apps or build VM images need KVM inside their machine. Hetzner says this is not possible on a cloud server, and on OVHcloud a live migration can crash the guest mid-run. boat documents /dev/kvm on every machine.

Idle agents that do not keep billing

Agents sit idle between tasks. Hetzner bills an off server in full, so you script snapshot, delete and recreate; OVHcloud bills off instances too, or you shelve and wait to unshelve. boat stops for free, snapshots every minute and forks while running.

Agents, desktop and keys built in

Both clouds start from an empty OS image, so you install and supervise every agent, desktop and key, and the agent can read any key you put on it. boat ships coding agents with a prompt and steer API, a 60fps desktop and a credentials proxy.

Use boat when you want each agent on its own full VM that is ready to work: /dev/kvm, coding agents, a desktop, HTTPS ports and minute-by-minute snapshots built in, fork while running, and stops that cost nothing. Compare it one to one: boat vs Hetzner Cloud and boat vs OVHcloud.

Questions people ask

Is Hetzner Cloud cheaper than OVHcloud?

For steady servers, on paper: one agent that never stops comes to $10 a month on Hetzner's CX line against $34 on OVHcloud, and 50 agents in parallel come to $141 against $406. For many short sessions OVHcloud wins thanks to per-second billing: 300 user sandboxes come to $128 against $312. The Hetzner prices use the CX line, which is currently out of stock, so the servers you can order today cost more.

Which is faster, Hetzner Cloud or OVHcloud?

There is no direct comparison. A shared Hetzner CX33 did 8.88 Node.js build-and-test runs per second in a 2026-08-24 benchmark run, and OVHcloud was not measured. boat did 26.69 runs per second at the same 4 vCPU / 8 GB size.

Can Hetzner Cloud and OVHcloud run Docker and nested VMs?

Both run Docker, since every server is a full VM with root. Hetzner says nested virtualization is not possible on a cloud server, and OVHcloud passes the vmx flag but warns that a live migration can make the guest kernel panic. On boat, Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm are documented on every machine.

Do I pay for a server that is turned off?

Yes, on both. Hetzner bills a server at the full rate until you delete it, and OVHcloud bills turned-off and paused instances at the same rate, though shelving bills only a disk snapshot. On boat, a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.

Does Hetzner Cloud or OVHcloud have GPUs?

OVHcloud rents Nvidia GPU instances, such as L4 and L40S. Hetzner Cloud lists no GPU servers, and boat has no GPUs either.

Where does my data run?

Hetzner Cloud runs in Germany and Finland, plus Ashburn, Hillsboro and Singapore. OVHcloud runs across Europe, plus Canada, the US, Singapore and Sydney. boat runs only in the EU (Germany, Finland and France), with EU data residency.

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