Scaleway vs IONOS Cloud
Scaleway and IONOS Cloud are both European clouds that rent plain KVM virtual machines you set up yourself. Scaleway bills CPU Instances per hour of uptime, stays in the EU and sells Arm64 machines, while IONOS bills its Cubes by the minute and also has data centers in the UK and the US.
The companies and products
Scaleway
Scaleway is a European cloud and AI provider, part of the iliad Group, that rents virtual machines, GPUs, storage and managed services.
Scaleway Instances are KVM virtual machines you pick from fixed shapes, from small shared-vCPU Development Instances to dedicated-vCPU and Arm64 types, running Linux or Windows Server. You get root, SSH, a public IP and security groups, and you install and run your own software next to Scaleway products like managed databases, Kubernetes, object storage and GPU Instances. It is general cloud 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. “42nd cheapest of 364” means 41 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 | Scaleway: 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 | 49th of 367, with limits $322 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 | 90th of 366, with limits $208 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 Short runs favor IONOS, which bills by the minute; Scaleway charges each CPU Instance for at least an hour, and boat's start limits queue big bursts. | 166th of 345, with limits $893 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 boat ranks 1st for user sandboxes; on both clouds 300 machines at once means asking support to raise account limits first. | 84th of 361, with limits $738 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 IONOS ranks 9th thanks to per-minute billing, while Scaleway's hourly minimum makes many short rollouts expensive; boat ranks 34th. | 176th of 360, with limits $18,254 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 boat ranks 10th as a full fit; Scaleway ranks 42nd and IONOS ranks 93rd, and on both you install the agent and the eval setup yourself. | 42nd cheapest of 364 $776 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 ranks 1st here because its Cubes bill by the minute, while each Scaleway job pays at least a full hour of uptime; boat ranks 4th with Docker and /dev/kvm on every machine. | 82nd cheapest of 377 $777 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 All three fit a 24/7 dev box: IONOS ranks 9th, boat ranks 18th and Scaleway ranks 30th, and boat also saves the disk every minute. | 30th cheapest of 368 $41 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 a desktop and browser yourself; boat ranks 6th with a 60fps desktop built in. | 94th of 369, with limits $168 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 | 173rd of 367, with limits $126 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 | 149th of 346, with limits $13 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 | 34th of 338, with limits $253 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 | 103rd of 360, with limits $29 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 clouds rent GPUs and boat has none: Scaleway has Nvidia B300, H100, L4 and L40S by the minute, 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 | Scaleway | IONOS Cloud | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | General EU cloud VMs (Instances) you set up and run yourself | General cloud servers (Cubes, vCPU and Dedicated Core servers) you set up and run yourself | A sandbox API for AI agents, on full VMs |
| Isolation | Every Instance is a QEMU/KVM 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 |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Root and Docker on Linux images; nested virtualization not documented | Root Linux VM where you install Docker; nested virtualization not documented | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine, documented |
| Billing step | CPU Instances per hour of uptime, including startup and standby | Cubes invoiced by the minute, NVMe disk included | Monthly plan from $20, spent per second on running sandboxes |
| Stopping a machine | Console or API power-off stops compute, but volumes and IPs keep billing; standby bills as running | Suspended Cubes keep billing; a stopped vCPU server stops compute while its volumes keep billing | A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk |
| Snapshots | Images and volume snapshots you create yourself; none automatic | Manual full snapshots of one volume, usable only in the same location | Automatic snapshots every minute and on stop |
| Fork | Make an image, then boot new Instances from it (disk only) | Snapshot a disk, then create new VMs from it (disk only) | Fork a running sandbox in one call (disk, no memory) |
| Reaching the machine | Public IPv4 and IPv6 on any port; HTTPS needs your own proxy, certificates and DNS | 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 | 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 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 | Secret Manager stores secrets the machine fetches, so they end up on it | None; you put secrets into the VM yourself | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register; switch to another account when credits run out |
| How many at once | Published quotas per shape, for example 10 DEV1-L after identity checks; more through support | Account limits not published; raised through IONOS Cloud Support | 100 to 2,000 sandboxes by plan, raised self-serve |
| Network rules | Security groups with inbound and outbound rules by protocol, port and IP range | Network Security Groups with ingress and egress rules by IP, port and protocol | Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist |
| GPUs, Windows and Arm | Nvidia B300, H100, L4 and L40S GPUs; Windows Server; Arm64 Instances | NVIDIA H200 VMs with 1 to 8 GPUs; Windows Server; no Arm64 | No GPUs; no Windows guests (Wine for Windows apps); x86 only |
| Regions | EU only: Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw and Milan | Germany, UK, France, Spain and the US | EU only: Germany, Finland and France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Scaleway | IONOS Cloud | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Not published | 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 | No | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | 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 | 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 | No | Not published | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | Yes | Not published | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | No | Not published | No |
| HIPAA | No | No | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for Scaleway or IONOS Cloud: neither was in the public StarSling benchmark run. In that run boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts. Scaleway sells both shared and dedicated vCPU types, and IONOS's CPU model varies by location, so results would depend on the shape you pick.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Scaleway 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 | Scaleway, 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 | $14 · 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 | $41 · 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 | $537 · 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 | $734 · Usage account | $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 | $4,892 · Usage account | $148 · Pay as you go · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Scaleway: Each Instance shape has an hourly price, billed per hour of uptime including startup and standby, so a short job still pays a full hour. Disks and public IPv4 bill on top and keep billing while an Instance is powered off.
IONOS Cloud: IONOS bills Cubes by the minute at a fixed rate per size, with the NVMe disk included. Suspended Cubes keep billing, so the low workday figure assumes you snapshot and delete the machine each night; reserved IPv4, extra storage and traffic past 2 TB a month cost extra.
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
Scaleway publishes quotas per Instance shape, such as 10 DEV1-L or 15 DEV1-M after identity checks, and more needs a support request; the table prices it as if those quotas were already raised. IONOS does not publish how many machines an account can run at once, so 300 user sandboxes and 1,000 short jobs at once are not confirmed there. Scaleway's hourly billing also bites the 1,000-job burst, which comes to $4,892 a month there. On boat the limit is 100 to 2,000 sandboxes by plan plus starts per minute, so that burst gets queued and needs more starts per day than the $2,000 plan allows.
| Scenario | Scaleway | 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 |
| 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 Scaleway when
you want EU-only servers with published quotas, Arm64 machines, or Nvidia B300, H100, L4 or L40S GPUs next to managed services.
- Arm64 and a wide GPU range. Pick Scaleway if agents must test on Arm64, or need Nvidia B300, H100, L4 or L40S GPUs billed by the minute.
- Published quotas and a clean power-off. Pick Scaleway if you want to see fleet quotas per shape up front and stop compute billing with a console power-off.
- Staying inside the EU. Pick Scaleway if every machine must sit in the EU, in Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw or Milan.
Use IONOS Cloud when
you run many short jobs that benefit from per-minute billing, need H200 GPUs, or need servers in the UK or the US.
- Billing by the minute. Pick IONOS Cloud for short jobs and CI: Cubes are invoiced by the minute, so a ten-minute run does not pay a full hour.
- UK and US data centers. Pick IONOS Cloud if some servers must run in London, Worcester, Newark or Lenexa as well as in Germany.
- H200 GPUs. Pick IONOS Cloud if your models need NVIDIA H200 cards, from 1 to 8 GPUs per VM.
Where boat fits
Scaleway and IONOS Cloud are general clouds, so neither is an agent sandbox. If what you are really running is AI agents, each on its own Linux machine, boat gives every agent a full VM in the EU with coding agents, a desktop, HTTPS ports and snapshots every minute already built in.
Agents ready and driven from outside
On both clouds a VM starts empty: you install each agent, copy real API keys onto it and write the code that prompts and watches it. boat preinstalls the agents, drives them by API and keeps keys outside in a credentials proxy.
Stops that keep the disk, saved every minute
Idle agents still bill on both: Scaleway keeps charging volumes and IPs, and suspended IONOS Cubes keep billing unless you snapshot and delete them. boat saves the disk every minute and a stopped sandbox costs nothing.
Hundreds of machines without a ticket
300 user sandboxes are above Scaleway's per-shape quotas and IONOS's unpublished limits, so you wait on support, then set up TLS and DNS per machine. boat runs 100 to 2,000 sandboxes by plan, each with HTTPS on 50 ports.
Use boat when you are really running AI agents: each one gets a full VM with coding agents, a desktop, HTTPS ports and minute-by-minute snapshots, stops cost nothing, and hundreds run without a quota ticket. Compare it one to one: boat vs Scaleway and boat vs IONOS Cloud.
Questions people ask
Is Scaleway cheaper than IONOS Cloud?
No, IONOS's list prices are lower in every scenario we priced: one agent that never stops comes to $20 a month on IONOS against $41 on Scaleway, and 50 agents in parallel to $240 against $537. boat comes to $26 and $317 for the same two. IONOS's workday figure assumes you delete the Cube each night, since suspended Cubes keep billing.
Which is faster, Scaleway or IONOS Cloud?
There is no comparable measurement for either one, since neither was in the public StarSling benchmark. boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in that run.
Can Scaleway and IONOS Cloud run Docker?
Yes, both are full KVM VMs where you can run Docker. Neither documents nested virtualization, so you would test it on the shape you pick. On boat, Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm are documented on every machine.
Do I pay for a stopped machine?
On Scaleway, a console or API power-off stops compute, but volumes and IPs keep billing, and standby bills as running. On IONOS, suspended Cubes keep billing until you snapshot and delete them. On boat, a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Where do Scaleway and IONOS Cloud run?
Scaleway runs only in the EU, in Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw and Milan. IONOS runs in Germany, France and Spain, and also in the UK and the US. boat runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France, with EU data residency.
Is either one an agent sandbox?
No. Both are general clouds that rent VMs, storage and networks, and you install and drive agents yourself. boat is built for agents, with coding agents, a desktop and a credentials proxy in every sandbox.
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