Vultr vs OVHcloud
Vultr and OVHcloud both rent plain Linux or Windows VMs that you set up yourself. Vultr bills by the started hour across 33 locations with a wide GPU range, while OVHcloud bills by the second, lets you shelve idle machines and can filter 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.
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. “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 | OVHcloud: 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 full VM with root and Docker that starts empty and bills while stopped; boat comes with coding agents, snapshots every minute and free stops. | 114th of 367, with limits $1,060 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 | 144th of 366, with limits $1,000 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 short runs far better than Vultr, since it bills by the second after a 1-minute minimum while Vultr bills every started hour. | 168th of 345, with limits $1,000 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 Neither publishes room for 300 sandboxes at once without asking: Vultr raises limits by ticket, and OVHcloud's largest self-serve quota is 512 vCPU; boat allows 100 to 2,000 by plan. | 98th of 361, with limits $899 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 Per-second billing makes OVHcloud the better fit of the two for many short rollouts, where Vultr's one hour minimum adds up fast. | 179th of 360, with limits $20,000 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 | 47th cheapest of 364 $893 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, and on both you run the runner software, the images and the clean-up between jobs yourself. | 91st cheapest of 377 $857 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 well: Vultr and OVHcloud are classic always-on servers, and a boat machine keeps its disk with snapshots every minute. | 28th cheapest of 368 $40 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 has a desktop built in, so you install one with VNC or RDP yourself; boat streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium and computer use. | 252nd of 369, with limits $1,190 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 | 300th of 367, with limits $894 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 | 175th of 346, with limits $89 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 | 72nd of 338, with limits $1,818 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 | 168th of 360, with limits $150 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 GPUs and boat has none: Vultr offers Nvidia H100, GH200 and B200 and AMD MI300X and up, while OVHcloud offers Nvidia L4, L40S and V100S. | 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 | Vultr | OVHcloud | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | A general KVM server 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 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 plans, or dedicated AMD EPYC vCPU on Optimized and VX1; 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 | By the started hour, one hour minimum; most plans capped at 672 hours a month | By the second after a 1-minute minimum | By the second from monthly plan credit |
| Stopping | A stopped instance is billed in full until you destroy it | Turned off or paused bills the same rate; shelving frees compute and bills only a disk snapshot | A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk |
| Snapshots | Manual disk snapshots that can take up to 30 minutes; paid scheduled backups | On-demand instance backups, or a schedule such as daily keeping the last 7 or 14 | Automatic snapshots every minute and on stop |
| Fork | Snapshot, then deploy new instances from it (disk, no memory) | Back up, then create a new identical instance (disk, no memory) | Fork a running sandbox in one call (disk, no memory) |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Root and Docker; virtualization documented for VX1 and bare metal only | Root and Docker; vmx flag passed, but a live migration can make the guest kernel panic | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine, documented |
| 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 load balancer | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; own IP |
| Outbound rules | Vultr Firewall filters incoming traffic only; outbound rules go in the guest | Security groups with outbound rules by IP range, port and protocol | Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist |
| Agents, desktop and keys | None built in; you install agents, a desktop and secrets yourself | None built in; you install agents, a desktop and secrets yourself | Claude Code, Codex and more preinstalled, 60fps desktop, credentials proxy for any HTTPS API |
| GPUs | Nvidia L40S, A100, H100, GH200, B200 and AMD MI300X, MI325X, MI355X | Nvidia L4, L40S and V100S | No GPUs |
| Windows | Windows Server instances for a license fee | Windows Server images with the license included | Linux guests only; Wine for Windows apps |
| Regions | 33 locations on six continents | Europe, Canada, the US, Singapore and Sydney, plus Local Zones | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Vultr | OVHcloud | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Not published | 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) | Not published | 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 | 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 | Yes | 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 | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | No | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | Yes | Not published | 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
Neither Vultr nor OVHcloud has a comparable measurement: 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, results would depend on the plan you pick, since each sells shared vCPU plans 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. Vultr 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 | Vultr, 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 | $10 · 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 | $40 · 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 | $524 · 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 | $894 · 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 | $5,960 · Usage account | $256 · Usage account · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Vultr: Vultr bills each plan by the started hour, from deploy to destroy, including while stopped. Most plans are capped at 672 hours a month, VX1 has no cap, and the prices here use the shared Regular plans.
OVHcloud: OVHcloud bills every second an instance exists after a 1-minute minimum; turned-off and paused instances bill the same rate, shelved ones only their snapshot. The prices here use shared Discovery d2 instances, and since October 2026 B3, C3 and R3 also bill local storage and 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
Vultr does not publish how many instances a new account can run at once; you ask support to raise it. OVHcloud raises quotas in steps of 20, 50, 100 and 200 VMs by buying prepaid credit, up to 512 vCPU, so 300 user sandboxes or 1,000 short jobs at once need support first. Both price those scenarios, but Vultr's one hour minimum makes the 1,000 short jobs come to $5,960 a month against $256 on OVHcloud. On boat the 1,000-job burst gets queued and needs more starts per day than the $2,000 plan allows.
| Scenario | Vultr | 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 Vultr when
you need regions on six continents, large Nvidia or AMD GPUs, or servers that sit next to bare metal and shared file systems, and they run for hours at a time.
- More places to run. Useful if your users are spread out: Vultr runs in 33 locations, including Sao Paulo, Mumbai, Tokyo, Johannesburg and Sydney.
- The biggest GPUs. Useful if your agents train or serve large models: Vultr rents Nvidia H100, GH200 and B200 and AMD MI300X and newer.
- Bare metal and shared file systems. Useful if servers must share a file system or sit next to single-tenant bare metal in one account.
Use OVHcloud when
you run short or bursty jobs that benefit from per-second billing, want to shelve idle machines, need outbound rules or Windows with the license included.
- Billing by the second. Useful for short jobs: OVHcloud bills each second after a 1-minute minimum, where Vultr bills every started hour.
- Shelve idle machines. Useful if machines sit idle for days: a shelved OVHcloud instance bills only its disk snapshot, while a stopped Vultr instance bills in full.
- Outbound rules and Windows included. Useful if you must limit where a machine connects, or need Windows: security groups filter outbound traffic, and the Windows license is included.
Where boat fits
Vultr and OVHcloud are clouds, not agent sandboxes, so the choice between them is about servers. If what you are really running is agents, boat gives each one a full VM that is ready to work, with snapshots every minute, free stops, fork while running, HTTPS ports and coding agents built in.
Idle agents that keep their work
Agents sit idle between tasks. A stopped Vultr instance bills in full, and an OVHcloud one bills the same until you shelve it. boat stops for free and saves the disk every minute, while their snapshots are manual or daily.
Agents, a desktop and keys built in
Both start as an empty OS image, so you install, update and supervise every agent, desktop and API key yourself. boat has coding agents you drive from outside, a 60fps desktop, and a credentials proxy that keeps keys off the machine.
Nested VMs and HTTPS that just work
Vultr documents virtualization only on VX1 and bare metal, and OVHcloud warns a live migration can crash nested VMs. boat has /dev/kvm on every machine, plus token-protected HTTPS on up to 50 ports with no proxy or certificates to set up.
Use boat when what you are running is agents and you want each one on a full VM that is ready to work: coding agents, a desktop, HTTPS ports, snapshots every minute, reliable /dev/kvm, fork while running and stops that cost nothing. Compare it one to one: boat vs Vultr and boat vs OVHcloud.
Questions people ask
Is Vultr cheaper than OVHcloud?
Usually not in these scenarios. One agent that never stops comes to $40 a month on Vultr against $34 on OVHcloud, and 50 agents in parallel come to $524 against $406. For short jobs the gap is wider, since Vultr bills every started hour: sandboxes for your users come to $894 on Vultr against $128 on OVHcloud, though OVHcloud's quota for 300 at once is not confirmed.
Which is faster, Vultr or OVHcloud?
There is no comparable measurement for either one. Both sell shared vCPU plans and dedicated vCPU plans, so speed depends on the plan you pick. boat did 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in the public StarSling benchmark.
Can Vultr and OVHcloud run Docker and nested VMs?
Both run Docker, since every instance is a full VM with root. Vultr documents virtualization only for VX1 and bare metal, and OVHcloud passes the vmx flag but warns 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 instance on Vultr or OVHcloud?
Yes on both. Vultr bills a stopped instance in full until you destroy it, and OVHcloud bills a turned-off or paused one at the same rate, though shelving it bills only its disk snapshot. On boat, a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Which has more regions?
Vultr, with 33 locations across North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Australia. OVHcloud runs in Europe, Canada, the US, Singapore and Sydney, plus Local Zones. boat runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France.
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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