WarpBuild vs Codemagic
WarpBuild is a drop-in runner for GitHub Actions: change one runs-on label and each job gets a fresh VM, on Linux, Windows or macOS. Codemagic is a CI/CD service built for mobile apps: it builds, signs and publishes iOS, Android and Flutter apps on Mac minis, with each build stopping within 120 minutes on self-serve plans.
The companies and products
WarpBuild
WarpBuild sells hosted GitHub Actions runners: you change the runs-on label and your CI jobs run on its machines.
WarpBuild is a CI service, not an agent sandbox. Each GitHub Actions job runs in its own VM on Linux (x86-64 or arm64), Windows or macOS on Apple M4 Pro, and the VM and its disk are destroyed after the build. It also sells remote Docker builders, can run the same runners inside your own AWS, GCP or Azure account, and can host Claude Managed Agents sessions on its stock runners.
Codemagic
Codemagic is a cloud CI/CD service built for mobile developers: it builds, tests and publishes iOS, Android, Flutter and React Native apps.
You describe a workflow in codemagic.yaml, and each build runs on a new virtual machine: an Apple silicon Mac mini with Xcode, an Ubuntu Linux machine, or a Windows machine. The machine is destroyed when the build finishes, and the result can go straight to App Store Connect, Google Play and other stores. It is built for app teams that want builds and code signing handled for them; it is a different kind of product from an agent sandbox, and the two overlap only where an agent needs a machine for a short, scripted job.
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. “94th cheapest of 377” means 93 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 | WarpBuild: price rank | Codemagic: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month A software factory needs machines that keep their files between tasks; WarpBuild wipes the disk after each job and Codemagic after each build of at most two hours. | 269th of 367, with limits $4,343 a month | 362nd of 367, with limits $32,718 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 does not fit either: GitHub stops a WarpBuild job after 5 days, a Codemagic build ends within 120 minutes, and neither keeps a disk. | 285th of 366, with limits $5,650 a month | 364th of 366, with limits $98,550 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 code runs are a compromise on all three: both CI services start a full build per run, and boat's start limits slow very large bursts. | 287th of 345, with limits $600 a month | 337th of 345, with limits $9,147 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 Sandboxes for your users need a URL into each one; WarpBuild blocks all inbound traffic and Codemagic machines sit on a private network. | 278th of 361, with limits $1,890 a month | 349th of 361, with limits $28,497 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 | 281st of 360, with limits $9,000 a month | 336th of 360, with limits $135 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 | 294th of 364, with limits $1,440 a month | 363rd of 364, with limits $10,947 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 WarpBuild fits general CI as a drop-in GitHub Actions runner, while Codemagic's smallest Linux machine is 8 vCPU / 32 GB; boat fits too if you run the runner on a sandbox yourself. | 94th cheapest of 377 $864 a month | 207th of 377, with limits $3,387 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB A dev box has to survive the night; WarpBuild and Codemagic machines are gone after the job, while a boat machine keeps its disk when stopped. | 182nd of 368, with limits $226 a month | 191st of 368, with limits $333 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 WarpBuild has no desktop and Codemagic only offers VNC or RDP for a person to debug a build; boat streams a 60fps desktop an agent can drive. | 264th of 369, with limits $1,320 a month | 71st of 369, with limits $10,047 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 | 280th of 367, with limits $720 a month | 151st of 367, with limits $10,947 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 | 306th of 346, with limits $878 a month | 148th of 346, with limits $13,310 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 | 275th of 338, with limits $17,550 a month | 337th of 338, with limits $263 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 | 264th of 360, with limits $435 a month | 95th of 360, with limits $6,672 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 Both have Apple silicon Macs: WarpBuild runs macOS on M4 Pro, Codemagic runs Mac minis with Xcode and iOS simulators ready, and boat runs Linux only. | 29th of 36, with limits $1,520 a month | 32nd of 36, with limits $1,952 a month | Can't run it |
Key features
| Feature | WarpBuild | Codemagic | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kind of product | A GitHub Actions runner that lives for one job | A mobile CI build machine started from codemagic.yaml or the API | A Linux VM for an agent, kept as long as you want |
| How long a machine can run | Until the job ends; GitHub stops a self-hosted runner job after 5 days | 120 minutes per build on Free, Pay as you go and Fixed price; custom on Enterprise | No session cap on paid plans; stop and start it when you like |
| Files after it stops | Disk destroyed after each build; cache and disk snapshots (deleted after 15 days) carry state over | Machine and disk deleted; only per-workflow dependency caches carry over | The disk stays, with snapshots every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing |
| Fork | No fork; a later runner can boot from a saved disk snapshot in 45 to 60 seconds | No fork; every build starts from a stock image | Fork a running sandbox into copies |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Docker on runners; /dev/kvm only on Linux x86-64, turned on with a label | Docker and Android emulators on Linux; no nested virtualization on macOS | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine |
| Operating systems | Linux x86-64 and arm64, Windows Server 2022 and 2025, macOS 14, 15 and 26 on Apple M4 Pro | macOS on Mac mini M2 and M4, Linux (x64, arm64 on request) and Windows | Linux only, on x86-64 (AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts) |
| Mobile release tools | General runners; your GitHub workflow does the signing and upload steps | Xcode and iOS simulators preinstalled, code signing, publishing to App Store Connect, TestFlight and Google Play | Not built in; you script it yourself |
| How builds start | Drop-in for GitHub Actions: change runs-on, keep your workflows, with fast cache and Docker builders | Workflows in codemagic.yaml, started by Codemagic or its API | No managed CI service; you start sandboxes through the API or run the GitHub runner yourself |
| Builds at once | Unlimited on Linux and Windows; high macOS concurrency through support | One build at a time on Pay as you go, plus $49 a month per extra build at once | Plans start at 100 running sandboxes |
| Reaching the machine | All inbound traffic blocked; SSH into failed jobs for debugging | Temporary SSH, VNC or RDP through a gateway, turned on per build | HTTPS URLs on up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; SSH |
| Desktop and computer use | None; runners have no desktop stream | VNC or RDP for a person to debug a build; no computer-use API | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control |
| Coding agents | Runs Claude Managed Agents sessions on stock Linux and macOS runners | codemagic-init helps agents on your own computer; nothing runs agents on build machines | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Keeping keys out of the machine | GitHub secrets are passed into the runner environment | Encrypted environment variables delivered into the build machine | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; real keys never enter the sandbox |
| Where it runs | WarpBuild's cloud, or BYOC in your own AWS, GCP or Azure account with static egress IPs | US data centers; dedicated macOS hosts in the EU on request | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | WarpBuild | Codemagic | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Systemd | Not published | No | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | Yes | Yes |
| Browser | No | Yes | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | No | Yes |
| SSH | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Persistent disk | No | No | Yes |
| Pause/resume | No | No | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | 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 | No | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | Yes | No | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | Yes | Yes | No |
| Wake on request | Yes | No | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | No | No | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | No | No | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | No | No | No |
| Egress allowlist | Yes | No | No |
| Secret proxy | No | No | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | No | No | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | Yes | No | Yes |
| Agent harness API | No | No | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes | No | No |
| GPU | No | No | No |
| Windows | Yes | Yes | No |
| Arm64 | Yes | Yes | No |
| Self-hosting | No | No | No |
| BYOC | Yes | No | No |
| Open source | No | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Yes | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Yes | 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 WarpBuild or Codemagic: neither was part of the public StarSling sandbox benchmark. In that run boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. Codemagic also sells only fixed sizes, with Linux X2 at 8 vCPU / 32 GB, so there is no 4 vCPU / 8 GB machine to set beside the others.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. WarpBuild and Codemagic 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 | WarpBuild, a month | Codemagic, 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 | $57 · Pay as you go · with limits | $333 · Free (individual) · with limits | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $237 · Pay as you go · with limits | $333 · Free (individual) · 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 | $2,851 · Pay as you go · with limits | $21,531 · Pay as you go (team, 4 concurrent) · 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 | $810 · Pay as you go · with limits | $12,297 · Pay as you go (team, 4 concurrent) · 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 | $1,800 · Pay as you go · with limits | $27,147 · Pay as you go (team, 4 concurrent) · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
WarpBuild: WarpBuild bills runners per minute while a job runs, with no plan fee, from $0.003 a minute for 2 vCPU on arm64; Windows costs twice the Linux x86-64 rate and macOS $0.08 a minute. Cache and snapshots are billed extra, and BYOC runners cost $0.002 a minute on top of your cloud bill.
Codemagic: Codemagic bills build minutes: $0.095 a minute on a Mac mini M2, $0.114 on an M4 and $0.045 on Linux X2 or Windows, with 500 free M2 minutes a month for individuals. Each extra build at once costs $49 a month, and fixed annual plans start at $3,990 a year.
Codemagic: 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
None of the five agent scenarios fits WarpBuild or Codemagic as they are sold, because both machines exist only for one CI job and keep no disk. An always-on agent hits GitHub's 5 day cap on WarpBuild and the 120 minute build cap on Codemagic. At scale, WarpBuild's limit on machines at once is not confirmed for 300 or 1,000, while Codemagic's priced setup allows only 4 builds at once of 8 vCPU / 32 GB each. On boat, only the 1,000-job burst does not fit: it needs more starts per minute and per day than the $2,000 plan allows, so it gets queued.
| Scenario | WarpBuild | Codemagic | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays |
|
| None that bite |
| One agent that never stops |
|
| 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 WarpBuild when
you want faster GitHub Actions CI on Linux, Windows or macOS, with long jobs, many at once, in its cloud or your own.
- Drop-in GitHub Actions. Useful if your CI already lives in GitHub Actions: change one runs-on label and jobs start on WarpBuild.
- Long jobs and many at once. Useful for big test suites: jobs can run up to GitHub's 5 day cap, with unlimited concurrency on Linux and Windows.
- Runners in your own cloud. Useful if CI must run in your own AWS, GCP or Azure account, with your network rules and fixed IPs.
Use Codemagic when
you build, sign and publish iOS, Android or Flutter apps and want Macs with Xcode for builds that finish within two hours.
- A full mobile release pipeline. Useful if you ship mobile apps: Codemagic signs builds and publishes to App Store Connect, TestFlight and Google Play.
- Mac minis with Xcode ready. Useful for iOS and Flutter teams: Mac mini M2 and M4 machines come with Xcode and iOS simulators preinstalled.
- Unlimited minutes on a fixed plan. Useful if you want a flat yearly bill: fixed annual plans give unlimited minutes on 3 builds at once.
Where boat fits
WarpBuild and Codemagic are CI services, and boat is not one. If what you are really running is agents, both give you a machine that lives for one job and is then destroyed. boat gives each agent a full Linux VM with its own kernel that keeps its disk, serves the apps it builds and runs coding agents you drive from outside.
A machine that outlives the job
An agent loses its installs and repos when a WarpBuild job ends, or after at most 120 minutes on Codemagic. WarpBuild snapshots cost $0.025 an hour each and expire after 15 days; Codemagic only caches dependency folders.
Apps and a desktop you can open
WarpBuild blocks all inbound traffic, and Codemagic offers only temporary SSH, VNC or RDP per build, gone 10 minutes after it ends. boat serves HTTPS on up to 50 ports, raw TCP and a 60fps desktop.
Agents you steer, keys kept out
Both CI services hand secrets to the machine as environment variables that agent code can read. On Codemagic an agent is just a build step you cannot steer; boat has a prompt, steer and events API and a credentials proxy.
Use boat when what you run is agents that need a machine that stays: one that keeps its files, serves the apps they build, shows a desktop and runs coding agents you drive from outside. Compare it one to one: boat vs WarpBuild and boat vs Codemagic.
Questions people ask
Is WarpBuild cheaper than Codemagic?
In every scenario we priced, the WarpBuild setup came out lower: one coding agent on workdays is $57 a month against $333, and 50 agents in parallel are $2,851 against $21,531. Neither one fits those agent scenarios as sold, so the numbers show the closest setup, not a like-for-like product. boat comes to $20 and $317 for the same two.
Which is faster, WarpBuild or Codemagic?
There is no comparable measurement: neither was part of the public StarSling sandbox benchmark, where boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. Their machine sizes also differ, since Codemagic's Linux machine is 8 vCPU / 32 GB.
How long can a build run on WarpBuild and Codemagic?
A WarpBuild job runs until it ends, under GitHub's 5 day cap for self-hosted runners. A Codemagic build stops after at most 120 minutes on Free, Pay as you go and Fixed price plans, with a custom limit on Enterprise. A boat sandbox has no session cap on paid plans.
Can WarpBuild and Codemagic run Docker?
Yes, both run Docker on their Linux machines. WarpBuild offers /dev/kvm on Linux x86-64 runners when you add a label, and Codemagic runs Android emulators on Linux but not on macOS. boat has Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine.
Which is better for iOS apps?
Both run macOS on Apple silicon: WarpBuild on M4 Pro runners for GitHub Actions, Codemagic on Mac mini M2 and M4 with Xcode, iOS simulators, code signing and App Store publishing built in. boat runs Linux only, so it is not an option for Xcode builds.
Can I run AI coding agents on WarpBuild or Codemagic?
Only inside a CI job. WarpBuild can host Claude Managed Agents sessions on stock runners, each on a fresh VM torn down afterwards, and on Codemagic an agent would be a build step that stops within 120 minutes. On boat the agent is preinstalled in a VM that keeps its disk, and you prompt and steer it through an API.
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