Ona vs Upstash Box
Ona, formerly Gitpod, is a dev-environment platform for engineering teams and its Codex agent, sold as an Enterprise contract that runs in your own cloud. Upstash Box is a self-serve sandbox for AI agents: a light container you drive from an SDK, which pauses when idle and bills only the CPU it uses.
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.
Upstash Box
Upstash Box is a cloud computer for AI agents from Upstash, the company known for serverless Redis, Vector and QStash.
Each box is a Docker container with its own filesystem, shell, git and an optional coding agent such as Claude Code, Codex or OpenCode, which you drive from TypeScript or Python SDKs. A box pauses when it sits idle, keeps its files, and you pay for the CPU it actually uses. Upstash built it to run its own Context7 service and opened it to everyone in March 2026.
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 | Upstash Box: 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 for databases and test services: Ona has it inside a Dev Container, Upstash Box does not, and boat runs it in a full VM with /dev/kvm. | 324th of 367, with limits $7,315 a month | 61st of 367, with limits $464 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An always-on agent on Ona needs auto-stop set to Never, while Upstash offers a flat-price keep-alive box; boat keeps a full machine running with no session cap on paid plans. | 83rd of 366, with limits $8,504 a month | 103rd of 366, with limits $475 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 Upstash Box suits short code runs well, because an idle box costs no CPU and a paused box wakes when work arrives. | 335th of 345, with limits $5,320 a month | 10th cheapest of 345 $119 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 Ona is built for your own engineers and defaults to 10 running environments per user, while Upstash Box and boat both fit sandboxes handed to your users. | 330th of 361, with limits $5,988 a month | 2nd cheapest of 361 $222 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 | 283rd of 360, with limits $9,773 a month | 352nd of 360, with limits $8,068 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 | 334th of 364, with limits $5,768 a month | 52nd cheapest of 364 $1,011 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 CI jobs that build containers or Android apps need Docker and /dev/kvm; Ona documents no /dev/kvm, Upstash has neither, and boat has both. | 365th of 377, with limits $5,461 a month | 120th cheapest of 377 $1,520 a month | 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 and prebuilds, Upstash's keep-alive box is a light dev box, and boat is a full VM you reach over SSH, HTTPS or a desktop. | 368th of 368, with limits $5,140 a month | 10th 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 Computer-use agents need a screen: Ona has only IDEs, Upstash has a headless browser, and boat streams a Linux desktop at 60fps. | 353rd of 369, with limits $5,691 a month | 73rd of 369, with limits $76 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 Upstash ships a managed headless Chromium with AI page actions and CDP, while boat gives the agent a real desktop browser it can see and click. | 150th of 367, with limits $5,346 a month | 49th of 367, with limits $38 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 | 146th of 346, with limits $5,468 a month | 37th cheapest of 346 $400 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 | 261st of 338, with limits $14,360 a month | 200th of 338, with limits $8,000 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 | 93rd of 360, with limits $5,228 a month | 225th of 360, with limits $259 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 | 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 | Upstash Box | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isolation | An isolated VM per environment, built from a Dev Container config | A Docker container per box on AWS | A full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts |
| Docker inside | Yes, Docker and root inside the Dev Container | Not documented; the box is itself a Docker container, and custom images are listed as coming soon | Yes, Docker, root and systemd as on any Linux server |
| Nested virtualization | Not documented on its VM classes | No; boxes are containers | Yes, /dev/kvm for Android emulators and VMs |
| How you get it | Enterprise contract through sales; new Core subscriptions are no longer available | Self-serve: a Free plan and Pay as You Go with no monthly fee | Self-serve plans from $20 a month, with a free trial |
| Driving it from code | Python, TypeScript and Go SDK on the Enterprise plan only | TypeScript and Python SDKs, self-serve | API and SDK on every plan, including the trial |
| Coding agents | Codex Agent started from chat, a Linear issue or an automation; Claude Code you run yourself | Claude Code, Codex and OpenCode built in, with run and stream APIs, webhooks and scheduled prompts | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Idle, stop and files | Stops after 30 idle minutes by default; the disk persists, but in your own cloud its storage is billed while stopped, and Core archives it after 3 days | Pauses when idle and keeps its files, and a request to its public URL wakes it; storage keeps billing while paused | Disk saved every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing |
| Fork | No environment copy; you can create a project from an environment's config | Snapshot a running box and start many new boxes from it | Fork a running sandbox into copies with its files |
| Desktop and browser | Browser IDE plus VS Code and JetBrains; no graphical desktop | Managed headless Chromium with AI page actions and CDP; no desktop | Linux desktop streamed at 60fps, Chromium and computer-use tools |
| Inbound access | HTTPS URL per port for you, your organization or everyone; SSH; no raw TCP documented | HTTPS URL per port, public unless you add a token or basic auth; SSH through a gateway; no raw TCP | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected by default; raw TCP |
| Outbound rules | No provider-side allowlist documented | Allow all, deny all, or allow and deny by domain and CIDR, changeable on a running box | Open internet, no provider-side allowlist |
| Keeping API keys out of the sandbox | Secrets are injected as environment variables or files | Host proxy injects headers into outbound HTTPS on port 443, set when the box is created | Credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; switch a credential to another account when credits run out |
| Machine sizes and GPUs | Instance types from your own cloud on Enterprise runners, including GPU VMs such as one NVIDIA A10G with 16 vCPU and 64 GB | Up to 8 vCPU / 16 GB, with 5, 10 or 20 GB of disk; no GPUs | Up to 16 vCPU / 32 GB, 50 GB disk at the default size; no GPUs |
| Regions | Enterprise runners in your own AWS or GCP account, in many regions | US only (AWS us-east-1) | EU only (Germany, Finland, France) |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Ona | Upstash Box | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | No | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | No | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Systemd | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | No | Yes |
| Browser | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | No | Yes |
| SSH | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | No | 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 | Yes | Yes | No |
| Wake on request | No | Yes | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | No | No | 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 | Yes | Yes |
| Agent harness API | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | No | Yes | No |
| GPU | Yes | No | No |
| Windows | No | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | Yes | No |
| Self-hosting | No | No | No |
| BYOC | Yes | No | 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 | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | No | Not published | No |
| SSO | Yes | No | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | No | No | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | No | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
Neither Ona nor Upstash Box has a result in the hpc-sandbox-benchmarks CPU test, so there is no comparable speed measurement between them. 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.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Ona and Upstash Box 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 | Upstash Box, 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 | $21 · Pay as You Go | $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 | $21 · 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 | $6,521 · Enterprise (AWS Marketplace 12-month contract) · with limits | $900 · Pay as You Go · 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 | $5,432 · Enterprise (AWS Marketplace 12-month contract) · with limits | $306 · Pay as You Go | $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 | $1,822 · Pay as You Go | $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.
Upstash Box: A standard box is billed for the CPU it actually uses, at $0.10, $0.20 or $0.40 per active CPU hour for Small, Medium and Large, plus $0.10 per GB-month of storage, and RAM is free. A keep-alive box costs a flat $8, $16 or $32 a month.
Upstash Box: 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 concurrency limit. Upstash Box fits four of the five scenarios but not 50 agents with Docker inside, and its disks stop at 5, 10 or 20 GB by size. Neither publishes an egress price. boat's limit is start rate: for 1,000 short jobs at once, even the $2,000 plan starts at most 90 per minute and 2,400 a day, so the burst is queued.
| Scenario | Ona | Upstash Box | 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, in a region of your choice.
- GPU environments. Useful if your agents need a GPU: Enterprise runners can use GPU instance types such as an A10G VM.
Use Upstash Box when
your agents mostly wait, need to wake on an incoming request, must stay inside a strict outbound allowlist, or must run in the US.
- Sign up and start today. Useful if you want to start now: Upstash Box is self-serve with no monthly fee, while new Ona customers go through sales.
- Idle costs no CPU, and a request wakes the box. Good for agents that wait a lot: you pay only for CPU used, and a request to a box's URL wakes it.
- Outbound network rules. Useful when an agent may only reach a short list of domains or IP ranges.
Where boat fits
If your code starts and drives the agents, Ona asks for an Enterprise contract and Upstash Box gives each agent only a light container. boat is self-serve like Upstash but gives each agent a full VM, with Docker, /dev/kvm, a desktop and open ports, and machines that keep their work and fork while running.
A whole Linux machine for every agent
Upstash boxes cannot run Docker, so the 50-agent scenario does not fit there. Ona has Docker in a Dev Container but documents no /dev/kvm, so emulators and microVMs fail on both. boat has root, systemd, Docker and /dev/kvm.
A desktop the agent can see
Neither has a graphical desktop: Ona offers IDEs, and Upstash a headless Chromium over CDP, which leaves desktop apps and native dialogs out of reach. boat streams a Linux desktop at 60fps with computer-use tools.
Work that is kept, copied and reachable
Ona has no fork and keeps billing a stopped disk in your cloud; Upstash bills storage while paused and caps disks at 20 GB. boat saves the disk every minute, stops for free, forks running sandboxes and opens raw TCP.
Use boat when your code starts and drives the agents and they need a real machine: Docker, /dev/kvm, a desktop, open ports and a disk that is kept and forked. Compare it one to one: boat vs Ona and boat vs Upstash Box.
Questions people ask
Is Ona cheaper than Upstash Box?
No. Using Ona's Enterprise listing on AWS Marketplace, one coding agent on workdays is $5,030 a month on Ona and $21 on Upstash Box, and 300 user sandboxes are $5,432 against $306. Ona's real price is a sales quote, so yours may differ.
Which is faster, Ona or Upstash Box?
There is no comparable measurement: neither was in the public CPU benchmark runs we use. boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in that test.
Can Upstash Box or Ona run Docker?
Ona runs Docker inside each environment's Dev Container. Upstash's docs do not offer Docker inside a box, since each box is itself a Docker container. boat sandboxes are full VMs where Docker, docker compose and systemd work as on any Linux server.
Can I sign up for Ona like I can for Upstash Box?
No. Ona's billing docs say new Core subscriptions are no longer available, so new customers go through sales for Enterprise. Upstash Box has a Free plan and Pay as You Go with no monthly fee, and boat's plans are self-serve from a free trial up.
Where do Ona and Upstash Box run?
Ona's Enterprise runners run in your own AWS or GCP account, and Ona Cloud runs in Frankfurt and North Virginia for existing Core subscribers. Upstash Box runs in AWS us-east-1. boat runs in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France.
Do Ona or Upstash Box have a desktop for computer use?
No. Ona offers browser, VS Code and JetBrains IDEs, and Upstash offers a headless Chromium with a CDP endpoint, with no desktop on either. boat streams a full Linux desktop at 60fps with computer-use tools preinstalled.
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