boat by ASCII
Vercel Sandbox alternative for AI agents
Vercel Sandbox bills CPU only while it is busy, but memory for the whole session. Even with an idle CPU, a boat sandbox costs a fifth of that memory charge, and it ran our build loop 2.1x faster.
boat vs Vercel Sandbox
| boat | Vercel Sandbox | |
|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Full VM, own kernel | Firecracker microVM |
| 4 vCPU / 8 GB, per hour | $0.036 | $0.17 idle to $0.68 busy |
| Left on for a month | $26 | $124 to $498 |
| Node.js build & test loop | 27.7 runs/s | 13.0 runs/s |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes |
| Desktop and browser | Yes | No |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | No |
| When the sandbox stops | Disk kept, free | Snapshot billed, sessions end at 24 h |
| Sandboxes for your users (battleships.dev) | $209/mo, 1st | $1,267/mo, 10th |
Prices are public list prices, re-checked 2026-09-28 to 2026-09-30 on battleships.dev. The boat team builds Battleships and holds boat to the same rules as every other provider. Compare every provider on battleships.dev
Which one should you use?
Use Vercel Sandbox when
your app already runs on Vercel, or you need egress rules and a secret proxy.
Use boat when
agents run longer than a day, need a desktop or a browser, or you want one flat price.
Start a sandbox
Install the CLI, then run boat new.
7-day free trial