Linode vs IONOS Cloud
Linode and IONOS Cloud both rent plain KVM servers that you set up and run yourself. Linode runs in 33 regions worldwide and bills by the hour, while IONOS is a German cloud with Windows, H200 GPUs and Cubes billed by the minute.
The companies and products
Linode
Linode is a general-purpose cloud, now sold as Akamai Cloud, and a Linode is one of its Linux virtual machines.
A Linode is a Linux VM you rent by size, with root, a public IP, local disk and, on older plans, a monthly transfer allowance. You pick a distribution, then install and run your own software on it, next to Akamai Cloud products like Kubernetes, block storage, NodeBalancers, VPCs and cloud firewalls. 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.
IONOS Cloud
IONOS Cloud is the public cloud of IONOS, a German hosting company in the United Internet group. It is a hyperscaler-style IaaS cloud, not an agent sandbox.
You rent KVM virtual machines: Cubes (fixed sizes from 1 to 16 vCPU with a local NVMe disk, billed by the minute), vCPU servers up to 60 vCPU and 230 GB of RAM, Dedicated Core servers and H200 GPU VMs. You build them in the Data Center Designer or through the Cloud API, SDKs and Terraform, next to block storage, private networks, firewalls and managed services. It is for teams that want to run their own servers in Germany, the rest of Europe or the US, and set up everything on them themselves.
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. “55th cheapest of 364” means 54 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 | Linode: price rank | IONOS Cloud: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Both give a root Linux VM where Docker runs, but neither has /dev/kvm documented, coding agents or minute-by-minute snapshots, which boat has built in. | 145th of 367, with limits $1,292 a month | 64th of 367, with limits $492 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB | 164th of 366, with limits $1,200 a month | 107th of 366, with limits $540 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 IONOS bills Cubes by the minute, so short runs cost far less there than on Linode, which bills every run as at least a full hour. | 174th of 345, with limits $1,200 a month | 53rd of 345, with limits $27 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 Linode bills each 10-minute user session as a full hour, and IONOS does not publish whether a fresh account can run 300 machines at once. | 114th of 361, with limits $1,090 a month | 35th of 361, with limits $182 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 | 186th of 360, with limits $24,000 a month | 9th of 360, with limits $740 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 | 55th cheapest of 364 $1,080 a month | 93rd of 364, with limits $137 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 plain VMs, and IONOS's per-minute Cubes make it the lowest-priced fit here; on either you run the runner software yourself. | 137th cheapest of 377 $4,320 a month | Cheapest of 377 $60 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB A server that stays on all month is what both are built for; IONOS comes to less, and Linode offers more regions to put it in. | 40th cheapest of 368 $48 a month | 9th cheapest of 368 $20 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 stream or computer-use tools, only a console for fixing servers; boat streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium. | 272nd of 369, with limits $1,440 a month | 86th of 369, with limits $137 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 | 311th of 367, with limits $1,080 a month | 156th of 367, with limits $74 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 | 190th of 346, with limits $108 a month | 153rd of 346, with limits $40 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 | 89th of 338, with limits $2,160 a month | 39th of 338, with limits $897 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 | 189th of 360, with limits $182 a month | 105th of 360, with limits $38 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 Only Linode is ranked here: it rents Nvidia RTX GPUs by the hour, while IONOS rents H200 VMs and boat has no GPUs. | 78th of 98, with limits $1,500 a month | 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 | Linode | IONOS Cloud | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | A general Linux server on Akamai Cloud that you set up and run yourself | General-purpose cloud servers (Cubes, vCPU and Dedicated Core servers) you set up yourself | Sandboxes for AI agents on full VMs, made and driven through an API |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Root and Docker; Linode staff say nested virtualization is not supported | Root Linux VM where you install Docker; running your own VMs inside is not documented | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm ready on every machine |
| Billing step | Hourly, rounded up to the next full hour | Cubes invoiced by the minute | Per second from a monthly plan's usage credit |
| Stopping a machine | A powered-off Linode is still billed; you delete it to stop paying | Suspended Cubes keep billing; a stopped vCPU server stops compute billing but its volumes still bill | A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk |
| Snapshots | Paid Backups add-on: scheduled backups plus one manual snapshot per Linode | Manual full snapshots of a block storage volume, usable in the same location | Automatic snapshots every minute and on stop |
| Copying a machine | Clone copies all disks; the docs say to power off first | Snapshot a disk, then create new VMs from it | Fork a running sandbox in one call (disk, no memory) |
| Desktop and computer use | None in the images; you install one and reach it through the Glish console | None; a remote console for troubleshooting servers | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream |
| Coding agents | None; StackScripts and Marketplace apps install general software | None in the VM; an MCP server lets your AI client manage IONOS resources | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, driven from outside with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Keeping keys out of the machine | No credentials proxy; secrets go in through user data or files | None; you put secrets into the VM yourself | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register |
| Reaching the machine | Public IPv4 on any port; HTTPS needs your own certificates or a NodeBalancer | Public IP on each VM and any port you open; load balancers available | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; own IP |
| Network rules | Free Cloud Firewall with outbound rules by protocol, port and IP range | Network Security Groups with ingress and egress rules by IP, port and protocol | Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist |
| GPUs | Nvidia RTX 4000 Ada, RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell and Quadro RTX 6000 by the hour | NVIDIA H200 PCIe VMs, 1 to 8 GPUs | None |
| Windows | Linux only | Windows Server VMs with a licence billed per vCPU | No Windows guests; Wine for Windows apps |
| Regions | 33 regions in 15 countries across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia | Germany, UK, France, Spain and the US | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Linode | IONOS Cloud | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | Not published | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Systemd | Yes | Not published | 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 | No | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | Yes | 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 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | No | No | No |
| Wake on request | No | No | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | No | Yes | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | Yes | Not published | 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 | Yes | No |
| GPU | Yes | Yes | No |
| Windows | No | Yes | No |
| Arm64 | No | No | No |
| Self-hosting | No | No | No |
| BYOC | No | No | No |
| Open source | No | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | No | Not published | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | Yes | Not published | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Not published | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | No | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for Linode or IONOS Cloud: neither was in the public StarSling benchmark run. In that run boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts. Results on Linode would depend on shared or dedicated CPU, and IONOS's CPU model varies by location.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Linode and IONOS 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 | Linode, a month | IONOS 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 | $13 · Usage account | $5 · Pay as you go | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $48 · Usage account | $20 · Pay as you go | $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 | $634 · Usage account | $240 · Pay as you go | $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 | $1,080 · Usage account | $74 · Pay as you go · 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 | $7,200 · Usage account · with limits | $148 · Pay as you go · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Linode: Each Linode size has an hourly price, rounded up to the next full hour, billed from create to delete even while powered off. Most plans stop at a monthly cap, but G8 dedicated and GPU plans have no cap since July 2026.
IONOS Cloud: IONOS bills Cubes by the minute at a fixed rate per size, with the NVMe disk included, and vCPU servers per core and per GB of RAM. Suspended Cubes keep billing, and the first 2 TB of outgoing traffic each month is free.
IONOS Cloud: 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
Linode rounds every instance up to a full hour, so a 10-minute user session or a 3-minute job is billed as an hour, and raising its account limits takes a support ticket. IONOS does not publish how many machines an account can run at once, so 300 sandboxes for your users and 1,000 short jobs at once are not confirmed there. The 1,000-job burst also runs on Linode's shared vCPUs, which other tenants can slow. On boat the limit is a sandbox count plus starts per minute, so that burst gets queued and needs more starts per day than the $2,000 plan allows.
| Scenario | Linode | IONOS Cloud | 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 | None that bite |
| 50 agents in parallel | None that bite |
| None that bite |
| Sandboxes for your users | None that bite |
| None that bite |
| 1,000 short jobs at once |
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Which one should you use?
Use Linode when
you need servers close to users outside Europe, smaller Nvidia GPUs by the hour, or a choice of shared or dedicated CPU next to Kubernetes and block storage.
- Regions around the world. Useful if your users are in Asia, Australia or South America: Linode runs in 33 regions across 15 countries.
- A wide GPU range. Useful if you want smaller GPUs by the hour: Linode rents RTX 4000 Ada, RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell and Quadro RTX 6000.
- Shared or dedicated CPU. Useful if you want to choose: shared CPU plans keep costs down, and dedicated CPU plans give guaranteed cores.
Use IONOS Cloud when
you want a German provider, Windows Server, H200 GPUs, per-minute billing for Cubes, or the lowest list price for plain VMs.
- Billed by the minute. Useful for short jobs: IONOS invoices Cubes by the minute, while Linode bills each machine as at least one hour.
- Windows Server. Useful if part of your work needs Windows: IONOS runs Windows Server VMs, and Linode is Linux only.
- Lower list prices. Useful on a tight budget: IONOS came out lower than Linode in every scenario we priced.
Where boat fits
Linode and IONOS Cloud are clouds for running your own servers, not agent sandboxes. If what you are really running is agents, boat gives each one a full VM that is ready to work, with /dev/kvm, coding agents, a desktop and snapshots every minute, and a stop that costs nothing. Stay on Linode or IONOS for GPUs, Windows or regions outside the EU.
A disk saved every minute, and free stops
Agents sit idle between tasks. A powered-off Linode and a suspended IONOS Cube both keep billing, so you script snapshot, delete and rebuild each night, and neither saves the disk on its own every minute.
Nested virtualization and a desktop
Linode staff say nested virtualization is not supported, and IONOS does not document it, so Android emulators and Firecracker fall back to slow emulation. Neither streams a desktop, so computer-use agents need one you install and maintain.
Coding agents driven from outside, keys kept out
Both start as empty servers. You install each agent, write the code that prompts and watches it, and copy real API keys onto the VM, where code the agent runs can read them. boat's credentials proxy keeps them outside.
Use boat when each agent needs its own ready VM: /dev/kvm, coding agents driven from outside, a desktop, keys kept outside, snapshots every minute and stops that cost nothing. Compare it one to one: boat vs Linode and boat vs IONOS Cloud.
Questions people ask
Is Linode cheaper than IONOS Cloud?
No. IONOS came out lower in every scenario we priced: one agent running all month comes to $20 on IONOS against $48 on Linode, and 50 agents in parallel come to $240 against $634. On boat those come to $26 and $317.
Which is faster, Linode or IONOS Cloud?
There is no comparable measurement for either: neither was in the public StarSling benchmark. boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in that run.
Can Linode and IONOS Cloud run Docker?
Yes. Both give you a root Linux VM where you install Docker. Nested virtualization is another matter: Linode staff say it is not supported, and IONOS does not document it. boat has Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine.
Do I pay for a stopped machine?
On Linode, yes: a powered-off Linode is still billed until you delete it. On IONOS, suspended Cubes continue to incur costs, so you snapshot and delete them to stop paying. On boat, a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Which has more regions?
Linode, with 33 regions in 15 countries, including the US, Brazil, India, Japan and Australia. IONOS runs Cubes in Germany, the UK, France, Spain and the US. boat runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France.
Do Linode and IONOS Cloud have GPUs?
Yes, both. Linode rents Nvidia RTX 4000 Ada, RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell and Quadro RTX 6000 by the hour, and IONOS rents NVIDIA H200 VMs with 1 to 8 GPUs. boat has no GPUs.
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