Nebius vs Verda
Nebius and Verda are both AI clouds that rent Nvidia GPUs and plain CPU virtual machines. Nebius runs in seven regions across Europe, Israel and the US and stops charging for compute when a VM is stopped, while Verda runs only in Helsinki, keeps billing a shut-down instance, and adds containers that scale to zero.
The companies and products
Nebius
Nebius is an AI cloud company, listed on Nasdaq and based in Amsterdam, that rents GPUs and the infrastructure around them.
You create a Compute VM from a preset (GPU or CPU only), add disks and an SSH key, and get a full Linux VM with root and an optional public IP. Around it Nebius sells Managed Kubernetes, Slurm clusters (Soperator), Serverless AI jobs and endpoints, object storage and networking. It is built for teams that train, fine-tune and serve AI models, not as a sandbox for agents.
Verda
Verda, called DataCrunch until 2025, is a European AI cloud that rents Nvidia GPUs, CPU machines and GPU clusters.
You create a GPU or CPU instance, add a disk and an SSH key, and get a full Linux VM with root and its own public IP. Verda also sells GPU clusters with InfiniBand and serverless containers that scale to zero for inference. It is built for teams that train, fine-tune and serve AI models, not as a sandbox for agents.
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. “29th cheapest of 364” means 28 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 | Nebius: price rank | Verda: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month On both you install the coding agent and tooling yourself; Nebius can snapshot a running VM, Verda only clones a volume after shutdown. | 197th of 367, with limits $2,272 a month | 88th of 367, with limits $788 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB | 210th of 366, with limits $2,261 a month | 133rd of 366, with limits $901 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 Verda's serverless containers scale to zero and wake on a request, which suits short bursts; Nebius has no wake on request. | 111th of 345, with limits $202 a month | 99th of 345, with limits $165 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 for 300 user sandboxes: Nebius starts at 12 VMs per region and Verda does not publish its limit. | 81st of 361, with limits $716 a month | 71st of 361, with limits $629 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 | 52nd of 360, with limits $3,049 a month | 20th of 360, with limits $1,097 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 | 29th cheapest of 364 $610 a month | 91st of 364, with limits $123 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 work as CI runners, and Nebius stops charging for compute between jobs while a shut-down Verda instance keeps billing. | 27th cheapest of 377 $297 a month | 10th cheapest of 377 $142 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB A 24/7 dev box is $45 a month on Verda and $91 on Nebius at 4 vCPU / 16 GiB, and boat runs one for $26 a month. | 68th cheapest of 368 $91 a month | 36th cheapest of 368 $45 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 product: Nebius gives a text serial console and Verda a guide to install a VNC server, while boat streams a 60fps desktop. | 187th of 369, with limits $610 a month | 82nd of 369, with limits $123 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 | 223rd of 367, with limits $305 a month | 169th of 367, with limits $110 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 | 253rd of 346, with limits $302 a month | 184th of 346, with limits $103 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 | 174th of 338, with limits $6,049 a month | 84th of 338, with limits $2,057 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 | 176th of 360, with limits $156 a month | 122nd of 360, with limits $66 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 fit GPU eval jobs: Verda costs $1,039 a month against $1,127 on Nebius here, and boat has no GPUs. | 18th cheapest of 98 $1,127 a month | 14th cheapest of 98 $1,039 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 | Nebius | Verda | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kind of product | AI cloud: GPU and CPU VMs, Kubernetes, Slurm clusters and serverless jobs | GPU and CPU cloud: raw VMs, GPU clusters and serverless containers | Sandboxes for AI agents: VMs with agents, desktop and hosting ready |
| Isolation | Every Compute VM is a full VM behind a hypervisor | Every instance is a full VM on KVM/QEMU | Every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Root on your own VM and container VMs from Docker images; nested virtualization is not documented | Root on your own VM, so you can install Docker; nested virtualization is not documented | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine |
| GPUs | Nvidia L40S, RTX PRO 6000, H100, H200, B200 and B300, on-demand or preemptible | Nvidia V100 up to GB300, including A100, on-demand or spot, plus clusters with InfiniBand | None |
| Biggest CPU machine | Up to 256 vCPU / 1,024 GB on AMD EPYC Genoa | Up to 360 dedicated vCPU / 1,440 GB on AMD EPYC Turin | 16 vCPU / 32 GB on the $100 plan and up |
| Smallest CPU machine | 2 vCPU / 8 GB | 4 vCPU / 16 GB | Small 2 vCPU / 4 GB, default 4 vCPU / 8 GB |
| Stopping a machine | Compute stops billing; disks keep billing on their full provisioned size | A shut-down instance keeps billing at its full rate; only Delete stops the charge | A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk |
| Snapshots and fork | Manual disk snapshots of a running VM; fork by making a disk, then a VM, from the snapshot | Clone a volume once its instance is shut down or it is detached | Snapshots every minute and on stop; fork a running sandbox in one call |
| Billing step | Per second, pay as you go | Prepaid 10-minute blocks, unused part refunded | Per second, from a monthly plan that becomes usage credit |
| Desktop and computer use | No desktop or browser product; a text serial console | No built-in desktop; a guide to install XFCE and TigerVNC yourself | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream |
| Coding agents | None built in; you install and run agents yourself over SSH | An MCP server and CLI agent mode so an outside agent can manage Verda machines | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Reaching the machine | Optional public IPv4 per VM, SSH and Nebius Tunnels; you set up TLS yourself | A free public IPv4 per instance and SSH; you set up TLS and the firewall yourself | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; dedicated IPv6 or IPv4 |
| Network rules | VPC security groups allow or deny ingress and egress by IP range, port and protocol | A firewall inside the VM (ufw) that you set up yourself | Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist |
| Regions | Finland, France, Spain, United Kingdom, Israel and the US | EU only: three data centers in Helsinki, Finland | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Nebius | Verda | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | Not published | 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 | Yes | No | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | Yes | 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 | No | No |
| Wake on request | No | Yes | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | Not published | No | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | Yes | Yes | 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 | No | Yes | No |
| GPU | Yes | Yes | No |
| Windows | No | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | 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 | Not published | Yes | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Yes | No |
| SSO | Yes | No | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Yes | 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 either: Nebius and Verda were not part of the public StarSling benchmark run. boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in that run, on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) hosts. Nebius CPU-only VMs run on AMD EPYC Genoa or Intel Ice Lake, and Verda says its CPU instances use dedicated AMD EPYC cores clocked at 3.3 GHz.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Nebius and Verda 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 | Nebius, a month | Verda, 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 | $25 · Pay as you go | $18 · Pay as you go | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $91 · Pay as you go | $45 · 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 | $1,127 · Pay as you go | $622 · 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 | $305 · Pay as you go | $254 · 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 | $610 · Pay as you go | $507 · Pay as you go · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Nebius: Nebius bills running VMs per second for vCPU and RAM, with no plan fee: AMD Genoa costs $0.015 per vCPU-hour plus $0.0045 per GiB-hour from 1 October 2026. Disks bill by provisioned size even while the VM is stopped.
Verda: Verda charges a prepaid balance in 10-minute blocks and refunds the unused part when you delete early. CPU machines cost $0.012 per vCPU-hour with 4 GB of RAM each, disks are extra at $0.20/GiB-month, and a shut-down instance keeps billing until you delete it.
Verda: 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
Nebius publishes its default quota: 12 VMs per region and, in most regions, 200 vCPU across CPU-only VMs, so 50 agents, 300 user sandboxes or 1,000 short jobs all need a raise first. Verda does not publish how many instances an account can run at once, so 300 sandboxes and 1,000 jobs at once are not confirmed until you get a higher quota. Verda's smallest CPU machine is 4 vCPU / 16 GB, so small sandboxes cost the same as medium ones there. On boat the 1,000-job burst is queued and needs more starts per day than the $2,000 plan allows.
| Scenario | Nebius | Verda | 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 |
| None that bite |
| Sandboxes for your users | None that bite |
| None that bite |
| 1,000 short jobs at once | None that bite |
|
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Which one should you use?
Use Nebius when
you need GPUs or CPU VMs outside Finland, machines that stop paying for compute while stopped, or egress rules, Kubernetes and Slurm next to them.
- Regions outside Finland. Useful if you need machines in the UK, Spain, France, Israel or the US, not only in Helsinki.
- Stopped VMs pay only for disks. Useful for machines that sit idle: a stopped Nebius VM stops paying for vCPU, RAM and GPUs.
- A full cloud around the VM. Useful when you want egress rules, private networks, Managed Kubernetes or Slurm clusters next to your machines.
Use Verda when
you want the widest range of Nvidia GPUs, a single CPU machine above 256 vCPU, an inference endpoint that scales to zero, or everything kept in Finland.
- More GPU types. Useful if you want older or newer cards: Verda rents everything from V100 and A100 up to GB300.
- Bigger CPU machines. Useful for one huge job: Verda CPU instances reach 360 dedicated vCPU and 1,440 GB of RAM.
- Containers that scale to zero. Useful for inference endpoints: Verda's serverless containers sleep when idle and wake on the next request.
Where boat fits
Nebius and Verda are GPU clouds, and boat has no GPUs, so model training and GPU evals belong on one of them. If what you are really running is agents on CPU machines, boat gives you VMs that come with coding agents, a desktop, HTTPS ports and snapshots every minute, and that cost nothing while stopped.
Agents and a desktop come ready
On Nebius and Verda each VM is a clean Ubuntu machine, so you install the agent, a browser and a VNC server yourself and keep them working. Verda's MCP server lets an agent manage machines, not work inside one.
Free stops and snapshots every minute
A stopped Nebius VM still pays for its disks, and a shut-down Verda instance keeps billing at its full rate. On both, snapshots are by hand, so the last good state is whenever you last took one. boat snapshots every minute and forks a running sandbox.
Ports and keys handled for you
On both clouds you set up TLS for every preview server, and the real API key has to live on the machine, where an agent can leak it. boat serves HTTPS on up to 50 ports and its credentials proxy keeps keys outside.
Use boat when what you run is agents: VMs that come with coding agents, a desktop and browser, HTTPS ports, a credentials proxy and snapshots every minute, and that cost nothing while stopped. Compare it one to one: boat vs Nebius and boat vs Verda.
Questions people ask
Is Nebius cheaper than Verda?
For CPU machines in our scenarios, no. One agent running all month is $91 on Nebius and $45 on Verda, and 50 agents in parallel are $1,127 against $622. For GPU eval jobs Verda comes to $1,039 a month and Nebius to $1,127. boat runs the always-on agent for $26 a month and the 50 agents for $317 a month.
Which is faster, Nebius or Verda?
We have no comparable CPU measurement for either, because neither was part of the public StarSling benchmark run. Nebius CPU VMs use AMD EPYC Genoa or Intel Ice Lake, and Verda uses dedicated AMD EPYC cores. boat did 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in that run.
Does a stopped machine cost money on Nebius or Verda?
On Nebius a stopped VM stops paying for vCPU, RAM and GPUs, but its disks keep billing. On Verda a shut-down instance keeps billing at its full rate, and only Delete stops the charge. A stopped boat sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Can Nebius and Verda run Docker?
Yes. Both give you root on a full VM, so you can install Docker, and Nebius can also start container VMs from Docker images. Neither documents nested virtualization. boat has Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine.
Where do Nebius and Verda run?
Verda has three data centers, all in Helsinki, Finland. Nebius runs in Finland, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Israel and the US. boat runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France.
Is Verda the same as DataCrunch?
Yes. DataCrunch was founded in Helsinki in 2020 and became Verda in 2025. It rents GPU and CPU instances, GPU clusters and serverless containers.
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