Linode vs OVHcloud
Linode and OVHcloud both rent plain Linux VMs that you set up and run yourself. The big difference is billing: Linode rounds every VM up to a full hour, while OVHcloud bills by the second after a 1-minute minimum, which matters a lot for short agent runs.
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.
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.
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 | OVHcloud: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month | 145th of 367, with limits $1,292 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 | 164th of 366, with limits $1,200 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 ranks 56th because it bills short runs by the second, while Linode ranks 174th since every run is billed as a full hour, and boat's start limits make big bursts a compromise. | 174th of 345, with limits $1,200 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 Linode bills each 10-minute user session as a full hour, and OVHcloud needs a support request past 512 vCPU, while boat ranks 1st with 100 to 2,000 sandboxes by plan. | 114th of 361, with limits $1,090 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 OVHcloud ranks 27th here, ahead of boat at 34th, because short per-second runs on shared Discovery instances are cheap; Linode ranks 186th because of its hourly rounding. | 186th of 360, with limits $24,000 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 Linode ranks 55th as a full match and OVHcloud 99th as a compromise, while boat ranks 10th with snapshots and fork built in. | 55th cheapest of 364 $1,080 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 and clean-up yourself; OVHcloud ranks 29th thanks to per-second billing, Linode 137th, and boat 4th. | 137th cheapest of 377 $4,320 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: OVHcloud ranks 23rd, Linode 40th, and boat 18th with its disk saved every minute. | 40th cheapest of 368 $48 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 cloud ships a desktop, so you install one yourself on Linode or OVHcloud, while boat ranks 6th with a 60fps desktop and computer use built in. | 272nd of 369, with limits $1,440 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 | 311th of 367, with limits $1,080 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 | 190th of 346, with limits $108 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 | 89th of 338, with limits $2,160 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 | 189th of 360, with limits $182 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 Linode ranks 78th as the only one of the three with a ranked GPU option; 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 | OVHcloud | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | A general Linux server on Akamai Cloud that you set up and run yourself | A general OpenStack VM that you set up and run yourself | A sandbox API for agents, on full VMs |
| Isolation | Full VM with its own kernel, isolated at the hypervisor | Fully isolated VM with its own kernel | Full VM with its own kernel |
| Billing step | Hourly, rounded up to the next full hour | Per second after a 1-minute minimum | Per second from a monthly plan that becomes usage credit |
| Stopping | A powered-off Linode is still billed; you delete it to stop paying | 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 |
| CPU | Shared CPU plans, or Dedicated CPU plans for a higher price; no comparable measurement | Dedicated vCPUs on B3, C3 and R3, shared on Discovery (D2); no comparable measurement | Dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts; 26.69 runs/s at 4 vCPU / 8 GB |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Root and Docker; nested virtualization is not supported | 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 |
| Snapshots | Paid Backups add-on with scheduled backups and one manual snapshot | On-demand backups, or a schedule such as daily keeping the last 7 or 14 | Automatic snapshots every minute and on stop |
| Fork | Clone copies the disks; the docs say to power off first | Take a backup, then create a new instance from it | Fork a running sandbox in one call (disk, no memory) |
| Reaching the machine | Public IPv4 on any port; HTTPS needs your own certificates or a NodeBalancer | 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 |
| Coding agents and desktop | None; you install agents and a desktop yourself | None; you install agents and a desktop yourself | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, plus a 60fps desktop with computer use |
| Keeping keys out of the machine | No credentials proxy; secrets go on the server | No credentials proxy; secrets go on the instance | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register |
| Outbound rules | Free Cloud Firewall with outbound rules by protocol, port and IP range | Security groups with outbound rules by IP range, port and protocol | Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist |
| GPUs and Windows | Nvidia RTX 4000 Ada, RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell and Quadro RTX 6000; no Windows | Nvidia L4 and L40S, among others; Windows Server images with the license included | No GPUs; no Windows guests (Wine for Windows apps) |
| Regions | 33 regions in 15 countries across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia | Europe, Canada, the US, Singapore and Sydney, plus Local Zones | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Linode | 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 | No | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | Yes | 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 | 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 | 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 | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | Yes | Not published | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | Yes | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for Linode or OVHcloud: neither was part of the public StarSling benchmark run where boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. Both sell shared and dedicated CPU options, so results would depend on the plan you pick.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Linode and OVHcloud 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 | 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 | $13 · Usage account | $8 · Usage account | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $48 · Usage account | $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 | $634 · Usage account | $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 | $1,080 · Usage account | $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 | $7,200 · Usage account · with limits | $256 · Usage account · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Linode: Each Linode size has an hourly price, rounded up to the next full hour, and billing runs from create to delete, even while powered off. Most plans stop at a monthly cap, but G8 and GPU plans have none since July 2026.
OVHcloud: OVHcloud bills every second an instance exists after a 1-minute minimum, until you delete it; shelved instances bill only their snapshot. Since October 2026, B3, C3 and R3 instances also bill local storage and a public IPv4 on top.
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
Linode's hourly rounding turns a 10-minute user session or a 3-minute job into a full billed hour, which is why user sandboxes come to $1,080 a month there against $128 on OVHcloud. OVHcloud raises quotas in steps of 20, 50, 100 and 200 VMs by buying prepaid credit, so 300 user sandboxes or 1,000 jobs at once need support first; Linode raises limits by support ticket. The cheapest tiers on both share their vCPUs, so heavy builds can be slowed by other tenants. On boat the limit is a sandbox count (100 to 2,000 by plan) plus starts per minute, and none of the three fits the 1,000-job burst as priced.
| Scenario | Linode | OVHcloud | 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 regions far outside Europe, a wide choice of Nvidia GPUs, or long-lived servers next to Kubernetes, block storage and NodeBalancers in one cloud.
- More regions around the world. Useful if your users are spread out: Linodes run in 33 regions in 15 countries, including Brazil, India, Japan and Australia.
- A wider GPU range. Useful for model work: Akamai Cloud rents RTX 4000 Ada and Quadro RTX 6000 by the hour, plus Blackwell on request and HGX B300 through sales.
- Simple quota raises. Useful when you grow: Linode raises account limits through a support ticket; on OVHcloud each step up means buying prepaid credit.
Use OVHcloud when
your jobs are short and per-second billing matters, when you need Windows Server or L4 and L40S GPUs, or when you want a European provider with regions in North America and Asia-Pacific too.
- Per-second billing. Useful for short jobs: OVHcloud bills each second after a 1-minute minimum, while Linode bills every VM as at least an hour.
- Shelving and Windows. Useful for machines you park: a shelved instance bills only its disk snapshot, and Windows Server images come with the license.
- Nested VMs, with a catch. Useful for light emulator tests: OVHcloud passes the vmx flag to instances, though a live migration can crash nested work.
Where boat fits
Linode and OVHcloud are general clouds, not agent sandboxes. If what you are really running is agents, each on its own Linux machine, boat gives you that full VM with the agent tooling, snapshots and free stops already built in, so you skip building it on top of a plain server.
Free stops that keep the disk
Agents sit idle between tasks. A powered-off Linode bills in full and an OVHcloud instance that is turned off bills at the same rate; shelving or deleting it means scripting a rebuild. A stopped boat sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
/dev/kvm you can rely on
Android emulators and VM builds need nested virtualization. Linode does not support it, and on OVHcloud a live migration can make the guest kernel panic mid-run. boat documents /dev/kvm next to Docker and systemd on every machine.
Agents, desktop and keys built in
Both clouds start from an empty OS image, so you install and supervise each agent, desktop and HTTPS setup, and any key you place there can be read. boat ships coding agents, a 60fps desktop, HTTPS on 50 ports and a credentials proxy.
Use boat when you are really running agents: each one gets a full VM with /dev/kvm, coding agents, a desktop, HTTPS ports, snapshots every minute, fork while running, and stops that cost nothing. Compare it one to one: boat vs Linode and boat vs OVHcloud.
Questions people ask
Is Linode cheaper than OVHcloud?
Not in these scenarios. One coding agent on workdays comes to $13 a month on Linode against $8 on OVHcloud, one agent that never stops to $48 against $34, and 50 agents in parallel to $634 against $406. boat comes to $20, $26 and $317 for the same three.
Which is faster, Linode or OVHcloud?
There is no comparable measurement for either one. Both sell shared and dedicated CPU plans, so speed depends on the plan. boat did 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in the public StarSling benchmark.
Can Linode or OVHcloud run Docker and nested VMs?
Both run Docker, since each gives you a full VM with root. Linode does not support nested virtualization, and OVHcloud passes the vmx flag but warns that a live migration can make the guest kernel panic. boat has Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine.
Do I pay for a stopped VM on Linode or OVHcloud?
Yes on both. A powered-off Linode is billed until you delete it, and a turned-off OVHcloud instance bills at the same rate, though shelving it bills only a disk snapshot. A stopped boat sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Which has more regions?
Linode, with 33 regions in 15 countries across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia. OVHcloud covers Europe, Canada, the US, Singapore and Sydney, plus Local Zones. boat runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France.
Is boat SOC 2 compliant?
SOC 2 is in progress. We're open about where we stand: live status at status.ascii.dev and our data retention policy at docs.boat.dev/data-retention.
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