Scaleway vs OVHcloud
Scaleway and OVHcloud both rent plain VMs that you set up and run yourself. Scaleway bills each Instance per hour of uptime and stays in the EU, while OVHcloud bills per second after a 1-minute minimum and also runs in Canada, the US, Singapore and Sydney.
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.
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.
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 | OVHcloud: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Both clouds give a full Linux VM with root and Docker that starts empty, while boat comes with coding agents, snapshots every minute and stops that cost nothing. | 49th of 367, with limits $322 a month | 90th of 367, with limits $814 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 | 136th of 366, with limits $934 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 OVHcloud fits one-minute runs better, since it bills by the second after a 1-minute minimum, while Scaleway bills each CPU Instance for at least an hour and boat queues big bursts. | 166th of 345, with limits $893 a month | 56th of 345, with limits $43 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 go past both clouds' default quotas, so either one needs a support request first; boat allows 100 to 2,000 sandboxes by plan. | 84th of 361, with limits $738 a month | 43rd of 361, with limits $299 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 Short rollouts suit OVHcloud's per-second billing far better than Scaleway's hourly billing, though both need raised quotas for wide fan-out. | 176th of 360, with limits $18,254 a month | 27th of 360, with limits $1,280 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 | 42nd cheapest of 364 $776 a month | 99th of 364, with limits $231 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 Both run Docker builds on a full VM where you run the runner and the clean-up yourself; on Scaleway each job pays at least a full hour. | 82nd cheapest of 377 $777 a month | 29th cheapest of 377 $300 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: Scaleway and OVHcloud are classic always-on servers, and a boat machine keeps its disk with snapshots every minute. | 30th cheapest of 368 $41 a month | 23rd cheapest of 368 $34 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 or computer use built in, so you install the desktop, browser and control loop yourself; boat streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium. | 94th of 369, with limits $168 a month | 108th of 369, with limits $231 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 | 174th of 367, with limits $128 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 | 159th of 346, with limits $65 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 | 47th of 338, with limits $1,290 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 | 120th of 360, with limits $64 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 Nvidia GPUs, Scaleway by the minute and OVHcloud by the hour, and boat has no 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 | OVHcloud | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | A general EU cloud VM you set up and run yourself | A general OpenStack VM you set up and run yourself | A sandbox API for agents, on full VMs |
| Isolation | Every Instance is a full KVM VM with its own kernel | Every instance is a fully isolated VM with its own kernel | Every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel |
| CPU | Shared vCPU on Development and Play types, dedicated on others; no comparable measurement | Dedicated vCPUs on B3, C3 and R3, shared on Discovery (D2); no comparable measurement | Dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) hosts; 26.69 runs/s at 4 vCPU / 8 GB |
| Billing unit | Per hour of uptime, including startup and standby | Per second after a 1-minute minimum, until you delete the instance | Monthly plan from $20, spent per second on running sandboxes |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Root and Docker; nested virtualization is not documented | Root and Docker; vmx is passed, but a live migration can make the guest kernel panic | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine, documented |
| Stopping | Standby bills as running; a console or API power-off stops compute, but disks and IPs keep billing | Turn off and pause bill at the same rate; shelve frees compute and bills only a disk snapshot | A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk |
| Snapshots | Images and volume snapshots you create yourself; none automatic | On-demand backups, or a schedule such as daily backups keeping the last 7 or 14 | Automatic snapshots every minute and on stop |
| Fork | Make an image, then boot new Instances from it (disk, no memory) | Take a backup, then create a new instance from it (disk, no memory) | 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 IPv4 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 |
| Coding agents, desktop and keys | None built in; you install agents and a desktop, and secrets end up on the machine | None built in; you install agents and a desktop, and secrets live on the instance | Claude Code, Codex and more preinstalled, a 60fps desktop, and an AI credentials proxy for any HTTPS API |
| How many at once | Quotas per shape, for example 10 DEV1-L after identity checks; more through support | Steps of 20, 50, 100 and 200 VMs by buying prepaid credit; more through support | 100 to 2,000 sandboxes by plan, raised self-serve |
| Outbound rules | Security groups by protocol, port and IP range; SMTP blocked by default | Security groups by IP range, port and protocol | Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist |
| GPUs, Windows and Arm | GPUs (B300, H100, L4, L40S) by the minute, Windows Server and Arm64 | GPUs (L4, L40S) by the hour and Windows Server; no Arm64 | No GPUs; no Windows guests (Wine for Windows apps); x86 only |
| Regions | Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw and Milan | Europe, Canada, the US, Singapore and Sydney, plus Local Zones | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Scaleway | OVHcloud | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Not published | 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 | No | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | Yes | 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 | 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 | No | No | 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 | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | Yes | Not published | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | No | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | No | Yes | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for Scaleway or OVHcloud: neither was part of the public StarSling benchmark run where boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. On both clouds the result would depend on the shape you pick, since each sells shared-vCPU types next to dedicated ones.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Scaleway and OVHcloud 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 | OVHcloud, 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 | $8 · Usage account | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $41 · Usage account | $34 · 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 | $537 · Usage account | $406 · 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 | $734 · Usage account | $128 · Usage account · 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 | $256 · Usage account · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Scaleway: Scaleway bills each CPU Instance 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.
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. The prices here use shared Discovery d2 instances; dedicated B3, C3 and R3 now bill local storage and a public IPv4 on top.
OVHcloud: 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 sets quotas per Instance shape, such as 10 DEV1-L or 15 DEV1-M after identity checks, so 50 agents, 300 user sandboxes and 1,000 short jobs all need a support request first. OVHcloud raises quotas in steps up to 200 VMs by buying prepaid credit, but 300 user sandboxes and 1,000 short jobs at once go past its 512 vCPU, so those are not confirmed. Hourly billing also makes Scaleway's burst expensive, at $4,892 a month against $256 on OVHcloud. On boat the limit is a sandbox count plus starts per minute, so the 1,000-job burst gets queued and needs more starts per day than the $2,000 plan allows.
| Scenario | Scaleway | OVHcloud | 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
every machine must stay in the EU, or you need Arm64 Instances, B300 or H100 GPUs by the minute, or long-lived servers next to Scaleway's managed services.
- Arm64 and newer GPUs. Useful if an agent must test on Arm64 or needs B300 or H100 cards: Scaleway sells both, with GPUs billed by the minute.
- Stays in the EU. Useful if every machine must stay in Europe: Scaleway runs only in Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw and Milan.
- Large always-on fleets. Useful for big scraping fleets or always-on assistants: Scaleway's mix came to $253 a month against $1,290 on OVHcloud for mass scraping.
Use OVHcloud when
you run many short jobs that suit per-second billing, need regions outside Europe, or want to raise VM quotas yourself by buying prepaid credit.
- Per-second billing. Useful for short jobs: OVHcloud bills every second after a 1-minute minimum, where Scaleway bills each Instance for at least an hour.
- Regions outside Europe. Useful if your users are far from Europe: OVHcloud also runs instances in Canada, the US, Singapore and Sydney.
- Quotas you can raise yourself. Useful for growing fleets: OVHcloud raises quotas to 20, 50, 100 or 200 VMs when you buy prepaid credit, without a ticket.
Where boat fits
Scaleway and OVHcloud are general clouds, and that is their strength for GPUs, Windows and managed services. If what you are really running is agents, each one on its own Linux machine, boat gives you the same full VM with the agent tooling, snapshots, free stops and fleet size already in place.
Idle agents keep their work
Agents sit idle between tasks. Scaleway standby and OVHcloud turned-off instances bill like running ones, and the workarounds (power-off, shelve) still bill disks or snapshots and have no automatic backups every minute. boat saves the disk every minute and a stopped sandbox costs nothing.
Agents and a desktop ready on boot
Both clouds start from an empty OS image, so you install and supervise each coding agent, desktop and browser, and the agent can read any key you put on it. boat preinstalls the agents, streams a 60fps desktop and keeps keys behind its credentials proxy.
Fleets without quota tickets
50 agents or 300 user sandboxes are past Scaleway's per-shape quotas and OVHcloud's 512 vCPU self-serve ceiling, so both need support first, then your own TLS and DNS per machine. boat runs 100 to 2,000 sandboxes by plan, each with HTTPS on 50 ports.
Use boat when each agent should get its own full VM that is ready to work: coding agents, a desktop, HTTPS ports and snapshots every minute built in, reliable /dev/kvm, fork while running, stops that cost nothing, and hundreds of sandboxes without a quota ticket. Compare it one to one: boat vs Scaleway and boat vs OVHcloud.
Questions people ask
Is Scaleway cheaper than OVHcloud?
Not in these scenarios. One coding agent on workdays comes to $14 a month on Scaleway against $8 on OVHcloud, one agent that never stops to $41 against $34, and 50 agents in parallel to $537 against $406. boat comes to $20, $26 and $317 for the same three.
Which is faster, Scaleway or OVHcloud?
There is no comparable 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 on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts.
Can Scaleway and OVHcloud run Docker and nested VMs?
Both run Docker, since each machine is a full VM with root. Scaleway does not document nested virtualization, and OVHcloud passes the vmx flag but warns that a live migration can make the guest kernel panic. boat documents Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine.
Do I pay for a stopped machine on Scaleway or OVHcloud?
On Scaleway, standby bills as running, and a console or API power-off still bills disks and IPs. On OVHcloud, turned-off and paused instances bill at the same rate, and shelving bills only a disk snapshot. On boat, a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Where do Scaleway and OVHcloud run?
Scaleway runs in Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw and Milan. OVHcloud runs across Europe and in Canada, the US, Singapore and Sydney. boat runs only in the EU, in 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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