Vultr vs Linode
Vultr and Linode both rent plain Linux servers that you set up and run yourself, billed by the hour and still billed when stopped. Vultr adds Windows, AMD GPUs and VX1 plans with virtualization support, while Linode adds a free firewall that can limit outbound traffic.
The companies and products
Vultr
Vultr is a general-purpose cloud, and Cloud Compute is its line of KVM virtual servers.
A Vultr instance is a Linux or Windows VM you rent by size, with root, a public IPv4, local SSD or NVMe and a monthly transfer allowance. You choose shared vCPU plans (Regular, High Performance, High Frequency) or dedicated vCPU plans (Optimized Cloud Compute, VX1), and run your own software next to Vultr block storage, file systems, VPCs, Kubernetes, bare metal and GPUs. It is a server host, not an agent sandbox, so this page compares the two where they overlap: giving an agent its own Linux machine.
Linode
Linode is a general-purpose cloud, now sold as Akamai Cloud, and a Linode is one of its Linux virtual machines.
A Linode is a Linux VM you rent by size, with root, a public IP, local disk and, on older plans, a monthly transfer allowance. You pick a distribution, then install and run your own software on it, next to Akamai Cloud products like Kubernetes, block storage, NodeBalancers, VPCs and cloud firewalls. It is a server host, 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. “47th cheapest of 364” means 46 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 | Vultr: price rank | Linode: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Vultr and Linode both give a full KVM machine with root and Docker that starts empty and stays billed when stopped; boat comes with agents, snapshots every minute and free stops. | 114th of 367, with limits $1,060 a month | 145th of 367, with limits $1,292 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB | 144th of 366, with limits $1,000 a month | 164th of 366, with limits $1,200 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 All three are a compromise for short bursts: Vultr and Linode bill every run as at least a full hour, and boat's start limits queue big bursts. | 168th of 345, with limits $1,000 a month | 174th of 345, with limits $1,200 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 Both bill each 10-minute user session as a full hour and raise machine limits by support ticket, which is why boat comes to $200 a month here against $894 on Vultr and $1,080 on Linode. | 98th of 361, with limits $899 a month | 114th of 361, with limits $1,090 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 | 179th of 360, with limits $20,000 a month | 186th of 360, with limits $24,000 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 | 47th cheapest of 364 $893 a month | 55th cheapest of 364 $1,080 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 software yourself; Vultr comes to $857 a month here against $4,320 on Linode, and boat to $86. | 91st cheapest of 377 $857 a month | 137th cheapest of 377 $4,320 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: Vultr comes to $40 a month, Linode to $48 and boat to $26, with boat keeping a snapshot of the disk every minute. | 28th cheapest of 368 $40 a month | 40th cheapest of 368 $48 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 Vultr nor Linode ships a desktop, so you install one yourself; boat streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium and computer use built in. | 252nd of 369, with limits $1,190 a month | 272nd of 369, with limits $1,440 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 | 300th of 367, with limits $894 a month | 311th of 367, with limits $1,080 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 | 175th of 346, with limits $89 a month | 190th of 346, with limits $108 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 | 72nd of 338, with limits $1,818 a month | 89th of 338, with limits $2,160 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 | 168th of 360, with limits $150 a month | 189th of 360, with limits $182 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 Only Linode is priced here, with Nvidia GPU instances by the hour; Vultr rents Nvidia and AMD GPUs too, and boat has no GPUs. | Can't run it | 78th of 98, with limits $1,500 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 | Vultr | Linode | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | A general KVM server you set up and run yourself | A general Linux server on Akamai Cloud you set up and run yourself | A sandbox API for agents, on full VMs |
| Isolation | Every instance is a KVM VM with its own kernel | Every Linode is a full VM with its own kernel, isolated at the hypervisor | Every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel |
| CPU | Shared vCPU plans, or dedicated AMD EPYC vCPU on Optimized and VX1 plans; no comparable measurement | Shared CPU plans, or Dedicated CPU plans for a higher price; 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; virtualization support documented for VX1 and bare metal, not for the other Cloud Compute plans | Root and Docker; Linode staff say nested virtualization is not supported because it breaks live migration | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine, documented |
| Stopping | A stopped instance is billed in full; you destroy it to stop paying | A powered-off Linode is still billed; you delete it to stop paying | A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk |
| Snapshots | Manual disk snapshots that can take up to 30 minutes, at $0.05 per GB-month; paid scheduled backups | Paid Backups add-on: scheduled disk backups plus one manual snapshot per Linode | Automatic snapshots every minute and on stop |
| Fork | Take a snapshot, then deploy new instances from it (disk, no memory) | Clone copies all disks to a new Linode; the docs say to power off first | Fork a running sandbox in one call (disk, no memory) |
| Reaching the machine | Public IPv4 on any port; HTTPS needs your own domain, proxy and certificates | Public IPv4 on any port; HTTPS needs your own certificates or a NodeBalancer | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; own IP |
| Desktop and computer use | Headless Linux; you install a desktop and VNC yourself | No desktop in the images; you install one and reach it through the Glish console | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream |
| Coding agents | None; you install and supervise agents yourself | None; StackScripts and Marketplace apps install general software | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Keeping keys out of the machine | No credentials proxy; you put secrets on the server yourself | No credentials proxy; secrets reach the server through user data or files you place | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register; switch a credential to another account when credits run out |
| Outbound rules | Vultr Firewall filters incoming traffic only; outbound rules go in the guest | Free Cloud Firewall with outbound rules by protocol, port and IP range | Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist |
| GPUs and Windows | Nvidia L40S, A100, H100, GH200 and B200 and AMD MI300X, MI325X and MI355X; Windows Server for a license fee | Nvidia RTX 4000 Ada, RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell and Quadro RTX 6000 by the hour; Linux only | No GPUs; Linux guests only, Wine for Windows apps |
| Regions | 33 locations on six continents | 33 regions in 15 countries across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia | EU only: Germany, Finland, France, with EU data residency |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Vultr | Linode | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Not published | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Not published | No | 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 | No | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | Not published | No | 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 | 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 | Not published | No | No |
| GPU | Yes | Yes | No |
| Windows | Yes | 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 | Yes | Yes |
| Spend limits | Not published | No | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | No | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | Yes | Yes | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Not published | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | Not published | Yes | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for Vultr or Linode: 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. Both sell shared and dedicated CPU plans, so their results would depend on which plan you pick.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Vultr and Linode 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 | Vultr, a month | Linode, 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 | $10 · Usage account | $13 · Usage account | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $40 · Usage account | $48 · 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 | $524 · Usage account | $634 · 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 | $894 · Usage account | $1,080 · Usage account | $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 | $5,960 · Usage account | $7,200 · Usage account · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Vultr: Each Vultr plan has an hourly price billed by the started hour, and most plans are capped at 672 hours a month; VX1 and GPU plans bill every hour used. Billing runs from deploy to destroy, including while stopped, and snapshots, backups and extra IPs cost extra.
Linode: Each Linode size has an hourly price rounded up to the next full hour, billed from create to delete, including while powered off. Older plans stop at a monthly cap; G8 dedicated and GPU plans have no cap since July 2026, and backups and extra egress cost extra.
Linode: 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 Vultr nor Linode publishes a fixed instance limit; on both you ask support to raise it, so 50 agents in parallel or 300 user sandboxes likely need a ticket first. Both bill a 3-minute job as a full hour, so 1,000 short jobs at once come to $5,960 a month on Vultr and $7,200 on Linode, where the burst also runs on shared vCPUs that other tenants can slow. On boat that burst gets queued and needs more starts per day than the $2,000 plan allows, so none of the three fits it cleanly.
| Scenario | Vultr | Linode | 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 | None that bite |
| Sandboxes for your users | None that bite | None that bite | None that bite |
| 1,000 short jobs at once | None that bite |
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Which one should you use?
Use Vultr when
you need Windows Server, Nvidia or AMD GPUs, virtualization on VX1 plans, or slightly cheaper shared servers in 33 locations.
- Windows and a wider GPU range. Useful if your agents need Windows Server or big GPUs: Vultr rents Nvidia H100, B200 and AMD MI300X class machines.
- Virtualization on VX1 plans. Useful if you need VMs inside the server: Vultr documents virtualization support on VX1 plans and bare metal, which Linode does not offer.
- Shared plans for less. Useful if you run one always-on 4 vCPU / 8 GB server: Vultr's shared plan comes to $40 a month against $48 on Linode.
Use Linode when
you want a free firewall with outbound rules, or a server that sits next to Akamai's Kubernetes, block storage and NodeBalancers.
- A free outbound firewall. Useful if you want to limit where a server can connect: Linode's free Cloud Firewall filters outbound traffic by protocol, port and IP.
- Next to Akamai's cloud. Useful if the server must sit beside Kubernetes, block storage, NodeBalancers and a private VPC in one Akamai account.
Where boat fits
Vultr and Linode are general clouds, not agent sandboxes. If what you are really running is agents, each one wants its own machine that is ready to work, cheap to leave idle and easy to copy, and that is what boat is built for. Pick Vultr or Linode for GPUs, Windows or regions outside the EU.
Idle machines that stop for free
Agents wait for hours between tasks. Vultr and Linode both bill a stopped server in full, so you pay for the idle time or script snapshot, delete and rebuild yourself. boat saves the disk every minute and a stopped sandbox costs nothing.
/dev/kvm and fork on every machine
Linode does not support nested virtualization, and on Vultr it is documented only for VX1 and bare metal. Copying a busy agent means a snapshot of up to 30 minutes on Vultr or powering off on Linode. boat forks a running sandbox in one call.
Agents, desktop and HTTPS built in
Both start as empty servers: you install each agent, a desktop, a TLS proxy and the API keys yourself. boat ships Claude Code and Codex with an API to drive agents inside from outside, a 60fps desktop, HTTPS on 50 ports and a credentials proxy.
Use boat when you want each agent on its own full VM that is ready to work: /dev/kvm, coding agents, a desktop, HTTPS ports and snapshots every minute built in, fork while running, and stops that cost nothing. Compare it one to one: boat vs Vultr and boat vs Linode.
Questions people ask
Is Vultr cheaper than Linode?
On the shared 4 vCPU / 8 GB plans, yes. One agent that never stops comes to $40 a month on Vultr and $48 on Linode, and 50 agents in parallel come to $524 on Vultr against $634 on Linode. On boat those come to $26 and $317.
Which is faster, Vultr or Linode?
There is no comparable measurement for either one, so we cannot say. Both sell shared and dedicated CPU plans, and speed depends on the plan. boat measured 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts.
Can Vultr or Linode run Docker and nested VMs?
Both run Docker, since every server is a full VM with root. Vultr documents virtualization support for VX1 plans and bare metal, while Linode staff say nested virtualization is not supported. On boat, Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm are on every machine.
Do Vultr and Linode bill a stopped server?
Yes, both do. A stopped Vultr instance or a powered-off Linode is billed until you destroy or delete it, because its resources stay reserved. On boat, a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Does Vultr or Linode have Windows and GPUs?
Vultr runs Windows Server for a license fee and rents Nvidia and AMD GPUs. Linode is Linux only and rents Nvidia GPU instances by the hour. boat has no GPUs and runs Linux guests only.
Where does my data run?
Vultr has 33 locations and Linode has 33 regions, both with several in Europe. boat runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France, with EU data residency.
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