Oracle Cloud vs DigitalOcean
Oracle Cloud is a big general cloud with x86, Arm, Windows, Mac and GPU machines, an Always Free tier and stops that pause compute billing. DigitalOcean rents simple Linux Droplets at a fixed hourly price, but a powered-off Droplet is still billed and a new team can run only 3 at once.
The companies and products
Oracle Cloud
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is Oracle's general-purpose cloud: compute, storage, networking, databases and AI services in regions around the world.
OCI Compute rents virtual machines and bare metal servers on x86 (AMD, Intel) and Arm (Ampere), plus GPU machines and Mac servers. You pick a shape, an OS image, a network and a disk, and then install and run everything inside the VM yourself. It is not a sandbox product, so this page compares the part that overlaps: running agent code on a VM.
DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean is a general-purpose cloud, and Droplets are its Linux virtual machines.
A Droplet is a Linux VM you rent by size, with root, a public IP, local SSD and a monthly transfer allowance. You pick an image, then install and run your own software on it, next to DigitalOcean products like Kubernetes, managed databases, load balancers 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. DigitalOcean also sells two separate products in preview, Harness Runtime for agents and MicroVMs, which are not Droplets.
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. “Cheapest of 364” means no 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 | Oracle Cloud: price rank | DigitalOcean: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month | 58th of 367, with limits $413 a month | 134th of 367, with limits $1,187 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB | 100th of 366, with limits $376 a month | 35th of 366, with limits $1,429 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 Both clouds suit short runs better than boat here, since both bill only while a VM exists, but each run waits for a full VM boot. | 51st of 345, with limits $16 a month | 63rd of 345, with limits $60 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 boat ranks 1st with a sandbox and HTTPS URL per user by API; on Oracle Cloud (31st) and DigitalOcean (54th) you build that sandbox layer and raise account limits first. | 31st of 361, with limits $115 a month | 54th of 361, with limits $421 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 Oracle Cloud ranks 7th on price for big rollout fleets if your tenancy limits are raised; DigitalOcean is 31st and needs a higher trust tier for many Droplets. | 7th of 360, with limits $679 a month | 31st of 360, with limits $1,786 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 Oracle Cloud ranks 1st for agent evals on price, while DigitalOcean is 106th because a new team can run only 3 Droplets at once; boat is 10th. | Cheapest of 364 $136 a month | 106th of 364, with limits $357 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 boat ranks 4th and Oracle Cloud ranks 6th; DigitalOcean is 146th, and on both clouds you run the runner software and clean-up between jobs yourself. | 6th cheapest of 377 $102 a month | 146th of 377, with limits $171 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Oracle Cloud ranks 2nd here thanks to cheap burstable VMs and the Always Free Arm allowance, DigitalOcean is 39th with a classic always-on Droplet, and boat is 18th with a disk saved every minute. | 2nd cheapest of 368 $12 a month | 39th cheapest of 368 $48 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 gives a Compute VM or Droplet a desktop stream, so you install and expose one yourself; boat streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium and computer use. | 75th of 369, with limits $97 a month | 117th of 369, with limits $263 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 | 154th of 367, with limits $49 a month | 56th of 367, with limits $147 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 | 150th of 346, with limits $32 a month | 88th of 346, with limits $175 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 | 35th of 338, with limits $642 a month | 69th of 338, with limits $1,786 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 DigitalOcean ranks 22nd and Oracle Cloud 102nd, while boat ranks 2nd with many full VMs at once and fork of a running sandbox. | 102nd of 360, with limits $26 a month | 22nd of 360, with limits $199 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 | Oracle Cloud | DigitalOcean | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | A plain cloud VM or bare metal server that you set up yourself | A general Linux server you set up and run yourself | A sandbox VM made for agents, created and driven by API |
| Isolation | Every VM has its own kernel on a KVM hypervisor; bare metal also available | Every Droplet is a full VM with its own kernel | Every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel |
| CPU | Pick a shape; burstable shapes guarantee only part of each vCPU; no comparable measurement | Basic plans share hyper-threads with other Droplets; dedicated CPU plans cost more; no comparable measurement | Dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) hosts; 26.69 runs/s at 4 vCPU / 8 GB |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Root and Docker you install; nested KVM documented on E5 and Standard3 Flex VMs, not on Ampere Arm | Root and Docker; nested VMs mentioned in the live migration docs but not listed as a feature | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm ready on every machine |
| Stopping | Stopping a standard VM pauses compute billing; the boot volume is billed until deleted | A powered-off Droplet is billed in full; you destroy it to stop paying | A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk |
| Snapshots | Disk backups by hand or on a schedule | On-demand disk snapshots billed by size; paid scheduled backups from every 4 hours to weekly | Automatic snapshots every minute and on stop |
| Fork | Make a custom image of the boot disk; imaging a running VM shuts it down for several minutes | Take a live snapshot, then create new Droplets from it (disk, no memory) | Fork a running sandbox in one call while it keeps running |
| Desktop and computer use | No desktop on Compute VMs; OCI Secure Desktops is a separate product | Headless Linux; you install a desktop and VNC yourself | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream |
| Coding agents | None preinstalled; Oracle's AI agent service builds business agents, not coding agents in a VM | None on Droplets; the separate Harness Runtime product runs agents in microVMs, in preview | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Keeping keys out of the machine | OCI Secret Management; the VM fetches the secret, so the key ends up inside | No credentials proxy; you put secrets on the server yourself | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register |
| Reaching the machine | Public IPv4 and any port you open; HTTPS through your own server or a load balancer | Public IPv4 and IPv6 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 |
| Network rules | Security lists and network security groups; domain filtering through OCI Network Firewall | Free cloud firewalls with outbound rules by IP range, Droplet or tag | Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist |
| Running many at once | Default or trial service limits per tenancy; more needs a request that may not be approved | Tier 1 allows 3 Droplets; Tier 5 allows 100 after prepayment, paid invoices or a request | 100 to 2,000 sandboxes at once by plan, self-serve |
| Machine types and regions | x86, Ampere Arm, Windows Server, Mac servers and GPUs; regions worldwide plus government clouds | Linux on x86 plus Nvidia and AMD GPU Droplets; 13 regions in the US, Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia | Linux x86 only, no GPUs; EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Oracle Cloud | DigitalOcean | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | 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 | Yes | No | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | No | 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 | Yes | Yes | No |
| GPU | Yes | Yes | No |
| Windows | Yes | No | No |
| Arm64 | Yes | 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 | No | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | 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 Oracle Cloud or DigitalOcean: neither was part of StarSling's public sandbox benchmark run of 2026-09-29, where boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts. Oracle's burstable shapes guarantee only part of each vCPU, and DigitalOcean's Basic plans share hyper-threads with other Droplets, so speed on both depends 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. Oracle Cloud and DigitalOcean 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 | Oracle Cloud, a month | DigitalOcean, 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 · Usage account · with limits | $13 · Pay as you go | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $15 · Usage account · with limits | $48 · 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 | $203 · Usage account · with limits | $629 · 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 | $49 · Usage account · with limits | $179 · 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 | $97 · Usage account · with limits | $357 · Pay as you go · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Oracle Cloud: Oracle bills per OCPU hour (one x86 OCPU is two vCPUs) and per GB hour of memory while a VM runs, plus the boot disk until you delete it; the first 10 TB of outbound data each month is free. The Oracle prices in this table use burstable E4 VMs billed at a 12.5% CPU baseline, far below a full-speed VM.
DigitalOcean: Each Droplet size has a fixed hourly price, billed per second with a 60 second minimum and capped at 672 hours a month. Billing runs from create to destroy, including while powered off, and snapshots and backups cost extra.
DigitalOcean: 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
Oracle's prices here come from burstable VMs with a 12.5% baseline, so a busy agent gets throttled and every Oracle row is marked as not fitting; a new tenancy also needs an approved limit increase for 50 agents or 1,000 jobs at once. A new DigitalOcean team is on Tier 1 with 3 Droplets at once, so 50 agents, user sandboxes and the burst do not fit until it reaches a higher tier. On boat the 1,000-job burst needs more starts per day and per hour than the $2,000 plan allows, and starts above 90 a minute are queued.
| Scenario | Oracle Cloud | DigitalOcean | 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 |
| Sandboxes for your users |
|
| None that bite |
| 1,000 short jobs at once |
|
|
|
Which one should you use?
Use Oracle Cloud when
you need Arm, Windows, Mac or GPU machines, a free always-on Arm box, stops that pause compute billing, or regions and network rules that DigitalOcean does not offer.
- More kinds of machines. Useful if you need Arm, Windows Server or Mac machines next to Linux: Oracle Cloud rents all of them, DigitalOcean does not.
- Stops and a free tier. Useful for machines that sit idle: stopping a standard Oracle VM pauses compute billing, and Always Free covers a small Arm VM.
- Wider reach and finer rules. Useful if you need regions in the Middle East or Africa, government clouds, or outbound filtering by domain.
Use DigitalOcean when
you want simple Linux servers at a fixed, capped price, clear tiers for how many you can run, and GPUs, databases and Kubernetes in one easy cloud.
- Simple, capped prices. Useful if you want one fixed hourly price per Droplet size, billed per second and capped at 672 hours a month.
- Clear limits you can unlock. Useful for growing teams: the Droplet limit is a published trust tier, and prepayment unlocks a higher tier at once.
- An agent product next door. Useful if you want to try a hosted agent runtime: DigitalOcean's Harness Runtime runs Claude Code and Codex in microVMs, in preview.
Where boat fits
Oracle Cloud and DigitalOcean are general clouds, so both give you an empty VM and leave the agent layer to you. If what you are really running is agents, boat gives each one a full VM that already has Docker, /dev/kvm, a desktop, coding agents, HTTPS ports and a disk saved every minute. Pick one of the clouds instead when you need GPUs, Windows, macOS or regions outside the EU.
Saved every minute, forked while running
On Oracle Cloud backups run by hand or on a schedule and imaging a running VM shuts it down for minutes; on DigitalOcean snapshots are on demand. boat saves the disk every minute and forks a running sandbox.
Idle agents without a bill or a script
A powered-off Droplet is billed in full, so you script snapshot, destroy and recreate; an Oracle VM keeps billing its boot volume. On boat a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Agents, desktop and HTTPS built in
On both clouds you install each coding agent and a desktop, set up certificates or a load balancer for HTTPS, and put AI keys on the machine. boat ships agents, a 60fps desktop, HTTPS on 50 ports and a credentials proxy.
Use boat when what you are really running is agents and you want each one on a full VM that already has Docker, /dev/kvm, a desktop, coding agents, HTTPS ports, snapshots every minute and forks, with stops that cost nothing. Compare it one to one: boat vs Oracle Cloud and boat vs DigitalOcean.
Questions people ask
Is Oracle Cloud cheaper than DigitalOcean?
On list price in our table, yes: one coding agent on workdays comes to $5 a month on Oracle, $13 on DigitalOcean and $20 on boat, and 50 agents in parallel to $203 on Oracle, $629 on DigitalOcean and $317 on boat. Oracle's numbers use burstable VMs throttled above an eighth of each vCPU, so they do not fit a busy agent, and full-speed shapes cost more.
Which is faster, Oracle Cloud or DigitalOcean?
Neither has a comparable measurement: both were left out of the public StarSling benchmark, where boat did 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. On both clouds speed depends on the plan, since Oracle's burstable shapes and DigitalOcean's Basic Droplets do not give you a full core.
Can Oracle Cloud and DigitalOcean run Docker?
Yes, both give you root on a full VM, so you install Docker yourself. Nested KVM is documented on Oracle's E5 and Standard3 Flex VMs but not on Ampere Arm, and on Droplets it is only mentioned in the live migration docs. boat has Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm ready on every machine.
Do I pay for a stopped VM?
On DigitalOcean, yes: a powered-off Droplet is billed in full until you destroy it. On Oracle Cloud, stopping a standard VM pauses compute billing, but the boot volume is billed until you delete it. On boat a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
How many machines can a new account run at once?
A new DigitalOcean team can run 3 Droplets, and Tier 5 allows 100 after prepayment, paid invoices or a request. A new Oracle tenancy starts with default or trial service limits, and a limit increase request may not be approved. boat allows 100 to 2,000 sandboxes at once by plan.
Which has more regions?
Oracle Cloud has public regions across the Americas, Europe, the UK, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Australia, plus government clouds. DigitalOcean has 13 regions in the US, Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia. boat runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France.
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