boat alternatives
The 5 alternatives below are grouped by kind of sandbox, and each says what it does differently from boat. Start from whatever made you look: missing GPUs, session limits, self-hosting, pricing or isolation.
Why teams look beyond boat
A low-priced EU-hosted full VM for agents that need persistence and a desktop, less suited to high-burst, compliance-gated or US-resident workloads.
- No US or Asian regions, and snapshot copies may be stored outside the EU
- SOC 2 is "in progress", not certified
- No GPUs on any size
- Network policy cannot be set through the API, and the default user has passwordless sudo, so in-VM firewall rules can be removed by the agent
- Sandbox starts are rate-limited per minute, hour and day by plan, with no queueing
boat alternatives, by kind
Hosted sandbox platforms
SDK-driven sandboxes you create, run code in and destroy through an API.
E2B
Open-source cloud sandboxes for AI agents, each a Firecracker microVM, with pause/resume, snapshots and forking.
- Firecracker microVM
- Open source
- Self-hostable
- BYOC
- Pause/resume
How it differs: Code interpreters and short-to-medium-lived agent tasks that need microVM isolation, with an open-source self-host path. The safe default for most agent builders: mature, open source, microVM-isolated and widely supported.
Tensorlake Sandboxes
MicroVM sandboxes with memory snapshots, copy-on-the-fly cloning, warm pools and egress policy, alongside hosted Git and a versioned filesystem, with an Apache-2.0 runtime and BYOC on AWS.
- MicroVM (gVisor for GPU)
- Open source
- Self-hostable
- BYOC
- GPU
- Pause/resume
How it differs: Agent harnesses, RL rollouts and coding agents that need memory snapshots, cloning and warm pools at scale. A feature-rich microVM platform for agent harnesses at scale, with open-source and BYOC options that most hosted peers lack.
Persistent VMs and agent computers
Full, long-lived virtual machines that an agent keeps, forks and returns to.
exe.dev
Persistent root VMs for people and their agents, driven entirely over SSH (or the same commands via HTTPS and MCP), with replicated NVMe storage, VM copies and flat-rate CPU/RAM pools in nine regions.
- VM (VMM per VM)
- BYOC
- Snapshots
How it differs: Developers who want a fleet of persistent root VMs they and their agents reach over SSH, at a flat monthly price. A flat-rate fleet of persistent SSH-driven VMs for agent-assisted developers, rather than an SDK-driven sandbox API for high-volume automation.
Fly.io Sprites
Persistent, hardware-isolated Linux computers for AI agents with a durable 100 GB disk, checkpoints, and no compute charges while idle.
- MicroVM
- Pause/resume
How it differs: Long-running, stateful agent computers that should cost nothing while idle. The most natural “persistent computer per agent” model, with idle-free billing.
Upstash Box
Persistent Docker-container "boxes" for coding agents with Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and Cursor built in, billed on active CPU time rather than wall-clock.
- Docker container
- Pause/resume
How it differs: Long-lived per-user coding-agent workspaces where idle time should cost nothing. A persistent, CPU-time-billed workspace for coding agents that trades VM isolation for cheap idle time.
boat vs alternatives
| Sandbox | Isolation | Open source | Self-host / BYOC | Cold start (vendor) | Max session | Snapshots / pause | GPU | SDKs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| boat | Full VM, own kernel | No | No / No | Not documented | No cap (auto-stop 1 h default) | Yes / Yes | No | Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, CLI, REST API |
| E2B | Firecracker microVM | Yes | Yes / Yes | Not documented | 1 h / 24 h (Pro) | Yes / Yes | No | Python, JavaScript/TypeScript |
| exe.dev | VM (VMM per VM) | No | No / Yes | ~1 s (claim) | No cap | Yes / Not documented | Not documented | CLI (over SSH), HTTPS API, MCP server |
| Fly.io Sprites | MicroVM | No | No / No | 0.1–2 s wake | Unlimited | Yes / Yes | No | JavaScript/TypeScript, Go, Python, Elixir |
| Tensorlake Sandboxes | MicroVM (gVisor for GPU) | Yes | Yes / Yes | ~100s of ms (claim) | 2 h / 24 h / unlimited (Pro) | Yes / Yes | Yes | Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Rust, CLI, REST API |
| Upstash Box | Docker container | No | No / No | Not documented | No cap (idle pause 1 h / 6 h) | Yes / Yes | No | JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, CLI, MCP server |
Frequently asked questions
What are the main alternatives to boat?
Is there an open-source alternative to boat?
Cite this page
Agent Sandboxes. (2026). boat alternatives. agentsandboxes.org. Last reviewed November 9, 2026. https://agentsandboxes.org/alternatives/boat/
Found an error or a missing sandbox? Submit a correction — every entry links to the sources it relies on.