Oracle Cloud vs Vultr
Oracle Cloud is a huge general cloud with Arm, Mac and GPU machines, a free Arm tier and VMs that stop billing for compute when stopped. Vultr rents simple KVM servers at a fixed hourly rate that keep billing until you destroy them.
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.
Vultr
Vultr is a general-purpose cloud, and Cloud Compute is its line of KVM virtual servers.
A Vultr instance is a Linux or Windows VM you rent by size, with root, a public IPv4, local SSD or NVMe and a monthly transfer allowance. You choose shared vCPU plans (Regular, High Performance, High Frequency) or dedicated vCPU plans (Optimized Cloud Compute, VX1), and run your own software next to Vultr block storage, file systems, VPCs, Kubernetes, bare metal and GPUs. 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.
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 | Vultr: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month boat ranks 3rd and comes with Docker, a desktop, coding agents and snapshots; Oracle Cloud and Vultr give an empty VM you set up yourself. | 58th of 367, with limits $413 a month | 114th of 367, with limits $1,060 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 | 144th of 366, with limits $1,000 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 None fits short bursts well: Oracle's burstable VMs still wait for a full boot, Vultr bills every started hour, and boat queues starts above 90 a minute. | 51st of 345, with limits $16 a month | 168th of 345, with limits $1,000 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 and Vultr you build that layer and ask for higher account limits first. | 31st of 361, with limits $115 a month | 98th of 361, with limits $899 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 for big rollout fleets on burstable VMs if your tenancy limits are raised; Vultr ranks 179th because every started hour is billed. | 7th of 360, with limits $679 a month | 179th of 360, with limits $20,000 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 of 364 here and Vultr 47th, both full fits; boat ranks 10th with snapshots and forks built in. | Cheapest of 364 $136 a month | 47th cheapest of 364 $893 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 All three run Docker builds on a full VM; boat ranks 4th, Oracle Cloud 6th and Vultr 91st, and on both clouds you run the runner software yourself. | 6th cheapest of 377 $102 a month | 91st cheapest of 377 $857 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 thanks to its free Arm allowance, Vultr 28th as a classic always-on server, and boat 18th with a disk saved every minute. | 2nd cheapest of 368 $12 a month | 28th cheapest of 368 $40 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 boat ranks 6th with a 60fps desktop and computer use built in; neither Oracle Compute nor Vultr has a desktop on its VMs, so you install and expose one. | 75th of 369, with limits $97 a month | 252nd of 369, with limits $1,190 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 | 300th of 367, with limits $894 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 | 175th of 346, with limits $89 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 | 72nd of 338, with limits $1,818 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 | 102nd of 360, with limits $26 a month | 168th of 360, with limits $150 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 | Vultr | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | A plain KVM VM or bare metal server that you set up yourself | A plain KVM server that you set up and run yourself | A sandbox VM with its own kernel, made for agents and driven by API |
| CPU | Many shapes; the prices here use burstable VMs that guarantee 12.5% of each vCPU; no comparable measurement | Shared vCPU plans, or dedicated AMD EPYC vCPU on Optimized and VX1; 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 on every VM, Docker is yours to install; nested KVM documented on E5 and Standard3 Flex, not on Ampere Arm | Root and Docker; virtualization documented for VX1 and bare metal, not other Cloud Compute plans | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm ready on every machine |
| Stopping | Stopping a standard VM pauses compute billing; the boot disk is billed until deleted | A stopped instance is billed in full until you destroy it | A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk |
| Snapshots | Disk backups by hand or on a schedule | Manual snapshots that can take up to 30 minutes; paid scheduled backups | Automatic snapshots every minute and on stop |
| Fork | Make a custom image; imaging a running VM shuts it down for several minutes | Take a snapshot, then deploy new instances from it | Fork a running sandbox in one call while it keeps running |
| Reaching the machine | Public IPv4 and any port you open in security rules; HTTPS through your own server or a load balancer | Public IPv4 on any port; HTTPS needs your own domain, proxy and certificates | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; own IP |
| Network rules | Security lists and network security groups by IP range and port; domain filtering through OCI Network Firewall | Vultr Firewall filters incoming traffic only; outbound rules go in the guest | Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist |
| 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; you install and supervise them | None preinstalled; you install and supervise them | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Keeping keys out of the machine | Secrets live in OCI Secret Management and the VM fetches them, 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; switch to another account when credits run out |
| Running many at once | Default or trial service limits per tenancy; an increase request may not be approved | Limit not published; support raises it based on usage and billing history | 100 to 2,000 sandboxes at once by plan, self-serve |
| GPUs, Windows, macOS and Arm | All four: Nvidia and AMD GPUs, Windows Server, Mac servers and Ampere Arm VMs | Nvidia and AMD GPUs and Windows Server; no macOS or Arm | None of these; Linux x86 only, Wine for Windows apps |
| Regions | Regions across the Americas, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Australia, plus government clouds | 33 locations on six continents | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Oracle Cloud | Vultr | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | Not published | 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 | Not published | 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 | 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 | Yes | Not published | No |
| GPU | Yes | Yes | No |
| Windows | Yes | Yes | 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 | Not published | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Yes | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Not published | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | Not published | 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 Vultr: neither was part of StarSling's public sandbox benchmark run of 2026-09-29. boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts. On both clouds speed depends on the shape or plan you pick, and Oracle's burstable shapes guarantee only 12.5% of each vCPU.
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 Vultr 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 | Vultr, 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 | $10 · Usage account | $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 | $40 · Usage account | $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 | $524 · Usage account | $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 | $894 · Usage account | $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 | $5,960 · Usage account | $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 here use burstable VMs billed at a 12.5% CPU baseline, so they sit far below a full-speed VM.
Vultr: Each Vultr plan has a fixed hourly price, billed by the started hour, and most plans are capped at 672 hours a month. Billing runs from deploy to destroy, including while stopped, and the prices here use the shared vCPU Regular plans.
Vultr: 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
Every Oracle row here is marked as not fitting, because its burstable VMs guarantee only an eighth of each vCPU and throttle a busy agent; full-speed shapes cost more. Vultr's shared plans fit every scenario on paper, but Vultr does not publish how many instances a new account may run, so 50 agents or 1,000 jobs at once likely need a support ticket. A new Oracle tenancy also starts on default or trial service limits, and an increase may not be approved. 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 | Vultr | 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 |
|
Which one should you use?
Use Oracle Cloud when
you need Mac servers, Arm VMs or GPUs, want stopped VMs to stop billing for compute, or want a free Arm box from the Always Free tier.
- Stop a VM, stop paying for compute. Useful for machines that sit idle: stopping a standard Oracle VM pauses compute billing, while a stopped Vultr instance is billed in full.
- Mac servers and Arm VMs. Useful for Apple builds or Arm software: Oracle rents Mac servers and Ampere Arm VMs, which Vultr Cloud Compute does not offer.
- A free always-on Arm box. Useful for one small personal box: Always Free gives every tenancy 1,500 Arm OCPU hours and 9,000 GB hours a month.
Use Vultr when
you want simple full-speed KVM servers at a fixed, capped hourly rate in 33 locations, or GPUs from fractional A16 up to B200.
- Full vCPU in every scenario. Useful for busy agents: Vultr's shared Regular plans fit every scenario here, while Oracle's priced VMs are throttled above 12.5% of each vCPU.
- A simple, capped hourly rate. Useful if you want plain bills: each plan has one hourly price, and most plans stop counting at 672 hours a month.
- Small and large GPUs. Useful for model work of any size: Vultr rents fractional A16 and A40 GPUs up to H100, B200 and AMD MI355X.
Where boat fits
Oracle Cloud and Vultr are general clouds, not agent sandboxes. If what you are really running is agents, boat gives each one a full VM that is ready to work, so you skip building the images, backups, URLs and cleanup on raw cloud VMs.
Docker and /dev/kvm on every machine
Oracle documents nested KVM only on E5 and Standard3 Flex VMs, and Vultr only on VX1 and bare metal. On boat every sandbox has Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm, plus coding agents and a 60fps desktop.
Saved every minute, forked while running
Imaging a running Oracle VM shuts it down for minutes, and a Vultr snapshot can take 30 minutes while the stopped server keeps billing. boat snapshots every minute, stops for free and forks a running sandbox.
HTTPS links and keys kept outside
On both clouds an agent's dev server is a bare IP until you add a domain, proxy or load balancer, and its API key sits on the disk. boat serves 50 ports on HTTPS and keeps keys in a credentials proxy.
Use boat when you want agents working today on full VMs that already have Docker, /dev/kvm, a desktop, coding agents, snapshots every minute, forks and HTTPS ports, instead of building that layer on a general cloud. Compare it one to one: boat vs Oracle Cloud and boat vs Vultr.
Questions people ask
Is Oracle Cloud cheaper than Vultr?
On list price in our table, yes: one coding agent on workdays comes to $5 a month on Oracle and $10 on Vultr, and 50 agents in parallel to $203 against $524. Those Oracle prices use burstable VMs throttled above 12.5% of each vCPU, so they do not fit a busy agent, while Vultr's rows run full shared vCPUs.
Which is faster, Oracle Cloud or Vultr?
Neither has a comparable measurement: both were left out of StarSling's public sandbox benchmark, where boat did 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. On both clouds speed depends on the shape or plan you pick.
Do I pay for a stopped VM?
On Oracle Cloud, stopping a standard VM pauses compute billing, but the boot disk is billed until you delete it. On Vultr, a stopped instance is billed in full until you destroy it. On boat, a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Can Oracle Cloud and Vultr run Docker and nested VMs?
Both give root on a KVM VM, so Docker works once you install it. Oracle documents nested KVM on E5 and Standard3 Flex VMs but not on Ampere Arm, and Vultr documents it on VX1 and bare metal only. boat has Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm ready on every machine.
Do Oracle Cloud and Vultr have a free tier?
Oracle gives US$300 of credit for 30 days and an Always Free Arm allowance of 1,500 OCPU hours and 9,000 GB hours a month, though it may reclaim idle free VMs. Vultr lists a free 1 vCPU / 0.5 GB plan in a few locations.
Where does my data run?
Oracle Cloud has regions across the Americas, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Australia, plus government clouds. Vultr has 33 locations on six continents. boat runs only in the EU (Germany, Finland and France), with EU data residency.
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