Paperspace vs Jarvislabs
Paperspace and Jarvislabs are both GPU clouds that rent Linux VMs for machine learning. Paperspace bills by the hour in New York, Amsterdam and Canada and keeps hourly snapshots, while Jarvislabs bills by the minute from a prepaid wallet, runs new machines in India and adds model serving that scales to zero.
The companies and products
Paperspace
Paperspace is a GPU cloud for machine learning, owned by DigitalOcean since 2023.
Paperspace Machines are full Linux VMs with a persistent disk, a public IP and optional Nvidia GPUs from M4000 up to H100, billed by the hour. Next to Machines it sells Gradient Notebooks, Deployments and Workflows for training and serving models. It is built for people who train, test and run models, not as a sandbox API: its API manages machines, and you work inside them over SSH.
- Operating systems
- Linux; Windows templates closed to new users since 1 July 2024
Jarvislabs
Jarvislabs is an AI cloud from India that rents Nvidia GPUs by the minute for training and serving models.
You can rent a GPU VM with root and your own kernel, a Template (a GPU container with PyTorch, ComfyUI or similar ready, opened in JupyterLab, VS Code or SSH), a plain CPU VM, or a multi-node GPU cluster. It also serves open models through Managed Endpoints, Serverless workers and a token-priced Model API. It is built for people who train, fine-tune and serve AI models, not as a sandbox for agents, though its jl CLI is written so a coding agent on your laptop can drive the GPUs.
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. “58th cheapest of 364” means 57 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 | Paperspace: price rank | Jarvislabs: 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 coding agent a real VM with Docker, but you set up each machine yourself over SSH; boat ships coding agents, snapshots and fork in every sandbox. | 141st of 367, with limits $1,261 a month | 154th of 367, with limits $1,406 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB | 179th of 366, with limits $1,560 a month | 185th of 366, with limits $1,670 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 Jarvislabs bills small CPU VMs by the minute, which suits short runs better than Paperspace's full hour per run, though each Jarvislabs VM takes about 90 seconds to boot. | 179th of 345, with limits $1,451 a month | 103rd of 345, with limits $169 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 Paperspace has no API to run code inside a machine and Jarvislabs does not publish how many instances can run at once, so boat is the one built for sandboxes for your users. | 124th of 361, with limits $1,243 a month | 215th of 361, with limits $539 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 Per-minute billing keeps Jarvislabs far below Paperspace for many short rollouts, since Paperspace bills each run as a full hour. | 193rd of 360, with limits $30,570 a month | 43rd of 360, with limits $2,568 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 | 58th cheapest of 364 $1,241 a month | 113th of 364, with limits $411 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 fit: either GPU cloud can host a CI runner, Jarvislabs bills it by the minute and Paperspace by the hour, and boat bills per second with free stops. | 101st cheapest of 377 $1,026 a month | 20th cheapest of 377 $253 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB A dev box that never stops costs about the same on both, and each adds a disk fee on top; boat's stopped sandboxes cost nothing. | 49th cheapest of 368 $63 a month | 52nd cheapest of 368 $68 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 has a Linux desktop for computer use: Paperspace streams desktops only on Windows machines new users cannot create, and Jarvislabs offers JupyterLab, VS Code and SSH. | 284th of 369, with limits $1,655 a month | 154th of 369, with limits $377 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 | 319th of 367, with limits $1,241 a month | 204th of 367, with limits $205 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 | 192nd of 346, with limits $112 a month | 244th of 346, with limits $247 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 | 92nd of 338, with limits $2,242 a month | 158th of 338, with limits $4,942 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 | 207th of 360, with limits $214 a month | 156th of 360, with limits $127 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 fit and boat has no GPUs: Jarvislabs rents L4 up to H200 by the minute, and Paperspace rents M4000 up to H100 by the hour. | 30th cheapest of 98 $2,982 a month | 9th cheapest of 98 $876 a month | 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 | Paperspace | Jarvislabs | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kind of product | GPU and CPU VM cloud for machine learning, part of DigitalOcean | GPU cloud: GPU VMs, GPU containers, CPU VMs, clusters and model serving | Sandbox cloud for agents: VMs you create, fork and drive from code |
| Isolation | Every machine is a full VM with its own kernel | GPU and CPU VMs are KVM virtual machines; Templates are containers | Every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel |
| GPUs | Nvidia M4000 up to H100, up to 8 per machine; H100 needs approval | Nvidia L4 up to H200, 1 to 8 per instance, with spot, reserved and clusters | None |
| Billing step | Per hour while the machine is on | Per minute from a prepaid wallet, $10 minimum top-up | Per second, from a monthly plan that becomes usage credit |
| Largest CPU machine | C10: 32 vCPU / 244 GB | 32 vCPU / 128 GB | 16 vCPU / 32 GB |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Docker runs inside; nested virtualization is not documented | Root on VMs, so you can run Docker; nested virtualization is not documented | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine |
| Files after a stop | Disk kept and billed while off (from $5 a month for 50 GB), plus the public IP | Disk kept and billed while paused at $0.10/GB-month, at least 100 GB on a VM | Disk kept; a stopped sandbox costs nothing |
| Snapshots | Auto-snapshots at most hourly, up to 10 kept, plus on-demand snapshots | No snapshot, clone or fork command | Snapshots every minute and on stop |
| Copying a machine | Custom templates from a machine that is turned off, same region only | No copy; you set up a new machine again | Fork a running sandbox in one call |
| Working inside from code | API and CLI manage machines but cannot connect to them; you use SSH | jl CLI lets an agent on your laptop create GPUs, run jobs and read logs | API, SDK and CLI to run commands, move files and fork, plus preinstalled coding agents |
| Desktop and computer use | Desktop streaming only on Windows machines, which new users cannot create | No desktop; JupyterLab, VS Code in the browser and SSH | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control |
| Reaching the machine | Public IPv4 on every Linux machine; no managed HTTPS URLs | VMs get a public IP; Templates expose HTTP ports through proxy URLs | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; dedicated IPv6 or IPv4 |
| Network rules | No provider-side inbound or egress rules listed | Security groups by port and IP range, VPCs and reserved IPs | Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist |
| Regions | New York, Amsterdam and Canada | India only for new instances (IN1, IN2) | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Paperspace | Jarvislabs | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Root | Not published | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | Not published | 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 | No | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | No | No | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | No | No | 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 | No | Yes | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | Not published | Yes | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | Yes | Yes | No |
| Egress allowlist | No | 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 | No | No |
| GPU | Yes | Yes | No |
| Windows | No | No | 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 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Not published | No |
| SSO | Yes | No | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | No | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | No | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | No | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable CPU measurement for Paperspace or Jarvislabs: neither was part of the public StarSling benchmark run, so we cannot say which is faster. boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in that run, on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) hosts.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Paperspace and Jarvislabs 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 | Paperspace, a month | Jarvislabs, 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 | $19 · Core usage | $21 · On-demand | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $63 · Core usage | $71 · On-demand | $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 | $804 · Core usage | $892 · On-demand | $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 | $1,241 · Core usage | $231 · On-demand · 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 | $8,274 · Core usage | $514 · On-demand · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Paperspace: Paperspace bills each machine per hour while it is on, at a fixed rate per size (C5, 4 vCPU / 8 GB, is $0.08 an hour). The boot disk (from $5 a month for 50 GB) and the public IP keep billing until you delete the machine.
Jarvislabs: Jarvislabs bills per minute from a prepaid wallet with no plan fee: CPU VMs cost $0.012 per vCPU-hour plus $0.0032 per GB of RAM. The disk is extra at $0.10/GB-month, billed while paused too, with at least 100 GB on a VM.
Jarvislabs: 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
Paperspace bills by the hour, so a ten-minute session is billed as a full hour; that is why sandboxes for your users come to $1,241 a month there and 1,000 short jobs to $8,274. Jarvislabs is far lower for those shapes, but it does not publish how many instances can run at once, so 300 or 1,000 machines at once are not confirmed until you ask. Paperspace has no start limits and raises team limits by support ticket. On boat the 1,000-job burst is queued and needs more starts per day than the $2,000 plan allows.
| Scenario | Paperspace | Jarvislabs | 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 |
| 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 Paperspace when
you need GPUs or very large CPU machines in the US, Canada or Amsterdam, and want hourly snapshots and templates for machines a person sets up over SSH.
- Machines in the US, EU and Canada. Useful if your users or data sit in North America or Europe: Paperspace runs in New York, Amsterdam and Canada.
- Hourly snapshots and templates. Useful for long-lived machines: Paperspace takes automatic snapshots up to every hour and copies a machine through custom templates.
- Very large CPU machines. Useful for heavy single jobs: its C10 CPU machine has 32 vCPU and 244 GB of memory.
Use Jarvislabs when
you want per-minute billing, newer GPUs like the H200, model serving that scales to zero, or machines in India.
- Per-minute billing. Useful for short or bursty runs: Jarvislabs bills per minute from a prepaid wallet, while Paperspace bills each started hour.
- Newer GPUs and model serving. Useful for inference and big models: Jarvislabs rents H200s and serves open models on workers that scale to zero.
- Network rules and India regions. Useful for teams in India, or who want provider firewall rules: Jarvislabs has security groups, VPCs and reserved IPs.
Where boat fits
Paperspace and Jarvislabs are GPU clouds, and boat has no GPUs, so training and GPU evals belong on one of them. If what you are really running is agents on CPU machines, boat gives each one its own VM with coding agents, a desktop and fork built in, and a stopped sandbox costs nothing.
Agents inside, driven from outside
On both clouds you install each agent over SSH and keep it updated. Paperspace's API cannot connect to a machine, and Jarvislabs' CLI manages machines from your laptop, not work inside one. boat ships Claude Code, Codex and more with a prompt, steer and events API.
Snapshots every minute and live fork
An agent that breaks its machine can lose up to an hour of work on Paperspace and has no restore point on Jarvislabs, which has no snapshots. Copying a set-up machine means stopping it for a Paperspace template or rebuilding it on Jarvislabs.
A desktop and HTTPS ports ready
Neither has a Linux desktop for computer-use agents, and neither gives managed HTTPS URLs on a VM, so you set up a remote viewer, TLS and firewall rules per machine. boat has a 60fps desktop and token-protected HTTPS on up to 50 ports.
Use boat when you run many agents on CPU machines and need each in its own VM that code can create, fork and drive, with coding agents, a desktop, HTTPS ports and free stops built in. Compare it one to one: boat vs Paperspace and boat vs Jarvislabs.
Questions people ask
Is Paperspace cheaper than Jarvislabs?
For long sessions they are close: one coding agent on workdays is $19 a month on Paperspace and $21 on Jarvislabs, and one agent that never stops is $63 versus $71. For short sessions Jarvislabs wins because it bills by the minute: sandboxes for your users come to $231 against $1,241, though Jarvislabs has not confirmed 300 machines at once. On boat those shapes are $20, $26 and $200.
Which is faster, Paperspace or Jarvislabs?
We have no comparable CPU measurement for either: 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 in that run.
Can Paperspace and Jarvislabs run Docker?
Yes. Both rent full VMs, so Docker runs inside, and Jarvislabs gives root on its VMs. Neither documents nested virtualization; boat has Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm on every sandbox.
Which has better GPUs?
Jarvislabs rents newer cards, from L4 up to H200, plus spot containers and clusters. Paperspace rents M4000 up to H100, and its H100s need approval first. boat has no GPUs.
Do stopped machines cost money?
On both, yes, for storage. Paperspace keeps billing the disk and public IP while a machine is off, and Jarvislabs bills the disk while paused, with at least 100 GB on a VM. A stopped boat sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Where do Paperspace and Jarvislabs run?
Paperspace runs machines in New York, Amsterdam and Canada. Jarvislabs creates new instances only in India; its old EU1 region no longer accepts new ones. boat runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France.
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