WarpBuild vs GitLab.com hosted runners
Both are CI services that give each job a fresh VM and delete it afterwards. WarpBuild plugs into GitHub Actions and lets a job run for days, while GitLab.com hosted runners serve GitLab pipelines and stop every job at 3 hours.
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.
GitLab.com hosted runners
GitLab.com hosted runners are the machines that run GitLab CI/CD jobs for projects on GitLab.com, paid for in compute minutes.
This is a CI service, not a sandbox API. Each job gets a new VM on Google Cloud (Linux and Windows) or on AWS Mac hardware (macOS), with passwordless sudo, and the VM is deleted right after the job. It is built for building, testing and deploying the code in a GitLab project, and GitLab's Duo Agent Platform also runs Claude Code and Codex agents as CI/CD jobs on these runners.
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 | GitLab.com hosted runners: 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 checkout and caches between tasks, and both wipe the VM after every job. | 269th of 367, with limits $4,343 a month | 347th of 367, with limits $14,454 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An assistant that lives all month does not fit either: GitHub stops a WarpBuild job after 5 days, and GitLab stops a job after 3 hours. | 285th of 366, with limits $5,650 a month | 353rd of 366, with limits $21,858 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 | 287th of 345, with limits $600 a month | 320th of 345, with limits $1,896 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 machine, and both block inbound traffic to their runners. | 278th of 361, with limits $1,890 a month | 331st of 361, with limits $6,133 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 | 318th of 360, with limits $29,762 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 | 330th of 364, with limits $4,758 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 fit: WarpBuild if your code and workflows live on GitHub, GitLab.com hosted runners if your pipelines live in a GitLab project; boat suits CI that needs a warm disk or jobs longer than 3 hours. | 94th cheapest of 377 $864 a month | 128th cheapest of 377 $2,089 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB A dev box needs a disk that stays; WarpBuild carries state only through cache and disk snapshots, and GitLab only through cache and artifacts. | 182nd of 368, with limits $226 a month | 358th of 368, with limits $805 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 Both are headless, while boat streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium and computer use on every machine. | 264th of 369, with limits $1,320 a month | 342nd of 369, with limits $4,278 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 | 144th of 367, with limits $2,118 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 | 143rd of 346, with limits $2,854 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 | 319th of 338, with limits $58,429 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 | 87th of 360, with limits $1,383 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 GitLab has a Linux runner with an NVIDIA T4 on Premium and Ultimate; WarpBuild and boat have 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 Both have hosted macOS: WarpBuild on Apple M4 Pro, GitLab on Apple silicon in beta for Premium and Ultimate; boat runs Linux only. | 29th of 36, with limits $1,520 a month | 24th of 36, with limits $1,069 a month | Can't run it |
Key features
| Feature | WarpBuild | GitLab.com hosted runners | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kind of product | GitHub Actions runners, picked with a runs-on label | GitLab CI/CD runners, used by a project's .gitlab-ci.yml | Sandbox API: create, stop, fork and reach machines from your code |
| Isolation | Its own VM per job, destroyed after the build | New VM per job on Google Compute Engine, deleted right after | Full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts |
| How long a job can run | Up to 5 days, GitHub's cap for self-hosted runners | Up to 3 hours, whatever the project setting | No session cap on paid plans |
| Files after the job | Disk destroyed; cache and disk snapshots (deleted after 15 days) carry state over | VM deleted; shared cache (5 GB per archive) or artifacts carry state over | Disk stays, saved every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing |
| Fork | No; a later runner can boot from a saved snapshot in 45 to 60 seconds | No; every job starts from a fresh VM and image | Fork a running sandbox with its disk |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Docker; /dev/kvm on Linux x86-64, turned on with a label | Docker-in-Docker in privileged mode; nested virtualization not documented | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine |
| Reaching the machine | Inbound traffic blocked; SSH into failed jobs for debugging | Inbound traffic blocked; no web terminal on hosted runners | SSH, HTTPS URLs on up to 50 ports, raw TCP |
| Desktop and computer use | None | None; headless runners | 60fps desktop with Chromium, computer use API, embeddable stream |
| Coding agents | Hosts Claude Managed Agents sessions on stock runners | Duo Agent Platform runs Claude Code, Codex and others from issues and merge requests | Seven agents preinstalled, driven from outside with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Keeping keys out of the machine | GitHub secrets are passed into the runner | Managed credentials for the Claude and Codex agents only; other secrets enter as CI/CD variables | Credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; real keys never enter the sandbox |
| Operating systems and GPUs | Linux x86-64 and arm64, Windows Server, macOS on Apple M4 Pro | Linux x64 and Arm64, Windows (beta), macOS on Apple silicon (beta), NVIDIA T4 | Linux x86-64, no GPUs |
| Running in your own infrastructure | BYOC in your AWS, GCP or Azure account, with static egress IPs | Open-source GitLab Runner on your own machines, using no compute minutes | Hosted only, in the EU |
| Regions | Its cloud, an EU region on enterprise, or your own cloud region | US (Google Cloud us-east1 by default) | EU only (Germany, Finland, France) |
| How you pay | Per minute while a job runs, no plan fee | Compute minutes included per group, extra packs of 1,000 bought ahead | Monthly plan from $20, all of it usage credit spent per second |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | WarpBuild | GitLab.com hosted runners | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | No | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | Not published | No | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | No | Yes |
| Browser | No | Yes | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | No | Yes |
| SSH | Yes | No | 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 | Yes | 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 | Yes | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | No | No | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Agent harness API | No | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes | No | No |
| GPU | No | Yes | No |
| Windows | Yes | Yes | No |
| Arm64 | Yes | Yes | No |
| Self-hosting | No | Yes | No |
| BYOC | Yes | No | No |
| Open source | No | Yes | 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 | No | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for either WarpBuild or GitLab.com hosted runners: neither was part of StarSling's public sandbox benchmark. boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second there at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 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. WarpBuild and GitLab.com hosted runners 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 | GitLab.com hosted runners, 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 | $119 · Premium · 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 | $805 · Premium · 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 | $9,491 · Premium · 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 | $2,658 · Premium · 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 | $5,896 · Premium · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
WarpBuild: WarpBuild bills per minute while a job runs, with no plan fee, from $0.003 a minute for 2 vCPU; Windows costs twice the Linux x86-64 rate and macOS $0.08 a minute. Cache, snapshots and BYOC runners are billed extra.
GitLab.com hosted runners: GitLab counts compute minutes as run time times a cost factor, from 1 for small Linux up to 12 for the biggest machines. Plans include minutes per group (10,000 on Premium, $29 per user a month billed yearly), and extra minutes cost $10 per 1,000, bought ahead.
GitLab.com hosted runners: Plans start at $20 a month, and the whole fee is usage credit spent per second while a sandbox runs. A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Limits in those scenarios
Neither fits any of the five agent scenarios, because both keep no disk after a job. GitLab cuts every job at 3 hours, and when a group's minutes run out new jobs stop until you buy more. WarpBuild jobs can run 5 days, so an always-on agent still needs restarts, and its egress price is not published. Neither confirms 300 or 1,000 machines at once, and boat queues starts above 90 a minute in the 1,000-job burst.
| Scenario | WarpBuild | GitLab.com hosted runners | 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
your code is on GitHub and you want faster Actions runners on Linux, Windows or macOS, in its cloud or your own.
- Faster GitHub Actions. For teams on GitHub: change one runs-on label and jobs start on WarpBuild, with fast cache and Docker builders.
- Long jobs and macOS on M4 Pro. For long builds or Apple work: jobs can run up to 5 days, and macOS runs on Apple M4 Pro.
- Runners in your own cloud. For teams whose CI must stay in their AWS, GCP or Azure account, with their own network rules and fixed IPs.
Use GitLab.com hosted runners when
your code lives on GitLab.com and you want CI that works from the first pipeline, including a T4 GPU or your own free runners.
- Native CI for GitLab projects. For code on GitLab.com: runners are on by default, so the first pipeline just runs with no extra service.
- A GPU and more platforms. For CI that needs an NVIDIA T4, Arm64, Windows or macOS, GitLab hosts a runner for each.
- Your own runners, free of minutes. For teams with spare machines: the open-source GitLab Runner runs there and uses no compute minutes.
Where boat fits
WarpBuild and GitLab.com hosted runners are both CI services, and they are good at it. If what you are really running is agents, both hand you a machine that is wiped when the job ends and cannot be reached from outside. boat gives each agent a full VM that keeps its disk, takes inbound traffic and runs coding agents you drive from outside.
A machine that keeps its work
On both, an agent reclones and reinstalls everything each job. The workarounds cost: WarpBuild snapshots are billed per hour and expire after 15 days, GitLab's cache tops out at 5 GB per archive. boat saves the disk every minute and lets you fork it.
Apps and desktops you can open
Both block inbound traffic, so nobody can open the app an agent built or watch its browser. boat gives HTTPS URLs on up to 50 ports, raw TCP, SSH and a 60fps desktop with computer use.
Agents you drive, keys kept out
WarpBuild hosts only Claude Managed Agents and GitLab runs agents from issues and merge requests, and other secrets sit inside the job. boat drives seven agents from any program, and its credentials proxy keeps real keys for any HTTPS API out.
Use boat when agents 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 GitLab.com hosted runners.
Questions people ask
Is WarpBuild cheaper than GitLab.com hosted runners?
In our CI runners use case, WarpBuild comes to $864 a month against $2,089 on GitLab, and one workday agent comes to $57 against $119. GitLab's included plan minutes can make plain CI on a GitLab project cheaper than these rates. boat comes to $86 a month for the same CI use case.
Which is faster, WarpBuild or GitLab runners?
We have no comparable CPU measurement for either. boat did 26.69 runs per second on StarSling's sandbox benchmark at 4 vCPU / 8 GB.
Can WarpBuild or GitLab runners run Docker?
Yes, both run Docker in jobs: WarpBuild on its runners, GitLab through Docker-in-Docker in privileged mode. WarpBuild also offers /dev/kvm on Linux x86-64; GitLab does not document nested virtualization. boat has Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine.
How long can a job run on each?
A WarpBuild job can run up to 5 days, GitHub's cap for self-hosted runners. A GitLab.com hosted runner job stops after 3 hours. A boat sandbox has no session cap on paid plans.
Can I use WarpBuild or GitLab runners as a sandbox for AI agents?
Only inside CI. WarpBuild hosts Claude Managed Agents sessions and GitLab's Duo Agent Platform runs Claude Code and Codex as CI jobs, but each gets a fresh VM that keeps no disk and takes no inbound traffic.
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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