boat vs Vercel Sandbox

boat costs $0.009 per vCPU-hour and Vercel Sandbox costs $0.128 per vCPU-hour. boat runs full VMs and has no session limit. Vercel Sandbox runs Firecracker microVMs and limits a session to 24 hours.

Updated

boat

Isolation
Full VM
Free tier
Free trial with 25 hours
Max session
No limit

Vercel Sandbox

Isolation
Firecracker microVM
Free tier
5 CPU-hours every month
Max session
24 hours

What is different

10 fields differ. The rest are the same or not listed.

boat
Vercel Sandbox
vCPU, per hour
boat: $0.009
Vercel Sandbox: $0.128
RAM, per GiB-hour
boat: Included
Vercel Sandbox: $0.0212
Storage
boat: Free
Vercel Sandbox: On Pro, snapshots $0.08 per GB-month and drives $0.05 per GB-month (beta).
Free tier
boat: Free trial with 25 hours
Vercel Sandbox: 5 CPU-hours every month
Billing
boat: Bundled machine time
Vercel Sandbox: Active CPU time only
Max session
boat: No limit
Vercel Sandbox: 24 hours
Largest sandbox
boat: 16 vCPU · 32 GiB
Vercel Sandbox: 8 vCPU · 16 GiB
Concurrent sandboxes
boat: Up to 2,000
Vercel Sandbox: Up to 10,000
Isolation
boat: Full VM
Vercel Sandbox: Firecracker microVM
Integrations
boat: MCP
Vercel Sandbox: Claude Agent SDK, LangChain, OpenAI Agents SDK, Vercel AI SDK

Full comparison

18 fields, at each provider's list price

Pricing

vCPU, per hour
boat: $0.009
Vercel Sandbox: $0.128
RAM, per GiB-hour
boat: Included
Vercel Sandbox: $0.0212
Storage
boat: Free
Vercel Sandbox: On Pro, snapshots $0.08 per GB-month and drives $0.05 per GB-month (beta).
Free tier
boat: Free trial with 25 hours
Vercel Sandbox: 5 CPU-hours every month
Paid plan from
boat: $20 / month
Vercel Sandbox: $20 / month
Billing
boat: Bundled machine time
Vercel Sandbox: Active CPU time only

Limits

Max session
boat: No limit
Vercel Sandbox: 24 hours
Idle stop
boat: Not listed
Vercel Sandbox: Not listed
Largest sandbox
boat: 16 vCPU · 32 GiB
Vercel Sandbox: 8 vCPU · 16 GiB
Concurrent sandboxes
boat: Up to 2,000
Vercel Sandbox: Up to 10,000

Platform

Isolation
boat: Full VM
Vercel Sandbox: Firecracker microVM
GPU
boat: No
Vercel Sandbox: Not listed
Snapshots
boat:
Vercel Sandbox:
Pause and resume
boat:
Vercel Sandbox:

Developer

SDKs
boat: Python, JavaScript / TypeScript
Vercel Sandbox: Python, JavaScript / TypeScript
Integrations
boat: MCP
Vercel Sandbox: Claude Agent SDK, LangChain, OpenAI Agents SDK, Vercel AI SDK

Trust

License
boat: Not listed
Vercel Sandbox: Not listed
BYOC
boat: Not listed
Vercel Sandbox: Not listed

Hourly cost

One sandbox running for one hour

boat
Vercel Sandbox
1 vCPU · 2 GiB
boat: $0.009
Vercel Sandbox: $0.170
2 vCPU · 4 GiB
boat: $0.018
Vercel Sandbox: $0.341
4 vCPU · 8 GiB
boat: $0.036
Vercel Sandbox: $0.682

Compute only, at list rates.

Open the calculator

Which one fits

Based on the fields above

boat fits when

  • A session must run longer than 24 hours.
  • You want each sandbox to be a full VM.
  • You use MCP.
  • You want the lower list price: $0.018 against $0.341 an hour for 2 vCPU and 4 GiB.

Vercel Sandbox fits when

  • You want each sandbox in its own microVM.
  • You use the Claude Agent SDK, LangChain, the OpenAI Agents SDK or the Vercel AI SDK.
  • Your code waits a lot: CPU is billed only while it is in use.
  • You need SOC 2 Type II.

More comparisons

See all comparisons

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