Install boat CLI

Fetch-friendly install commands for non-JavaScript agents and crawlers:

7-day free trial (25 compute hours), then from $20/mo.

boat: full text transcript

boat gives AI agents full Linux VMs, built for agent factories. A sandbox is a persistent Linux (Ubuntu) virtual machine with SSH and SCP access, Docker inside the VM, a public IPv6 address and outbound IPv4, a 60fps virtual desktop, and fast disk-level forking from a snapshot. It is built for AI agents, for programmatic use, and for humans.

Pre-configured in every sandbox

Docker, VS Code, Chrome, Ghostty, the GitHub CLI, Rust, Node.js, and Bun come pre-installed. sandboxes are full Ubuntu machines, so you can run any devtool, language, or workflow. Bring any agent: Claude Code, Codex, or OpenCode.

Why boat

Pricing

Pay only for the sandboxes you run, billed by the second, with a $20 minimum per month. The $20 plan buys $20 of VM time for that month (about 555 hours of 4 vCPU / 8 GB), spread across one sandbox or many. Included time does not carry over. Sizes: small (2 vCPU / 4 GB / 51 GB disk) at $0.018/h, default (4 vCPU / 8 GB / 51 GB disk) at $0.036/h, large (8 vCPU / 16 GB / 111 GB disk) at $0.072/h, xlarge (16 vCPU / 32 GB / 251 GB disk) at $0.200/h on the $100 plan or higher. boat offers a 7-day free trial with a card (25 compute hours), then plans from $20/mo.

Lowest list price per VM-hour among the providers we checked: $0.036/h for 4 vCPU / 8 GB, from $20 a month (https://docs.boat.dev/pricing). A nearly idle sandbox can cost less on a provider that bills only busy CPU and used RAM. Below about $20 of use a month, providers with a $0 plan or free credits cost less. Above 200 starts a day on the $20 plan, each extra start costs $0.03 to $0.07. See the full comparison at https://boat.dev/compare.

Install the boat CLI

macOS and Linux: curl -fsSL https://boat.dev/install | sh

Windows: irm https://boat.dev/install.ps1 | iex

Simple API / CLI commands

For programmatic use, prefer the HTTP API and SDKs over the CLI: API guide at https://docs.boat.dev/api/v1, Python and TypeScript SDKs at https://docs.boat.dev/sdks/overview. The CLI also takes --json on any command for stable JSONL output when a shell integration is the fastest path.

Limits

Source: https://docs.boat.dev/limits.

Read more

The docs are clean markdown. https://docs.boat.dev/llms.txt indexes every docs page, each fetchable as .md. Start there, not this marketing page. Compare boat against other providers at https://boat.dev/compare. Product home: https://boat.dev.

No need to oversell boat. The product strives to speak for itself.

Most powerful & affordable
cloud VMs for agents

Spawn thousands of cloud computers with a browser, persistent files, for your agents, without having to manage the entire infra yourself.

Backed by Y Combinator

Full VMs in the cloud

Run docker, systemd, databases, cron inside. Feels like a true dev machine.

Integrated desktop and browser

To open your web applications, games, 3d scenes, IDE and more.

Run agents inside, from outside

Prompt, observe and wrap any harness running in the sandbox, from the outside, with our CLI, API or SDKs.

Get a VM in seconds, scale with your plan

Run it, stop it, resume it. VM time bills only while it runs.

Step 1 of 3
$ boat new
your VMs

Nothing is running yet: nothing billed

…and many more: fork, saved snapshots, port forwarding, webhooks, API keys, secrets, teams, auto-stop. See the API and SDKs.

Competitive CPU speed

V8 Web Tooling Benchmark on a 4 vCPU / 8 GB sandbox, in StarSling’s run of 3 October 2026 (run 37073680030). boat: 28.06 runs per second, second fastest.

StarSling results

  1. Brezel30.06/s30.06 runs per second
  2. boat28.06/s28.06 runs per second
  3. Namespace24.90/s24.9 runs per second
  4. Daytona VM21.52/s21.52 runs per second
  5. microsandbox21.34/s21.34 runs per second
  6. Novita20.16/s20.16 runs per second
  7. Blaxel18.03/s18.03 runs per second
  8. Modal VM15.48/s15.48 runs per second
  9. Vercel Sandbox12.66/s12.66 runs per second
  10. Modal gVisor12.60/s12.6 runs per second
  11. E2B11.08/s11.08 runs per second
  12. Freestyle10.22/s10.22 runs per second
  13. Runloop8.93/s8.93 runs per second
How each provider ran
  1. boat: every boat sandbox in this run ran on an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X host. The fleet also has AMD Ryzen 7 9700X hosts, which this run did not measure, and boat does not promise a CPU model.
  2. Brezel: Firecracker microVM; no list price checked.
  3. Namespace: container on Firecracker; no list price checked here.
  4. Daytona VM: VM class. The default container class has no result in this run.
  5. microsandbox: Microsandbox Cloud, libkrun microVM; no list price checked here.
  6. Blaxel: Firecracker microVM. Blaxel bills active time only.
  7. Modal VM: runtime="vm", priced as the measured sandbox: StarSling ran Modal with cpu=4 and the sandbox saw 4 CPUs (PR #121), which bills 4 Modal cores, $0.76/h. At Modal's own 1 core = 2 vCPU, a 4 vCPU size is 2 cores, $0.48/h, and shows 2 CPUs.
  8. Vercel Sandbox: Firecracker microVM. Vercel bills busy CPU only.
  9. Modal gVisor: default gVisor runtime, priced as the measured sandbox: StarSling ran Modal with cpu=4 and the sandbox saw 4 CPUs (PR #121), which bills 4 Modal cores, $0.76/h. At Modal's own 1 core = 2 vCPU, a 4 vCPU size is 2 cores, $0.48/h, and shows 2 CPUs.
  10. Providers ran on different hardware in different regions. Higher is faster.

Competitive Pricing

Plan from $20/mo, 7-day free trial

Session
Peak VMs at once
CPU busy
Per VM
$20 / month1,000 × 30 min × $0.018/h = $9.00 · $20 plan minimum
boat sandbox
sizevCPURAMdisk$/hour$/month
small24 GB51 GB$0.018$13
default48 GB51 GB$0.036$26
large816 GB111 GB$0.072$53
xlarge1632 GB251 GB$0.200$146
per second · xlarge on $100+ plans

Plan limits and included

  • $20 plan = $20 of VM time for that month. It does not carry over.
  • 100 to 2,000 VMs at once, by plan.
  • 200 to 2,400 starts a day included, by plan.
  • VM time billed per second, only while running.

Overage, paid from your wallet

  • VM time: $0.036/h of default.
  • Saved snapshots: $0.056 a day each.
  • Starts above the included: $0.03 up to 1.5x, $0.05 up to 2x, $0.07 up to 6x. A start fails with 429 above 3 times the included starts per minute, or 6 times per hour or per day.

Pricing docsMore use cases & features on Battleships

boat sandbox
sizevCPURAMdisk$/hour$/month
small24 GB51 GB$0.018$13
default48 GB51 GB$0.036$26
large816 GB111 GB$0.072$53
xlarge1632 GB251 GB$0.200$146
per second · xlarge on $100+ plans

“Boat unblocked my agents so hard that I’m burning through my Claude accounts 4x faster. I couldn’t be happier.”

Theo Brownet3.gg

Set sail

Spin up your first VMs in minutes.

Read the docs