Hyperstack vs Replicate
Hyperstack rents you whole GPU and CPU virtual machines with root and SSH, billed by the minute. Replicate runs AI models as containers behind a prediction API, on hardware that scales up with requests and down to zero.
The companies and products
Hyperstack
Hyperstack is the GPU cloud of NexGen Cloud, a UK company founded in 2020: you rent GPU and CPU virtual machines, Kubernetes clusters and storage by the minute.
A Hyperstack VM is a full virtual machine with root and SSH, booted from an Ubuntu image (with or without Docker) and sized from a fixed list of flavors, from one RTX A4000 to 8-GPU B300 nodes, plus CPU-only flavors from 4 to 32 vCPUs. It also runs managed Kubernetes, volumes, object storage and an AI Studio inference API. It is built for teams that train, fine-tune and serve models, not as a sandbox API for agents, so this page compares the parts that overlap: VMs as machines for agent work.
Replicate
Replicate runs AI models with an API: thousands of community and official models, plus your own models packaged with Cog.
You call a public model with one API request, fine-tune one on your data, or package your own model with Cog, Replicate's open-source tool that builds a Docker image with an HTTP prediction server. Replicate runs it on CPU or NVIDIA GPU hardware as deployments that scale up with traffic and down to zero. It is built for teams that serve models, not for agents that need a machine of their own, so this page compares the places where the two overlap.
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. “122nd cheapest of 377” means 121 of the other 376 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 | Hyperstack: price rank | Replicate: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month A software factory needs root, Docker and a lasting disk: Hyperstack has them but bills a stopped VM in full, and Replicate keeps no disk at all. | 343rd of 367, with limits $11,458 a month | 268th of 367, with limits $4,340 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB | 337th of 366, with limits $12,775 a month | 335th of 366, with limits $11,300 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 Short code runs suit Replicate's model, where a request starts work on an instance that bills per second and scales back to zero. | 172nd of 345, with limits $1,167 a month | 258th of 345, with limits $295 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 Replicate fits 300 user sessions at once; Hyperstack does not publish how many VMs can run at once, so that is not confirmed there. | 173rd of 361, with limits $4,207 a month | 317th of 361, with limits $3,705 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 | 173rd of 360, with limits $17,500 a month | 174th of 360, with limits $17,900 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 Replicate fits agent evals as short, separate runs that bill per second, while Hyperstack is a compromise here; boat fits with a full VM per eval. | 204th of 364, with limits $3,250 a month | 67th cheapest of 364 $1,440 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 CI fits Hyperstack, where each job gets a full VM with Docker, but not Replicate, which has no shell and no documented Docker inside. | 122nd cheapest of 377 $1,560 a month | 311th of 377, with limits $864 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB A dev box needs SSH and a disk that keeps your installs: Hyperstack has both, Replicate has neither, and boat adds free stops. | 115th cheapest of 368 $475 a month | 306th of 368, with limits $226 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 gives an agent a screen: Hyperstack offers SSH and text console logs, Replicate has no desktop, and boat streams a 60fps desktop. | 332nd of 369, with limits $3,250 a month | 263rd of 369, with limits $1,296 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 | 335th of 367, with limits $1,750 a month | 322nd of 367, with limits $1,296 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 | 327th of 346, with limits $1,750 a month | 272nd of 346, with limits $439 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 | 310th of 338, with limits $35,000 a month | 221st of 338, with limits $8,775 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 | 309th of 360, with limits $876 a month | 306th of 360, with limits $855 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 Nvidia GPUs and fit this job; Hyperstack ranks 2nd and Replicate ranks 22nd of 98, and boat has no GPUs. | 2nd cheapest of 98 $625 a month | 22nd cheapest of 98 $1,338 a month | 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 | Hyperstack | Replicate | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | A full VM with root and SSH, from a fixed list of GPU and CPU flavors | A model packaged as a Cog container and called through a prediction API | A full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts |
| GPUs | Nvidia RTX A4000 to H100, H200, B200 and B300, up to 8-GPU nodes, on demand, spot or reserved | T4, L40S, A100 80GB, H100 and H200, up to 8 per instance; most multi-GPU and all H200 need a committed spend contract | None, CPU only |
| Ready-made models | An AI Studio inference API next to the VMs | Thousands of public and official models for images, video, speech and text, plus fine-tuning | None; you bring the model API you call |
| Shell access | Root and SSH | No SSH; you call the model through the HTTP API or client libraries | SSH, root and systemd, like a normal Ubuntu server |
| Docker | Ubuntu 22.04 and 24.04 images with or without Docker | The model is the container; Docker inside is not documented | Docker, Docker Compose and /dev/kvm on every machine |
| Files after a stop | The whole disk stays; a stopped VM bills at the full rate, a hibernated one bills only disk and a kept IP | No persistent disk; instances start fresh, and API inputs and outputs are deleted after an hour by default | The whole disk is saved every minute and on stop, and a stopped sandbox costs nothing |
| Snapshots and fork | Snapshots on request with the VM shut off, up to 100 GB; no fork | No snapshots or fork; you add replicas of the same image | Automatic snapshots every minute, and fork of a running sandbox |
| Scale to zero | No; VMs never stop on their own, you hibernate them by hand | Yes; deployments scale to zero and start again on the next prediction | No; a stopped sandbox is started by API |
| Run time | No maximum runtime documented | Each prediction times out after 30 minutes unless support raises it | No session cap on paid plans; you set the time to live |
| Reaching the machine | A public IPv4 you can keep static; you open ports and run your own TLS | One prediction API per model behind API token auth; no own IP or ports | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; dedicated IPv4 or IPv6 |
| Network rules | Per-VM firewall: inbound closed by default, outbound rules by IP, protocol and port | No firewall or outbound rules offered | Open internet out; inbound through HTTPS URLs and TCP ports |
| Desktop and browser | SSH and text console logs; no graphical desktop | No desktop or browser product | 60fps Linux desktop with Chromium, computer use and browser control |
| Keeping keys out of the machine | No credentials proxy; keys go in with cloud-init, files or environment variables | Secrets are sent to the model as inputs and redacted from logs afterwards | Credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register |
| Regions | Norway, Canada and the US | Infrastructure subprocessors listed in the US; no region choice documented | EU only: Germany, Finland and France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Hyperstack | Replicate | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | No | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Not published | No | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Not published | 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 | No | Yes |
| Pause/resume | Yes | No | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | No | No | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | No | No | Yes |
| Memory fork | No | No | No |
| Custom image (Docker or snapshot) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | No | Yes | No |
| Wake on request | No | Yes | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | No | Yes | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | No | Not published | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | Yes | No | 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 | Yes | Yes | No |
| GPU | Yes | Yes | No |
| Windows | No | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | No | No |
| Self-hosting | No | Yes | No |
| BYOC | No | No | No |
| Open source | No | Yes | No |
| Scoped API keys | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | Not published | Yes | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | No | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Yes | No |
| SSO | No | No | 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
There is no comparable CPU measurement for Hyperstack or Replicate: neither is in the StarSling hpc-sandbox-benchmarks runs we use, so we cannot say which is faster. boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in the run of 2026-09-29, on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts. Both Hyperstack and Replicate pick their hardware for GPU work, which this test does not cover.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Hyperstack and Replicate 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 | Hyperstack, a month | Replicate, 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 | $114 · Prepaid on-demand | $57 · Usage · with limits | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $475 · Prepaid on-demand | $237 · Usage · with limits | $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 | $5,720 · Prepaid on-demand | $2,851 · Usage · 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 | $1,750 · Prepaid on-demand · with limits | $1,620 · Usage | $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 | $3,500 · Prepaid on-demand · with limits | $3,580 · Usage | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Hyperstack: Hyperstack bills a running VM per minute from a prepaid balance, at a fixed hourly price per flavor, with no charge for bandwidth. CPU flavors start at 4 vCPU / 4 GB, and a stopped VM keeps billing in full, so the totals assume you hibernate it between runs.
Replicate: Replicate bills per second by hardware tier, from prepaid credit that expires after a year. Public models bill only while they run; private models and deployments also bill setup and idle time.
Replicate: Plans start at $20 a month, and the whole fee becomes usage credit spent per second on running sandboxes. A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its whole disk.
Limits in those scenarios
Replicate does not fit the workday agent, the always-on agent or the 50-agent fleet, because it has no persistent disk, and the fleet also needs Docker inside, which is not documented. Hyperstack fits those three but does not publish how many VMs can run at once, so 300 user sandboxes and 1,000 short jobs at once are not confirmed there, while Replicate fits both. Each Replicate prediction stops after 30 minutes unless support raises it. boat's $2,000 plan queues the 1,000-job burst because it needs more starts per day than the plan allows.
| Scenario | Hyperstack | Replicate | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays | None that bite |
| None that bite |
| One agent that never stops | None that bite |
| None that bite |
| 50 agents in parallel |
|
| None that bite |
| Sandboxes for your users |
|
| None that bite |
| 1,000 short jobs at once |
|
|
|
Which one should you use?
Use Hyperstack when
you want whole GPU or CPU machines with root, SSH and a lasting disk, firewall rules, or regions in Canada and the US.
- Whole GPU machines you control. Useful if you want root and SSH on a GPU box: Hyperstack rents full VMs from one RTX A4000 to 8-GPU B300 nodes.
- A disk that stays between runs. Useful if your work builds up files: a Hyperstack VM keeps its whole disk, and hibernation keeps it while compute billing stops.
- Firewall rules and North American regions. Useful if you must limit outbound traffic by IP and port, or keep data in Canada or the US.
Use Replicate when
you want to call or serve an AI model as an API, from its catalog or packaged with Cog, that scales with traffic and down to zero.
- Thousands of models, one API call away. Useful if you want to call an image, video, speech or language model without hosting it yourself.
- Scale to zero and wake on request. Useful for models that wait for traffic: deployments scale down to zero and start again on the next prediction.
- Cog images run anywhere. Useful if you want an exit: Cog, the open-source packaging tool, builds standard Docker images you can run on your own servers.
Where boat fits
Hyperstack and Replicate are GPU clouds for training and serving models, and boat has no GPUs, so model work belongs on them. If what you are really running is agents that write and run code for hours, look at boat: each agent gets a full VM with Docker, a disk saved every minute, a desktop and coding agents built in. Your agents in boat can still call a model on Replicate or a GPU VM on Hyperstack.
A disk saved every minute, free stops and fork
On Hyperstack a stopped VM bills at the full rate unless you hibernate it, and snapshots need the VM shut off. On Replicate an agent's files are gone when the instance scales down, so every run sets itself up again.
Coding agents driven from outside, keys kept out
On both you install and run the agent yourself, and keys sit inside as files, variables or model inputs where code the agent runs can read them. boat preinstalls Claude Code, Codex and more, and keeps real keys in a credentials proxy.
A desktop, Docker and HTTPS URLs on every machine
Hyperstack gives SSH and a public IP, so a desktop, VNC server and certificates are yours to set up on every image. Replicate has no desktop, no ports and no documented Docker inside, and stops each prediction at 30 minutes.
Use boat when your agents need a machine of their own for hours: a shell, root, Docker, a browser and a desktop, on a full VM whose disk is saved every minute and costs nothing while stopped. Compare it one to one: boat vs Hyperstack and boat vs Replicate.
Questions people ask
Is Hyperstack cheaper than Replicate?
For GPU eval jobs, yes: about $625 a month on Hyperstack against $1,338 on Replicate. For CPU agent work Replicate's totals are lower, such as $237 against $475 a month for one agent that never stops, but Replicate does not fit that case because it keeps no disk, and Hyperstack's closest flavor has 8 vCPU against 4.
Which is faster, Hyperstack or Replicate?
We have no comparable CPU measurement for either, so we cannot say. Both are built around Nvidia GPUs, and Hyperstack offers newer cards such as B200 and B300 that Replicate does not list.
Can I run Docker on Hyperstack or Replicate?
On Hyperstack, yes: VMs have root and its Ubuntu images come with or without Docker. On Replicate, Cog builds your model into a Docker image, but running Docker inside it is not documented. boat sandboxes come with Docker, Docker Compose, systemd and /dev/kvm.
What do they cost when nothing is running?
A stopped Hyperstack VM bills at the full rate; a hibernated one bills only its disk and a kept IP, and restoring it needs the flavor in stock. Replicate deployments scale to zero, though private models bill a few idle minutes after traffic stops. On boat a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
How long can a job run?
A Replicate prediction times out after 30 minutes unless support raises it. Hyperstack documents no maximum runtime, so a VM runs until you stop, hibernate or delete it. boat has no session cap on paid plans.
Are Hyperstack or Replicate good for AI coding agents?
Hyperstack can host one on a VM you set up yourself, and Replicate is built for serving models, not for agents that need a machine. boat gives each agent a full VM with coding agents, a desktop and a credentials proxy built in, and your agent can still call either for GPU work.
Try boat
Install the CLI, then run boat new.
7-day free trial