boat vs Shellbox
boat costs $0.009 per vCPU-hour and Shellbox costs $0.01 per vCPU-hour. boat runs full VMs and has no session limit. Shellbox runs Firecracker microVMs and has no session limit.
Updated
boat
- Isolation
- Full VM
- Free tier
- 7-day free trial with 25 hours of compute
- Max session
- No limit
Shellbox
- Isolation
- Firecracker microVM
- Free tier
- Not listed
- Max session
- No limit
What is different
7 fields differ. The rest are the same or not listed.
boat
Shellbox
- vCPU, per hour
- boat: $0.009
- Shellbox: $0.01
- Storage
- boat: Free
- Shellbox: A stopped box costs $0.50 per x1 slot per month
- Paid plan from
- boat: $20 / month
- Shellbox: Pay as you go
- Concurrent sandboxes
- boat: Up to 2,000
- Shellbox: Up to 16
- Isolation
- boat: Full VM
- Shellbox: Firecracker microVM
- Pause and resume
- boat: No
- Shellbox:
- Integrations
- boat: MCP, Claude Code
- Shellbox: Claude Code
Full comparison
18 fields, at each provider's list price
boatdocs
Shellboxshellbox
Pricing
- vCPU, per hour
- boat: $0.009
- Shellbox: $0.01
- RAM, per GiB-hour
- boat: Included
- Shellbox: Included
- Storage
- boat: Free
- Shellbox: A stopped box costs $0.50 per x1 slot per month
- Free tier
- boat: 7-day free trial with 25 hours of compute
- Shellbox: Not listed
- Paid plan from
- boat: $20 / month
- Shellbox: Pay as you go
- Billing
- boat: Bundled machine time
- Shellbox: Bundled machine time
Limits
- Max session
- boat: No limit
- Shellbox: No limit
- Idle stop
- boat: Not listed
- Shellbox: After 2 minutes
- Largest sandbox
- boat: 16 vCPU · 32 GiB
- Shellbox: 16 vCPU · 32 GiB
- Concurrent sandboxes
- boat: Up to 2,000
- Shellbox: Up to 16
Platform
- Isolation
- boat: Full VM
- Shellbox: Firecracker microVM
- GPU
- boat: No
- Shellbox: Not listed
- Snapshots
- boat:
- Shellbox:
- Pause and resume
- boat: No
- Shellbox:
Developer
- SDKs
- boat: Python, JavaScript / TypeScript
- Shellbox: Not listed
- Integrations
- boat: MCP, Claude Code
- Shellbox: Claude Code
Trust
- License
- boat: Not listed
- Shellbox: Not listed
- BYOC
- boat: Not listed
- Shellbox: Not listed
Hourly cost
One sandbox running for one hour
boat
Shellbox
- 1 vCPU · 2 GiB
- boat: $0.009
- Shellbox: $0.010
- 2 vCPU · 4 GiB
- boat: $0.018
- Shellbox: $0.020
- 4 vCPU · 8 GiB
- boat: $0.036
- Shellbox: $0.040
Compute only, at list rates.
Open the calculatorWhich one fits
Based on the fields above
boat fits when
- You want each sandbox to be a full VM.
- You use MCP.
- You want the lower list price: $0.018 against $0.020 an hour for 2 vCPU and 4 GiB.
- You need a desktop in the sandbox.
Shellbox fits when
- You want to pay only for usage, with no plan fee.
- You want each sandbox in its own microVM.
- You need pause and resume.
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