Ona vs Unikraft Cloud
Ona, formerly Gitpod, gives your engineers and its Codex agent a full cloud dev environment, sold through sales and run in your own AWS or GCP account. Unikraft Cloud turns a Dockerfile into a tiny microVM that boots in milliseconds and sleeps when traffic stops, on flat self-serve plans.
The companies and products
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.
Unikraft Cloud
Unikraft Cloud is a microVM cloud from Unikraft Inc. that runs any Dockerfile-based workload as a minimal Linux microVM with millisecond cold starts and scale-to-zero.
Your Dockerfile becomes the VM image at build time, and each instance runs on a heavily customized Firecracker VMM, so it boots in milliseconds and can go into standby when no traffic arrives. It is a general compute platform built for dense, bursty work such as HTTP services, headless browsers and agent fleets, sold as flat self-serve plans plus Enterprise dedicated hosts, on-prem and bring your own cloud. It is not a dev machine you log into: instances are reached through services, the CLI and a sandbox plugin for commands and files.
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. “324th cheapest of 367” means 323 of the other 366 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 | Ona: price rank | Unikraft Cloud: 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 Docker and test suites inside each machine: Ona gives you Docker in a Dev Container but only through an Enterprise contract, Unikraft documents no container runtime inside, and boat fits fully. | 324th of 367, with limits $7,315 a month | Can't run it | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An always-on assistant on Ona needs auto-stop set to Never, and on Unikraft it shares a small plan pool, such as 8 GiB on Team, with every other running instance. | 83rd of 366, with limits $8,504 a month | Can't run it | 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 that sleep between calls are the shape Unikraft is built for, though its self-serve plans cap you at 24 running instances; Ona starts full dev environments, not quick jobs. | 335th of 345, with limits $5,320 a month | Can't run it | 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 Ona is built for your own engineers, not your users, and Unikraft Pro holds 5,000 sleeping instances but only 24 running ones, so hundreds of active users need Enterprise on either. | 330th of 361, with limits $5,988 a month | Can't run it | 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 | 283rd of 360, with limits $9,773 a month | Can't run it | 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 | 334th of 364, with limits $5,768 a month | Can't run it | 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 jobs that copy a warm machine need fork: Ona has none, Unikraft can checkpoint a running microVM, and boat forks a running sandbox with its disk. | 365th of 377, with limits $5,461 a month | Can't run it | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Ona is a full cloud IDE with Dev Containers, SSH and prebuilds, Unikraft has no SSH yet, and boat is a full VM you reach over SSH, HTTPS or a desktop. | 368th of 368, with limits $5,140 a month | 219th of 368, with limits $39 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 Ona nor Unikraft has a graphical desktop for an agent to see and click, while boat streams one at 60fps with Chromium. | 353rd of 369, with limits $5,691 a month | Can't run it | 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 | 150th of 367, with limits $5,346 a month | Can't run it | 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 | 146th of 346, with limits $5,468 a month | Can't run it | 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 | 261st of 338, with limits $14,360 a month | Can't run it | 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; Unikraft can start new instances from a checkpoint, and Ona can only start new environments from a config or prebuild. | 93rd of 360, with limits $5,228 a month | Can't run it | 2nd cheapest of 360 $200 a month |
| GPU eval jobs 10 at once · 8 vCPU / 32 GB · 500 sessions of 30 min a month | 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 | Can't run it | Can't run it | Can't run it |
Key features
| Feature | Ona | Unikraft Cloud | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | A cloud dev environment platform for engineers and its Codex agent | A general microVM cloud for dense, bursty services that sleep when idle | A sandbox API for agents: full VMs you start and drive from code |
| Isolation | An isolated VM per environment, built from a Dev Container config | A minimal Linux microVM per instance on a customized Firecracker VMM | A full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts |
| Buying it | Enterprise through sales; new Core subscriptions are closed | Self-serve Hobby (free), Team and Pro plans, plus Enterprise | Self-serve plans from $20 a month, with a free trial |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Docker and root inside the Dev Container; nested virtualization not documented | Dockerfile becomes the VM image, no container runtime inside documented; nested virtualization on Enterprise only | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine |
| SSH and IDEs | SSH, a browser IDE, VS Code and JetBrains | No SSH yet; commands and files go through the sandbox plugin and CLI | SSH into every sandbox, plus an API and a desktop |
| Desktop and computer use | No graphical desktop inside the environment | None built in; you can run your own headless browser from a Dockerfile | 60fps desktop with Chromium, computer use and browser control |
| Idle behavior | Stops after 30 idle minutes by default; background work does not count; can be set to Never | Standby after a 1 second idle cooldown by default, and wakes on the next request in milliseconds | Runs until you stop it; disk saved every minute and on stop, and a stopped sandbox costs nothing |
| Fork and checkpoints | No environment copy; you can create a project from an environment's config | Checkpoint memory and volumes of a running microVM, then start new instances from it | Fork a running sandbox into copies with its files |
| Machine size | Your own cloud's instance types, such as 4 vCPU / 16 GiB | A plan pool shared by all running instances: 2 vCPU / 4 GiB, 8 vCPU / 8 GiB or 24 vCPU / 32 GiB | 4 vCPU / 8 GB by default, up to 16 vCPU / 32 GB per sandbox on the $100 plan and above |
| Driving it from code | Python, TypeScript and Go SDK on Enterprise only | CLI, JS SDK and a sandbox plugin for commands and files | API and SDK on every plan, including the trial |
| Coding agents | Codex Agent started from chat, a Linear issue or an automation | None preinstalled; you bring the agent in your own image | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Keeping keys out of the sandbox | Secrets are injected into the environment as variables or files | Network shield can inject secrets into traffic, Enterprise only, limited access | Credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API, on every plan |
| Inbound access | HTTPS URL per port; no raw TCP or public IP documented | Services on its load balancer: HTTP, HTTPS and TLS-wrapped TCP; no public IP per instance | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; dedicated IPv4 or IPv6 |
| Regions, GPUs and deployment | Enterprise runners in your own AWS or GCP account, with GPU instance types such as an A10G | Dallas, Frankfurt, San Francisco, Singapore and Washington DC; GPUs, on-prem and your own cloud on Enterprise | EU only (Germany, Finland, France); no GPUs |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Ona | Unikraft Cloud | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | No | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | Yes | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | No | Yes |
| Browser | Yes | No | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | No | Yes |
| SSH | Yes | No | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | Yes | Yes |
| Fork/clone | No | Yes | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Memory fork | No | Yes | No |
| Custom image (Docker or snapshot) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | Yes | Yes | No |
| Wake on request | No | Yes | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | No | Not published | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | No | No | No |
| Egress allowlist | No | Yes | No |
| Secret proxy | No | Yes | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | No | Yes | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | Yes | No | Yes |
| Agent harness API | Yes | No | Yes |
| MCP server | No | No | No |
| GPU | Yes | Yes | No |
| Windows | No | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | Yes | No |
| Self-hosting | No | Yes | No |
| BYOC | Yes | Yes | No |
| Open source | No | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | No | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | No | Yes | No |
| SSO | Yes | No | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | No | Yes | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable CPU measurement for Ona or Unikraft Cloud: neither was in the public benchmark runs we use. boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in StarSling's run of 2026-09-29, on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts. Unikraft states cold starts under 10 ms, which is its own figure and measures start time, not CPU speed.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Ona and Unikraft 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 | Ona, a month | Unikraft 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 | $5,030 · Enterprise (AWS Marketplace 12-month contract) · with limits | $39 · Hobby | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $5,140 · Enterprise (AWS Marketplace 12-month contract) · with limits | $39 · Hobby | $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 | $6,521 · Enterprise (AWS Marketplace 12-month contract) · with limits | Can't run it | $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 | $5,432 · Enterprise (AWS Marketplace 12-month contract) · with limits | Can't run it | $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 | $5,955 · Enterprise (AWS Marketplace 12-month contract) · with limits | Can't run it | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Ona: New Core subscriptions are closed, so the Ona prices here use its Enterprise listing on AWS Marketplace: a 12-month, $60,000 contract (about $5,000 a month), plus compute on your own AWS bill. Real Enterprise prices are negotiated with sales.
Unikraft Cloud: Unikraft charges a flat monthly fee for a pool of running capacity: free for 2 vCPU / 4 GiB, $39 for 8 vCPU / 8 GiB, $199 for 24 vCPU / 32 GiB, with sleeping instances not counted. It publishes no per-hour rate, so anything bigger is an Enterprise quote.
Unikraft Cloud: Plans start at $20 a month, and the whole fee is usage credit spent per second while a sandbox runs. A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Limits in those scenarios
No Ona scenario fits as published, because a new customer can only buy Enterprise through sales, and the table assumes 3 environments at once since Ona publishes no Enterprise limit. Unikraft fits one agent on its Team pool at $39 a month, but its pools are shared by every running instance, so 50 agents, 300 user sandboxes and 1,000 short jobs fit no self-serve plan. boat has no session cap and runs 100 sandboxes at once from its first paid plan, but at 1,000 short jobs at once its $2,000 plan queues starts.
| Scenario | Ona | Unikraft Cloud | 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 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 your engineers work in the same environments as their agents, with browser, VS Code and JetBrains IDEs and prebuilds.
- Runs in your own cloud. Useful if environments must run inside your own AWS or GCP account, on instance types you already pay for.
- Managed Codex agent. Useful if you want Codex to plan, code and open pull requests from chat, a Linear issue or an automation.
Use Unikraft Cloud when
you run many small services or headless browsers that sleep most of the time and must wake in milliseconds, or need US or Asia regions.
- Millisecond starts and scale-to-zero. Best for many small services that sleep most of the time and must answer the next request in milliseconds.
- Self-serve, with a free plan. Useful if you want to start without a sales call: Hobby is free, and Team and Pro are flat monthly plans.
- Regions in the US and Asia. Unikraft runs in Dallas, San Francisco, Washington DC and Singapore as well as Frankfurt, with more metros on request.
Where boat fits
If what you are really running is agents that start from your code, neither tool was built for that: Ona is an IDE platform for your engineers, and Unikraft is built for small services that sleep. boat gives each agent a whole Linux machine with Docker, /dev/kvm and a desktop, an API on every plan, and fleets of full-size sandboxes without a sales call.
A whole machine the agent can work in
Agents install packages, run docker compose and start emulators. Ona documents no /dev/kvm, and Unikraft has no container runtime inside, no SSH yet and nested virtualization only on Enterprise. boat gives root, systemd, Docker and /dev/kvm on every plan.
A screen, open ports and agents built in
Neither Ona nor Unikraft has a graphical desktop, and neither offers raw TCP to a machine. boat streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium, serves HTTPS on up to 50 ports plus raw TCP, and ships Claude Code, Codex and OpenCode you drive from outside.
Fleets without a sales call
Fifty 4 vCPU / 8 GB agents need 200 vCPU and 400 GiB at once. That is above every Unikraft self-serve pool, and Ona sells only Enterprise. boat runs 100 to 2,000 sandboxes at once on self-serve plans, and keeps keys outside them in a credentials proxy.
Use boat when your code starts and drives the agents: full VMs with Docker, /dev/kvm, a desktop and open ports, coding agents built in, and fleets that fork while running, all self-serve. Compare it one to one: boat vs Ona and boat vs Unikraft Cloud.
Questions people ask
Is Ona cheaper than Unikraft Cloud?
No, in the scenarios we priced. One coding agent on workdays is $39 a month on Unikraft's Team pool against $5,030 on Ona's Enterprise listing, and one agent that never stops is $39 against $5,140. boat runs the same two at $20 and $26.
Which is faster?
Neither Ona nor Unikraft Cloud has a CPU score in the benchmark runs we use, so we cannot compare their speed. Unikraft starts faster: its microVMs cold boot in milliseconds and wake on the next request, while Ona starts a full dev environment.
Can Ona or Unikraft Cloud run Docker?
Ona runs Docker with root inside its Dev Container. Unikraft uses your Dockerfile to build the VM itself, and its docs do not describe a container runtime inside a running instance. A boat sandbox has Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm ready to use.
Can I SSH into them?
Yes on Ona, which also offers browser, VS Code and JetBrains IDEs. Not yet on Unikraft Cloud, where you run commands and move files through its sandbox plugin and CLI. You can SSH into every boat sandbox.
Can I sign up for either without talking to sales?
Unikraft Cloud, yes: Hobby is free and Team and Pro are self-serve. Ona, no: new Core subscriptions are closed, so new customers buy Enterprise through sales. boat's plans are self-serve, from a free trial up.
Where do they run?
New Ona customers run Enterprise runners in their own AWS or GCP account. Unikraft runs in Dallas, Frankfurt, San Francisco, Singapore and Washington DC, with more on request. boat runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France.
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