OVHcloud vs IONOS Cloud
OVHcloud and IONOS Cloud both rent plain VMs that you set up yourself, from European companies. OVHcloud reaches further, with regions in Canada, Singapore and Sydney and a way to shelve idle machines, while IONOS Cloud has lower list prices, H200 GPUs and data centers in the UK and the US.
The companies and products
OVHcloud
OVHcloud is a French cloud provider; its Public Cloud rents OpenStack virtual machines, storage and networking by the second.
A Public Cloud instance is a Linux or Windows VM picked from families such as General Purpose (B3), Compute (C3), Memory (R3), GPU and the shared-resource Discovery range (D2). You run your own software on it, next to OVHcloud products like private networks, gateways, load balancers, Kubernetes and object storage, through a Control Panel, an API or OpenStack tools. It is general infrastructure, not an agent sandbox, so this page compares the two where they overlap: giving an agent its own Linux machine.
IONOS Cloud
IONOS Cloud is the public cloud of IONOS, a German hosting company in the United Internet group. It is a hyperscaler-style IaaS cloud, not an agent sandbox.
You rent KVM virtual machines: Cubes (fixed sizes from 1 to 16 vCPU with a local NVMe disk, billed by the minute), vCPU servers up to 60 vCPU and 230 GB of RAM, Dedicated Core servers and H200 GPU VMs. You build them in the Data Center Designer or through the Cloud API, SDKs and Terraform, next to block storage, private networks, firewalls and managed services. It is for teams that want to run their own servers in Germany, the rest of Europe or the US, and set up everything on them themselves.
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 377” means 28 of the other 376 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 | OVHcloud: price rank | IONOS Cloud: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Both give a root Linux VM where Docker runs, but neither has coding agents, a desktop or snapshots every minute, so boat ranks 3rd while both clouds are a compromise. | 90th of 367, with limits $814 a month | 64th of 367, with limits $492 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB | 136th of 366, with limits $934 a month | 107th of 366, with limits $540 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: OVHcloud bills by the second after a 1-minute minimum and IONOS bills Cubes by the minute, with no plan fee on either. | 56th of 345, with limits $43 a month | 53rd of 345, with limits $27 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 300 user sandboxes at once is not confirmed on either cloud: OVHcloud's largest self-serve quota is 512 vCPU and IONOS does not publish its limits, while boat allows 100 to 2,000 sandboxes by plan. | 43rd of 361, with limits $299 a month | 35th of 361, with limits $182 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 | 27th of 360, with limits $1,280 a month | 9th of 360, with limits $740 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 | 99th of 364, with limits $231 a month | 93rd of 364, with limits $137 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 IONOS Cloud ranks 1st for CI runners on list price, boat ranks 4th, and OVHcloud ranks 29th; on both clouds you run the runner software and clean-up yourself. | 29th cheapest of 377 $300 a month | Cheapest of 377 $60 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB An always-on dev box is what both clouds are built for; IONOS Cloud ranks 9th, boat ranks 18th and OVHcloud ranks 23rd. | 23rd cheapest of 368 $34 a month | 9th 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 Neither cloud has a desktop stream or computer-use tools, so you install and stream a desktop yourself; boat streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium. | 108th of 369, with limits $231 a month | 86th of 369, with limits $137 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 | 174th of 367, with limits $128 a month | 156th of 367, with limits $74 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 | 159th of 346, with limits $65 a month | 153rd of 346, with limits $40 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 | 47th of 338, with limits $1,290 a month | 39th of 338, with limits $897 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 | 120th of 360, with limits $64 a month | 105th of 360, with limits $38 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 rent GPUs and boat has none: OVHcloud has Nvidia L4 and L40S instances, and IONOS has H200 VMs with 1 to 8 GPUs. | 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 | OVHcloud | IONOS Cloud | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kind of product | General OpenStack VMs plus storage, networks and managed services | General KVM servers (Cubes, vCPU and Dedicated Core servers) plus storage, networks and managed services | A sandbox API for AI agents, on full VMs |
| Isolation | Every instance is a fully isolated VM with its own kernel | Every server is a KVM VM with its own kernel | Every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel |
| CPU | Dedicated vCPUs on B3, C3 and R3; shared resources on Discovery (D2); no comparable measurement | CPU model varies by location; 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; the vmx flag is passed, but a live migration can make the guest kernel panic | Root Linux VM where you install Docker; running your own VMs inside is not documented | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine, documented |
| Stopping a machine | Turned-off and paused instances bill at the same rate; shelving frees compute and bills only a disk snapshot | Suspended Cubes keep billing; to stop paying you snapshot and delete the Cube | A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk |
| Snapshots | On-demand instance backups, or a schedule such as daily backups | Manual full snapshots of a volume, usable only in the same location | Automatic snapshots every minute and on stop |
| Fork | Back up an instance, then create a new one from it (disk, no memory) | Snapshot a disk, then create new VMs from it (disk, no memory) | Fork a running sandbox in one call (disk, no memory) |
| Reaching the machine | Public IPv4 on any port; HTTPS needs your own certificates or a load balancer | Public IP on each VM and any port you open; private LANs and load balancers | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; own IP |
| Desktop and computer use | None built in; you install a desktop and connect over SSH or RDP | None; a remote console for fixing servers | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream |
| Coding agents | None; you install and drive agents yourself, for example over SSH | None in the VM; an MCP server lets your own AI client manage IONOS resources | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Keeping keys out of the machine | No credentials proxy; secrets live on the instance | No credentials proxy; you put secrets into the VM yourself | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register; switch a credential to another account when credits run out |
| Network rules | Security groups with inbound and outbound rules by IP range, port and protocol | Network Security Groups with ingress and egress rules by IP, port and protocol | Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist |
| GPUs and Windows | Nvidia L4 and L40S instances; Windows Server images with the license included | NVIDIA H200 VMs with 1 to 8 GPUs; Windows Server with a licence billed per vCPU | No GPUs; no Windows guests (Wine for Windows apps) |
| Regions | Europe, Canada, the US, Singapore and Sydney, plus Local Zones | Germany, UK, France, Spain and the US | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | OVHcloud | IONOS Cloud | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Systemd | Yes | 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 | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | Yes | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | Yes | 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 | Yes | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | Yes | Not published | 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 | No | Yes | No |
| GPU | Yes | Yes | No |
| Windows | Yes | Yes | 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 | Not published | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Not published | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Not published | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | No | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable CPU measurement for OVHcloud or IONOS Cloud: neither was in the public StarSling benchmark run. boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB there, on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts. On OVHcloud results would depend on the family, since Discovery (D2) instances share their resources, and IONOS's CPU model varies by location.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. OVHcloud and IONOS 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 | OVHcloud, a month | IONOS 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 | $8 · Usage account | $5 · Pay as you go | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $34 · Usage account | $20 · 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 | $406 · Usage account | $240 · 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 | $128 · Usage account · with limits | $74 · 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 | $256 · Usage account · with limits | $148 · Pay as you go · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
OVHcloud: OVHcloud bills every second an instance exists, after a 1-minute minimum, until you delete it; turned-off and paused instances bill at the same rate, and shelved ones bill only their snapshot. The prices here use shared Discovery d2 instances; since October 2026 B3, C3 and R3 instances also bill local storage and a public IPv4 on top.
IONOS Cloud: IONOS bills Cubes by the minute at a fixed rate per size with the NVMe disk included, and vCPU servers per core and per GB of RAM. Suspended Cubes keep billing, so the low workday figure assumes you snapshot and delete the machine each night; the first 2 TB of outgoing traffic each month is free.
IONOS Cloud: 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
Neither cloud confirms 300 user sandboxes or 1,000 short jobs at once. OVHcloud raises quotas in steps of 20, 50, 100 and 200 VMs by buying prepaid credit, and 600 vCPU goes past its 512 vCPU self-serve top, so you ask support. IONOS does not publish how many machines a fresh account can run, and you ask IONOS Cloud Support to raise it. OVHcloud's cheap Discovery instances also share their CPU, so heavy bursts can slow down.
| Scenario | OVHcloud | IONOS Cloud | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays | None that bite | None that bite | None that bite |
| One agent that never stops | None that bite | 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 OVHcloud when
you need regions in Canada, Singapore or Sydney, Nvidia L4 or L40S GPUs, or a way to shelve idle servers, inside one cloud with Kubernetes and private networks.
- Regions in Asia-Pacific and Canada. Useful if your users are in Asia or Canada: OVHcloud runs instances in Singapore, Sydney and Canada as well as Europe and the US.
- Shelve idle machines. Useful if machines sit idle for days: shelving an OVHcloud instance frees the compute and bills only its disk snapshot.
- Smaller GPUs by the hour. Useful for lighter model work: OVHcloud rents Nvidia L4 and L40S instances, billed by the second like its other VMs.
Use IONOS Cloud when
you want the lower list price, H200 GPUs, or servers in the UK, Germany, Spain or the US, billed by the minute.
- Lower list prices. Useful if budget leads: IONOS Cloud comes in below OVHcloud in every scenario we priced, from one workday agent to 50 at once.
- H200 GPUs. Useful if your agents train or serve large models: IONOS rents NVIDIA H200 VMs with 1 to 8 GPUs.
- Data centers in the UK. Useful if you need servers in Britain: IONOS runs Cubes and vCPU servers in London and Worcester, next to Germany, France, Spain and the US.
Where boat fits
OVHcloud and IONOS Cloud are general clouds, so this is about the overlap. If what you are really running is AI agents, both hand you an empty VM and leave the agent setup, desktop, keys and backups to you. boat gives each agent a full VM with those already built in.
Stops that keep the disk
Agents sit idle between tasks. On OVHcloud a turned-off instance bills at the full rate unless you shelve it, and IONOS keeps billing suspended Cubes, so you snapshot, delete and rebuild each time. A stopped boat sandbox costs nothing.
Agents and a desktop ready to drive
Both clouds start from a bare OS image, so you install each coding agent, a desktop and a browser, copy real keys onto the VM and write the code that drives it. boat ships them with a prompt, steer and events API and a credentials proxy.
Nested VMs and snapshots every minute
OVHcloud warns that a live migration can crash nested VMs, and IONOS does not document them; backups are daily or manual on both, so a broken machine can lose hours. boat documents /dev/kvm and saves the disk every minute.
Use boat when the machines are for AI agents: a full VM each with coding agents, a desktop, keys kept outside, reliable /dev/kvm, snapshots every minute and stops that cost nothing. Compare it one to one: boat vs OVHcloud and boat vs IONOS Cloud.
Questions people ask
Is OVHcloud cheaper than IONOS Cloud?
No, IONOS Cloud's list prices are lower in every scenario we priced. One agent running all month comes to $20 on IONOS against $34 on OVHcloud, and 50 agents in parallel come to $240 against $406; boat comes to $26 and $317. Both clouds' workday figures assume you delete the machine each night.
Which is faster, OVHcloud or IONOS Cloud?
We have no comparable CPU measurement for either. OVHcloud's B3 and C3 families have dedicated resources while Discovery (D2) shares them, and IONOS's CPU model varies by location. boat did 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in StarSling's public benchmark.
Can OVHcloud and IONOS Cloud run Docker?
Yes, both give you a root Linux VM where Docker runs. Nested VMs are where they differ: OVHcloud passes the vmx flag but warns a live migration can make the guest kernel panic, and IONOS does not document it. boat documents Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine.
Do I pay for a stopped machine?
On both, mostly yes. OVHcloud bills turned-off and paused instances at the same rate, but shelving bills only a disk snapshot. IONOS says suspended Cubes continue to incur costs, so you snapshot and delete the Cube to stop paying; a stopped boat sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Which has more regions?
OVHcloud: Europe, Canada, the US, Singapore and Sydney, plus Local Zones. IONOS Cloud runs in Germany, the UK, France, Spain and the US. boat runs only in the EU (Germany, Finland and France), with EU data residency.
Is boat SOC 2 compliant?
SOC 2 is in progress. We're open about where we stand: live status at status.ascii.dev and our data retention policy at docs.boat.dev/data-retention.
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