Sprites vs Ona
Sprites gives each agent a small Linux VM you create by API, which sleeps when idle and wakes on the next request, and you can start paying as you go today. Ona, formerly Gitpod and now part of OpenAI, is a cloud dev platform for engineering teams and its Codex agent, sold to new customers only through sales.
The companies and products
Sprites
Sprites is Fly.io's product for agents: persistent Linux computers you create by API or CLI, which sleep when idle and wake on the next request.
Each Sprite is a Firecracker microVM with 8 vCPU, memory the platform manages, and a 100 GB ext4 disk that syncs to object storage. It runs one managed Ubuntu image with Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI and Cursor preinstalled, gets an HTTPS URL that wakes it, and bills only for the CPU and memory it actually uses while awake. It is built for coding agents, dev environments and user code that sit idle most of the time.
- Isolation
- Firecracker microVM per Sprite
- Regions
- Not selectable for Sprites
- Free start
- $30 trial credit per organization
Ona
Ona, formerly Gitpod, is a platform for cloud dev environments and background coding agents, and is now part of OpenAI.
Ona is a different kind of product from boat: a dev-environment platform, not a sandbox API. Each task or developer gets an isolated VM built from a Dev Container config, which people open in a browser IDE, VS Code or JetBrains, and where Ona's Codex Agent can plan, code, test and open pull requests. It is built for engineering teams who want the same governed environment for every developer and agent; new customers run it in their own AWS or GCP account on an Enterprise contract.
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. “63rd cheapest of 377” means 62 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 | Sprites: price rank | Ona: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Both keep files between runs, but boat ranks 3rd here because it adds systemd, /dev/kvm and many public ports that full-stack builds often need. | 66th of 367, with limits $546 a month | 324th of 367, with limits $7,315 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An always-on assistant drops its open connections on every Sprites pause unless a task hold keeps it awake, and on Ona it stops after 30 idle minutes unless auto-stop is set to Never; boat just keeps running. | 157th of 366, with limits $1,166 a month | 83rd of 366, with limits $8,504 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 Sprites suits short code runs: it sleeps about 30 seconds after the last command and bills only real CPU and memory, while Ona is a dev platform sold through sales. | 93rd of 345, with limits $140 a month | 335th of 345, with limits $5,320 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 Sprites gives each user a VM with a URL that wakes on request, Ona is built for your own engineers with a default of 10 running environments per user, and boat ranks 1st here. | 56th of 361, with limits $428 a month | 330th of 361, with limits $5,988 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 | 105th of 360, with limits $6,540 a month | 283rd of 360, with limits $9,773 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 | 125th of 364, with limits $545 a month | 334th of 364, with limits $5,768 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 Neither Sprites nor Ona documents /dev/kvm, which Android and VM image builds need; boat exposes it, and Ona runs start from a prebuild rather than a copy of a warm machine. | 63rd cheapest of 377 $476 a month | 365th of 377, with limits $5,461 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Ona is a full cloud IDE with Dev Containers and prebuilds, Sprites tunnels SSH through its CLI and does not run systemd, and boat gives you SSH and systemd on a full VM. | 213th of 368, with limits $27 a month | 368th of 368, with limits $5,140 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 Sprites is headless and Ona has no graphical desktop inside its environments, while boat streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium for computer use. | 85th of 369, with limits $136 a month | 353rd of 369, with limits $5,691 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 | 171st of 367, with limits $122 a month | 150th of 367, with limits $5,346 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 | 229th of 346, with limits $206 a month | 146th of 346, with limits $5,468 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 | 141st of 338, with limits $4,113 a month | 261st of 338, with limits $14,360 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 Neither Sprites nor Ona can copy a running machine; boat can fork one prepared sandbox into many while it runs. | 210th of 360, with limits $223 a month | 93rd of 360, with limits $5,228 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 | Sprites | Ona | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Firecracker microVM with its own kernel | Isolated VM with dedicated compute, built from a Dev Container config | Full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts |
| Getting started | Self-serve pay as you go, with $30 of trial credit per organization | New Core subscriptions are closed; new customers buy Enterprise through sales | Self-serve plans from a free trial up, starting at $20 a month as usage credit |
| Machine size | Fixed 8 vCPU and 100 GB disk; memory set and scaled by the platform | VM classes you pick, including GPU types such as one NVIDIA A10G with 16 vCPU and 64 GB on Enterprise runners | You choose; up to 16 vCPU / 32 GB on the $100 plan and above |
| Inside the machine | Root and Docker (with rough edges users report); no systemd, and no /dev/kvm in the docs | Docker and root inside the Dev Container; nested virtualization not documented | Root, Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm for emulators and nested VMs |
| Idle behavior | Pauses about 30 seconds after activity stops; wakes on the next request in 100 to 500 ms | Stops after 30 minutes without SSH, IDE or agent activity by default; background work does not count; can be set to Never | Runs until you stop it or its time to live ends; no session cap on paid plans |
| Files after a stop | Disk survives and syncs to object storage; checkpoints restore in place | Disk persists, but is billed on your own cloud while stopped; Core archives a stopped environment after 3 days | Disk saved every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk |
| Fork | No fork in the public API or CLI | No environment copy; you can create a project from an environment's config | Fork a running sandbox with its disk into new ones |
| Starting point | One managed Ubuntu image; you install on top of it | Dev Container config per repo, with prebuilds that snapshot the filesystem on a schedule | Named snapshots used as templates, shareable by code; no Dockerfile builds |
| Driving it from code | API, CLI and a remote MCP server on pay as you go | Python, TypeScript and Go SDK on the Enterprise plan only | REST API, CLI and SDKs on every plan, including the trial |
| Coding agents | Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI and Cursor preinstalled, run through exec or a console | Codex Agent started from chat, a Linear issue or an automation; Claude Code you run yourself | Seven agents preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API to drive them from outside |
| Screen and IDE | Headless; no desktop, browser or IDE product | Browser IDE plus VS Code and JetBrains; no graphical desktop inside the environment | 60fps desktop with Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream |
| Reaching the machine | One HTTPS URL to one HTTP port; other ports and SSH only through the sprite proxy CLI | HTTPS URL per port for you, your organization or everyone; SSH; no raw TCP documented | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; dedicated IP; SSH |
| Keys and outbound traffic | Connectors gateway holds API tokens with path allow and block lists; optional domain allowlist | Secrets injected into the environment as environment variables or files | Credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; switch a credential to another account when credits run out; no provider-side allowlist |
| Regions | Region not selectable | Enterprise runners in your own AWS or GCP account, in many regions | EU only (Germany, Finland, France), with EU data residency |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Sprites | Ona | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | No | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | No | Not published | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | No | Yes |
| Browser | No | Yes | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | No | Yes |
| SSH | No | Yes | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | Yes | 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 | Yes | No | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | No | No | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | No | No | No |
| Egress allowlist | Yes | No | No |
| Secret proxy | Yes | No | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | Yes | No | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Agent harness API | No | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes | No | No |
| GPU | No | Yes | No |
| Windows | No | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | No | No |
| Self-hosting | No | No | No |
| BYOC | No | Yes | No |
| Open source | No | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | Not published | Yes | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | No | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | No | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | No | No |
| EU data residency | No | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable CPU measurement for Sprites or Ona: neither is in the hpc-sandbox-benchmarks results we use. boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in StarSling's run of 2026-09-29, on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Sprites and Ona 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 | Sprites, a month | Ona, 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 | $23 · Pay-as-you-go | $5,030 · Enterprise (AWS Marketplace 12-month contract) · with limits | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $92 · Pay-as-you-go | $5,140 · Enterprise (AWS Marketplace 12-month contract) · with limits | $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 | $1,120 · Pay-as-you-go | $6,521 · Enterprise (AWS Marketplace 12-month contract) · with limits | $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 | $314 · Pay-as-you-go · with limits | $5,432 · Enterprise (AWS Marketplace 12-month contract) · 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 | $1,134 · Pay-as-you-go · with limits | $5,955 · Enterprise (AWS Marketplace 12-month contract) · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Sprites: Sprites bills CPU time at $0.0385 per CPU-hour and actual memory at $0.021875 per GB-hour, only while the Sprite is awake, plus storage on the bytes you write. Optional plans such as Hero at $100 a month buy fixed allowances that are not credit.
Ona: New Core subscriptions are closed, so the Ona prices here use its Enterprise listing on AWS Marketplace: a 12-month, $60,000 contract, plus compute on your own AWS bill. Real Enterprise prices are negotiated with sales.
Ona: Plans start at $20 a month, and the whole fee is usage credit spent per second on running sandboxes. A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Limits in those scenarios
Sprites does not publish how many Sprites can run at once on pay as you go, so 300 user sandboxes and 1,000 jobs at once are not confirmed, and creation is 10 a minute without a plan. No Ona scenario fits as published, because new customers can only buy Enterprise through sales, and the table assumes 3 environments at once since Ona publishes no Enterprise limit. On boat the 1,000-job burst gets queued above 90 starts a minute and needs more daily starts than the $2,000 plan allows.
| Scenario | Sprites | Ona | 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 |
| Sandboxes for your users |
|
| None that bite |
| 1,000 short jobs at once |
|
|
|
Which one should you use?
Use Sprites when
you want to start today without a contract, and your agents or apps sit idle most of the day and should wake on a request.
- Start today, pay for what you use. Useful for small teams: Sprites is self-serve, has no plan fee by default, and bills only the CPU and memory a Sprite uses while awake.
- Sleeps when idle, wakes on request. Useful for agents and apps that sit idle most of the day: a Sprite pauses after 30 seconds and wakes on the next request.
- Limits on what an agent can reach. Useful if you want guardrails: Sprites can allowlist outbound domains and limit which API paths a stored token can call.
Use Ona when
your engineers want a governed cloud IDE shared with a Codex agent, inside your own AWS or GCP account or with a GPU.
- A full cloud IDE for your team. Useful if your engineers work in the same environments as their agents: Ona has browser, VS Code and JetBrains IDEs with Dev Containers and prebuilds.
- Runs in your own cloud. Useful if environments must run inside your own AWS or GCP account, in a region you pick: Ona's Enterprise runners do that.
- GPU environments. Useful if your agents need a GPU: Ona's Enterprise runners can use GPU types, such as an A10G VM with 16 vCPU and 64 GB.
Where boat fits
If your own code starts the agents and they work for hours, look at boat. Sprites is built to sleep between short bursts, and Ona is built for engineers in an IDE and sold through sales. boat gives each agent a full VM it can shape, an API on every plan, and a machine that keeps its work and can be forked.
A full machine with a screen
Sprites has no systemd and is headless, and neither Sprites nor Ona documents /dev/kvm or a desktop, so emulators, nested VMs and computer-use agents do not run. On Sprites you would build a display and stream layer yourself.
Agents you drive from outside, on any plan
On Sprites you write the code that starts, prompts and watches each agent through exec. On Ona the SDK is Enterprise only, through sales, and its managed agent is Codex. boat has a prompt, steer and events API from the trial up.
Machines that keep running, keep work and fork
A Sprite pauses and drops connections unless an hour-long task hold is renewed, and an Ona agent stops after 30 idle minutes by default. Neither can copy a running machine, so each parallel attempt starts over.
Use boat when your code starts and drives agents that work for hours: full VMs with systemd and /dev/kvm, a desktop, open ports, an API on every plan, and forks of running machines. Compare it one to one: boat vs Sprites and boat vs Ona.
Questions people ask
Is Sprites cheaper than Ona?
In every scenario we priced, yes: one coding agent on workdays is $23 a month on Sprites against $5,030 on Ona, and 50 agents in parallel are $1,120 against $6,521. Ona's figure uses its AWS Marketplace Enterprise listing, so a real sales quote may differ. boat comes to $20 and $317 for the same two.
Which is faster, Sprites or Ona?
We can't say: neither has a comparable CPU measurement in the benchmark results we use. A Sprite always has 8 vCPU, and Ona's size depends on the VM class you pick. boat did 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB.
Can Sprites and Ona run Docker?
Both run Docker with root. On Sprites, users report that docker exec fails for containers whose main process is not root, and there is no systemd. Neither documents /dev/kvm, which boat has in every sandbox.
Can I sign up for Ona the way I can for Sprites?
No. Sprites is self-serve with $30 of trial credit per organization. Ona's billing docs say new Core subscriptions are no longer available, so new customers go through sales for Enterprise.
Which one runs Claude Code?
Sprites preinstalls Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI and Cursor, which you run through exec or a console. On Ona the managed agent is Codex, and you install Claude Code yourself. boat preinstalls seven agents with one API to prompt, steer and watch them.
Is Ona the same as Gitpod?
Yes. Gitpod renamed itself Ona in 2025 and moved toward background coding agents, and Ona is now part of OpenAI.
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