Namespace vs Ona
Namespace is a build platform: fast CI runners, caches and Devboxes on its own hardware, pay as you go, but each Devbox stops after at most 24 hours. Ona, formerly Gitpod and now part of OpenAI, is a cloud dev environment platform with a Codex agent that new customers buy as an Enterprise contract and run in their own AWS or GCP account.
The companies and products
Namespace
Namespace is a dev platform for fast builds, tests and coding environments: CI runners, build caches and Devboxes, on its own hardware.
Most of Namespace is CI: a faster drop-in for GitHub Actions runners, with Docker, Bazel, Turborepo and Nix caching. Its Devboxes are remote Linux and macOS machines with persistent storage, made for people and AI coding agents, and they also host sessions for Claude Managed Agents, Cursor Cloud Agents and Devin. It is a different kind of product from boat, so this page compares the part where they overlap: a machine an agent works on.
- Products
- GitHub Actions runners, Docker, Bazel, Turborepo and Nix caching, Devboxes, and a compute API
- Hardware
- Its own hardware in its own racks: AMD EPYC for Linux and Windows, Apple M4 Pro or M5 Max for macOS
- Linux Devboxes
- Run from a container image you choose and include Docker; the docs do not say whether each one has its own kernel
- Funding
- Announced a $42M Series B
- Compliance
- Trust center lists SOC 2 Type II
Ona
Ona, formerly Gitpod, is a platform for cloud dev environments and background coding agents, and is now part of OpenAI.
Ona is a different kind of product from boat: a dev-environment platform, not a sandbox API. Each task or developer gets an isolated VM built from a Dev Container config, which people open in a browser IDE, VS Code or JetBrains, and where Ona's Codex Agent can plan, code, test and open pull requests. It is built for engineering teams who want the same governed environment for every developer and agent; new customers run it in their own AWS or GCP account on an Enterprise contract.
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. “80th cheapest of 377” means 79 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 | Namespace: price rank | Ona: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month | 39th of 367, with limits $3,495 a month | 324th of 367, with limits $7,315 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB Neither fits fully: a Namespace Devbox is shut down after at most 24 hours, and Ona stops after 30 idle minutes unless auto-stop is set to Never; boat has no session cap on paid plans. | 303rd of 366, with limits $6,645 a month | 83rd of 366, with limits $8,504 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 | 247th of 345, with limits $250 a month | 335th of 345, with limits $5,320 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 Neither is built to hand machines to your users: Namespace Devboxes need a Namespace login for HTTPS, and Ona's SDK is Enterprise only with a default of 10 running environments per user. | 284th of 361, with limits $2,068 a month | 330th of 361, with limits $5,988 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 | 356th of 360, with limits $9,012 a month | 283rd of 360, with limits $9,773 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 | 282nd of 364, with limits $1,043 a month | 334th of 364, with limits $5,768 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 Namespace fits, since CI runners with build caches are its main product, while Ona is a dev environment platform; boat also fits, running CI jobs on full VMs with Docker and /dev/kvm. | 80th cheapest of 377 $765 a month | 365th of 377, with limits $5,461 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Both are built for dev boxes: Namespace stops a Devbox after at most 24 hours, and Ona gives a full cloud IDE but only through an Enterprise contract; a boat machine stays up as long as you want. | 126th of 368, with limits $168 a month | 368th of 368, with limits $5,140 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 Namespace has a screenshot and click API on macOS Devboxes only, and Ona has no graphical desktop; boat streams a 60fps Linux desktop with Chromium. | 67th of 369, with limits $982 a month | 353rd of 369, with limits $5,691 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 | 285th of 367, with limits $789 a month | 150th of 367, with limits $5,346 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 | 259th of 346, with limits $332 a month | 146th of 346, with limits $5,468 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 | 226th of 338, with limits $9,012 a month | 261st of 338, with limits $14,360 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 boat can fork one prepared machine into many while it runs; neither Namespace nor Ona can copy an environment. | 242nd of 360, with limits $339 a month | 93rd of 360, with limits $5,228 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 None of the three fits this use case as priced; Ona's Enterprise runners can use GPU instance types in your own cloud, and Namespace and boat are CPU only. | 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 Only Namespace fits: it runs macOS on Apple Silicon, and neither Ona nor boat has macOS. | 6th cheapest of 36 $1,205 a month | Can't run it | Can't run it |
Key features
| Feature | Namespace | Ona | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | CI runners, build caches and Devboxes for people and coding agents | Cloud dev environments with an IDE and a Codex agent | Sandboxes for agents, driven from code |
| Buying it | Self-serve, pay as you go, 30-day free trial | New Core subscriptions closed; new customers go through sales for Enterprise | Self-serve plans from $20 a month, with a free trial |
| Isolation | Linux Devboxes run from a container image on Namespace's own hardware; the docs do not say if each has its own kernel | Every environment is an isolated VM built from a Dev Container config | Every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel |
| CPU speed (Node.js build-and-test, 4 vCPU / 8 GB) | 21.79 runs/s | Not measured | 26.69 runs/s |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Docker in Linux Devboxes; /dev/kvm on Linux compute instances | Docker and root in the Dev Container; nested virtualization not documented | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine |
| How long a session can run | Devboxes stop after 4, 5 or 24 hours by plan, 24 at most | No hard cap; stops after 30 idle minutes by default, can be set to Never | No session cap on paid plans |
| Files after a stop | A stopped Devbox keeps its storage, billed at $0.20 per GB-month used | Disk persists; billed on your cloud while stopped; Core archives after 3 days | Snapshots every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox keeps its disk and costs nothing |
| Fork | No fork; compute instances can suspend and resume with RAM kept | No environment copy | Fork a running sandbox into copies with its files |
| Desktop and computer use | Screenshot and click API on macOS Devboxes only | Browser IDE, VS Code and JetBrains; no graphical desktop | 60fps Linux desktop with Chromium, computer use and browser control |
| Driving it from code | Compute API, TypeScript SDK and an MCP server | Python, TypeScript and Go SDK on Enterprise only | API and SDK on every plan, including the trial |
| Coding agents | Hosts Claude Managed Agents, Cursor and Devin sessions through those partners | Codex Agent from chat, a Linear issue or an automation | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Reaching the sandbox | HTTPS URLs behind a Namespace login; TCP through a CLI port-forward | HTTPS URL per port for you, your org or everyone; SSH; no raw TCP | HTTPS on up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; dedicated IPv6 or IPv4 |
| Outbound controls and keys | Domain egress rules, with headers injected from Namespace Vault | Secrets injected as environment variables or files | Open internet; AI credentials proxy for any HTTPS API you register |
| Operating systems, GPUs and regions | Linux, macOS on Apple Silicon and Windows; no GPUs | Linux, with GPU instance types in your own AWS or GCP account, in many regions | Linux only, no GPUs, EU only (Germany, Finland, France) |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Namespace | Ona | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | No | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | Yes | No | Yes |
| Browser | No | Yes | Yes |
| Computer-use API | Yes | No | Yes |
| SSH | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | Yes | 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 | Yes | Yes | No |
| Wake on request | Yes | No | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | Yes | No | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | No | No | No |
| Egress allowlist | Yes | No | No |
| Secret proxy | Yes | No | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | Yes | No | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Agent harness API | No | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes | No | No |
| GPU | No | Yes | No |
| Windows | Yes | No | No |
| Arm64 | Yes | No | No |
| Self-hosting | No | No | No |
| BYOC | No | Yes | No |
| Open source | No | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | No | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | Yes | No | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | No | No | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
In StarSling's public run of 2026-09-29 at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second and Namespace did 21.79, so the same build takes about a fifth longer on Namespace. Ona was not in that run, so there is no comparable measurement for it; on Enterprise its speed depends on the AWS or GCP machines in your own account.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Namespace measured on: Linux compute instance (unit-minutes, PAYG/overage $0.0015). Ona 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 | Namespace, a month | Ona, 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 | $50 · Devbox (pay as you go) | $5,030 · Enterprise (AWS Marketplace 12-month contract) · with limits | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $176 · Devbox (pay as you go) · with limits | $5,140 · Enterprise (AWS Marketplace 12-month contract) · 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 | $2,198 · Devbox (pay as you go) | $6,521 · Enterprise (AWS Marketplace 12-month contract) · 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 | $1,214 · Devbox (pay as you go) | $5,432 · Enterprise (AWS Marketplace 12-month contract) · 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 | $3,237 · Devbox (pay as you go) | $5,955 · Enterprise (AWS Marketplace 12-month contract) · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Namespace: Devboxes are billed in Devbox Minutes at $0.004 each, pay as you go on every plan; a 4 vCPU / 8 GB Devbox uses one a minute. Plan minutes on Team and Business cover runners and instances, not Devboxes, and stored files cost $0.20 per GB-month.
Ona: New Core subscriptions are closed, so the prices here use Ona's Enterprise listing on AWS Marketplace: a 12-month, $60,000 contract, plus compute on your own AWS bill. Real Enterprise prices are negotiated with sales.
Ona: 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
On Namespace the limit that bites is time: a Devbox is shut down after 4, 5 or 24 hours by plan, so the agent that never stops has to restart at least once a day. On Ona no scenario fits as published, because a new customer can only buy Enterprise through sales, and since Ona publishes no Enterprise concurrency limit the table assumes 3 environments at once, which makes 50 agents, 300 user sandboxes and 1,000 short jobs too big. On boat the limit is starts per minute and per day, so the 1,000 short jobs get queued and need more starts than the $2,000 plan allows.
| Scenario | Namespace | Ona | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays |
|
| None that bite |
| One agent that never stops |
|
| 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 Namespace when
you want to start today on pay-as-you-go Devboxes or faster GitHub Actions runners, or need macOS or Windows machines.
- Start today, pay per minute. Useful if you want to try it now: Namespace is self-serve with a free trial and bills Devbox minutes as you go.
- macOS and Windows. Useful if your agents build iOS or Mac apps or test on Windows: Namespace runs both, and Ona does not.
- CI runners and build caches. Useful if you want faster GitHub Actions: Namespace is a drop-in runner with Docker, Bazel and Turborepo caching.
Use Ona when
your engineers want a governed cloud IDE shared with a Codex agent, inside your own AWS or GCP account or with a GPU.
- A full cloud IDE for your team. Useful if engineers work beside their agents: Ona has browser, VS Code and JetBrains IDEs with Dev Containers and prebuilds.
- Runs in your own cloud. Useful if environments must run inside your own AWS or GCP account, in a region you choose.
- GPU environments. Useful if agents need a GPU: Ona's Enterprise runners can use GPU instance types such as an NVIDIA A10G.
Where boat fits
Namespace and Ona are both built for developers first: one around CI and Devboxes, the other around a team IDE. If what you are really running is agents that your code starts, drives and keeps for hours or days, boat is built for that. Each agent gets a full VM with no session cap, a desktop and its coding agent ready inside.
No clock on the session
A Namespace Devbox is shut down after 4 to 24 hours even while it works, and an Ona environment stops after 30 idle minutes unless set to Never. On boat's paid plans a sandbox runs as long as the work does.
A full VM with a desktop and open ports
Ona documents no /dev/kvm and no desktop, Namespace's click API is macOS only, and neither offers raw TCP to a public IP. Every boat machine has /dev/kvm, systemd, a 60fps Linux desktop, HTTPS on 50 ports and raw TCP.
Agents you drive from outside, with work that keeps
Namespace leaves the agent loop to partners, and Ona's SDK needs an Enterprise contract. boat ships Claude Code, Codex and OpenCode with a prompt, steer and events API, saves the disk every minute and forks a running sandbox.
Use boat when your code starts and drives the agents on Linux for hours or days: a full, faster VM with no session cap, /dev/kvm, a desktop, open ports, and machines that keep their work and fork while running. Compare it one to one: boat vs Namespace and boat vs Ona.
Questions people ask
Is Namespace cheaper than Ona?
In every scenario we priced, yes: one coding agent on workdays is $50 a month on Namespace and $5,030 on Ona, and 50 agents in parallel are $2,198 against $6,521. Ona's price is its Enterprise listing on AWS Marketplace, so a sales quote may differ. On boat the same two scenarios come to $20 and $317.
Which is faster, Namespace or Ona?
Only Namespace has a public measurement: 21.79 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in StarSling's run of 2026-09-29. Ona was not tested, and on Enterprise it runs on machines in your own cloud. boat did 26.69 in the same run.
Can Namespace and Ona run Docker?
Yes. Namespace Linux Devboxes include Docker, and its Linux compute instances have /dev/kvm. Ona gives you Docker and root inside the Dev Container but documents no nested virtualization. boat has Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine.
How long can a session run on Namespace and Ona?
A Namespace Devbox is shut down after 4 hours on Developer, 5 on Team and 24 on Business, even while you work. Ona has no hard cap, but stops after 30 idle minutes by default, and background processes do not count as activity unless auto-stop is set to Never. boat has no session cap on paid plans.
Is Ona the same as Gitpod?
Yes. Gitpod renamed itself Ona in 2025, and Ona is now part of OpenAI. New Core subscriptions are no longer available, so new customers go through sales.
Where does my data run?
Namespace runs in several regions on its own hardware, and keeping every workload in one region needs its enterprise plan. Ona Enterprise runs in your own AWS or GCP account. boat runs only in the EU (Germany, Finland and France), with EU data residency and a zero data retention option.
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