AWS EC2 vs DigitalOcean
AWS EC2 is a huge menu of cloud VMs: Linux, Windows and macOS, on Intel, AMD and Arm, in 39 regions, with discounts if you commit for years. DigitalOcean Droplets are simpler Linux servers with one hourly price per size, a monthly cap and data transfer included, but they keep billing while powered off.
The companies and products
AWS EC2
AWS EC2 is Amazon's general-purpose cloud VM service, not a sandbox product: you rent virtual servers by the second and set them up yourself.
You pick an instance type (Intel, AMD, Graviton Arm, GPU or Mac), a machine image and a network, and EC2 boots a Nitro VM with its own kernel and root access. Disks are EBS volumes, inbound traffic goes through security groups, and anything agent-specific (agents, desktops, HTTPS URLs, key handling) is yours to build. It is built for every kind of server workload, from websites to GPU training, across AWS's worldwide regions.
DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean is a general-purpose cloud, and Droplets are its Linux virtual machines.
A Droplet is a Linux VM you rent by size, with root, a public IP, local SSD and a monthly transfer allowance. You pick an image, then install and run your own software on it, next to DigitalOcean products like Kubernetes, managed databases, load balancers and cloud firewalls. It is a server host, not an agent sandbox, so this page compares the two where they overlap: giving an agent its own Linux machine. DigitalOcean also sells two separate products in preview, Harness Runtime for agents and MicroVMs, which are not Droplets.
Which use cases each one fits
For each use case, Battleships prices every sandbox provider on the same workload and sorts them from the cheapest monthly bill up. “5th cheapest of 364” means 4 of the other 363 providers run that workload, with every feature it needs, for less. “With limits” means the provider runs it but misses something, so it is listed after every full match. Open a use case for its whole ranking and what each provider misses.
| Use case and its workload | AWS EC2: price rank | DigitalOcean: price rank | bochka: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month | 87th of 367, with limits $775 a month | 134th of 367, with limits $1,187 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An always-on assistant is a compromise on both clouds, since you build the agent setup, HTTPS endpoint and backups yourself; bochka has them built in. | 114th of 366, with limits $646 a month | 35th of 366, with limits $1,429 a month | 5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month |
| Code interpreter bursts 100 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 200,000 sessions of 1 min a month | 102nd of 345, with limits $165 a month | 63rd of 345, with limits $60 a month | 186th of 345, with limits $2,000 a month |
| Sandboxes for your users 300 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 23 min a month Sandboxes for your users need raised limits on both clouds first, 5 vCPUs per region on a new AWS account and 3 Droplets on a new DigitalOcean team; bochka fits fully. | 70th of 361, with limits $607 a month | 54th of 361, with limits $421 a month | Cheapest of 361 $209 a month |
| RL rollouts 1,000 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 1,000,000 sessions of 3 min a month Both clouds handle RL rollouts better than bochka's start limits once their quotas are raised, with EC2 placing higher than DigitalOcean. | 13th of 360, with limits $830 a month | 31st of 360, with limits $1,786 a month | 34th of 360, with limits $2,000 a month |
| Agent evals 250 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 15,000 sessions of 20 min a month EC2 is a full match for agent evals and DigitalOcean is a compromise, mostly because a new DigitalOcean team can run only 3 Droplets at once; bochka is also a full match. | 5th cheapest of 364 $177 a month | 106th of 364, with limits $357 a month | 10th cheapest of 364 $200 a month |
| CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month EC2 fully fits CI runners, while DigitalOcean's 3-Droplet default limit makes parallel jobs a compromise; bochka fits too and needs no runner fleet to manage. | 21st cheapest of 377 $255 a month | 146th of 377, with limits $171 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB All three fit a 24/7 dev box: a Droplet is a classic always-on server, EC2 adds disk and IPv4 charges, and bochka keeps the disk with snapshots every minute. | 59th cheapest of 368 $76 a month | 39th cheapest of 368 $48 a month | 18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month |
| Computer-use agents 50 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 20,000 sessions of 15 min a month Neither cloud ships a desktop or computer-use API on Linux, so you install and stream one yourself; bochka streams a 60fps desktop out of the box. | 103rd of 369, with limits $195 a month | 117th of 369, with limits $263 a month | 6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month |
| Browser-use agents 50 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 10 min a month | 165th of 367, with limits $101 a month | 56th of 367, with limits $147 a month | 7th cheapest of 367 $200 a month |
| Scraping & bots (startup scale) 50 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 100,000 sessions of 3 min a month | 195th of 346, with limits $116 a month | 88th of 346, with limits $175 a month | 6th cheapest of 346 $90 a month |
| Mass scraping & bots (undetectable) 1,000 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 3,000,000 sessions of 2 min a month | 82nd of 338, with limits $2,046 a month | 69th of 338, with limits $1,786 a month | 71st of 338, with limits $1,800 a month |
| Parallel red teaming 200 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 5,000 sessions of 30 min a month | 108th of 360, with limits $45 a month | 22nd of 360, with limits $199 a month | 2nd cheapest of 360 $200 a month |
| GPU eval jobs 10 at once · 8 vCPU / 32 GB · 500 sessions of 30 min a month Only EC2 has a rank here: DigitalOcean rents GPU Droplets too, but a new team on Tier 1 gets no GPU Droplets, and bochka has no GPUs. | 25th cheapest of 98 $1,723 a month | Can't run it | Can't run it |
| macOS agents 5 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 1,000 sessions of 20 min a month | Can't run it | Can't run it | Can't run it |
Key features
| Feature | AWS EC2 | DigitalOcean | bochka |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | A general cloud VM on the Nitro system; you install and wire everything else | A general Linux server you set up and run yourself | An agent sandbox: a full VM with agents, desktop, URLs and snapshots set up |
| Operating systems and CPUs | Linux and Windows on Intel, AMD and Graviton Arm; macOS on Mac Dedicated Hosts | Linux only, on x86; Basic plans share hyper-threads, dedicated CPU plans cost more | Linux on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) hosts; Wine for Windows apps |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Docker, root and systemd on any instance; /dev/kvm only on C8i, M8i, R8i and metal instances | Root and Docker; nested VMs are mentioned in the live migration docs but not listed as a feature | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine, documented |
| Billing | Per second, 60 second minimum; disk and public IPv4 billed on top; lower rates with 1-year or 3-year commitments | Per second, 60 second minimum, capped at 672 hours a month; disk and IPv4 included in bundled plans; no public commitment discounts | Monthly plan from $20 that all becomes usage credit, spent per second on running sandboxes |
| Stopping | Compute stops billing; the EBS disk and public IPv4 keep billing | A powered-off Droplet is billed in full; you destroy it to stop paying | A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk |
| Snapshots | Manual EBS snapshots, or scheduled with Data Lifecycle Manager | On-demand disk snapshots at $0.06 per GB-month; paid scheduled backups | Automatic snapshots every minute and on stop |
| Pause and fork | Hibernation keeps memory for the same instance; a copy means making an image and booting a new instance | No memory pause; take a live snapshot, then create new Droplets from it | Fork a running sandbox in one call (disk, no memory); resume reboots from disk |
| Reaching the machine | Public IPv4 ($0.005 an hour) and any port through security groups; HTTPS needs your own certificate and load balancer or web server | Public IPv4 and IPv6 on any port; HTTPS needs your own certificates or a load balancer | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; dedicated IPv6 or IPv4 |
| Data transfer out | First 100 GB a month free across the account, then $0.09 per GB | Each Droplet adds an allowance to a team pool (5,000 GiB for the 4 vCPU / 8 GB size), then $0.01 per GiB | Open internet on every plan |
| Outbound network rules | Security groups per instance; domain allowlists with AWS Network Firewall or DNS Firewall (paid) | Free cloud firewalls with outbound rules by IP range, Droplet or tag | Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist |
| Coding agents and keys | None preinstalled; IAM credentials and secrets are read from inside the instance | None on Droplets; the separate Harness Runtime preview runs agents in microVMs | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, a prompt, steer and events API, and an AI credentials proxy for any HTTPS API |
| Desktop and computer use | Linux images have no desktop; Windows instances have Remote Desktop; no computer-use API | Headless Linux; you install a desktop and VNC yourself | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream |
| GPUs | Nvidia GPU instances, from L4 and L40S up to H100 and H200 | Nvidia and AMD GPU Droplets, on demand, reserved or spot (not on a new Tier 1 team) | None |
| Regions | 39 regions and 124 availability zones worldwide | 13 regions in the US, Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | AWS EC2 | DigitalOcean | bochka |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | No | Yes |
| Browser | No | No | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | No | Yes |
| SSH | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | Yes | No | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | Yes | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | No | Yes | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Memory fork | No | No | No |
| Custom image (Docker or snapshot) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | No | No | No |
| Wake on request | No | No | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | No | No | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | Yes | Yes | No |
| Egress allowlist | Yes | Yes | No |
| Secret proxy | No | No | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | No | No | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | No | No | Yes |
| Agent harness API | No | No | Yes |
| MCP server | No | Yes | No |
| GPU | Yes | Yes | No |
| Windows | Yes | No | No |
| Arm64 | Yes | No | No |
| Self-hosting | No | No | No |
| BYOC | No | No | No |
| Open source | No | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | Not published | No | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Not published | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | Yes | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for EC2 or DigitalOcean: neither was part of the public StarSling benchmark run we use. In that run, on 2026-09-29, bochka did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. EC2 speed depends on the instance family you pick, and DigitalOcean's Basic plans share hyper-threads with other Droplets while its dedicated plans do not.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. AWS EC2 and DigitalOcean have no published run in this suite yet, so there is no like-for-like number to compare.
Pricing in five scenarios
Each bill is priced from the providers' public price lists by the open Battleships engine, with the cheapest plan that runs the scenario.
| Scenario | AWS EC2, a month | DigitalOcean, a month | bochka, a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, 8 hours a day, 22 days a month, files kept between days | $21 · Pay-as-you-go (no platform fee) | $13 · Pay as you go | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $51 · Pay-as-you-go (no platform fee) · with limits | $48 · Pay as you go | $26 · $20/mo |
| 50 agents in parallel 50 machines of 4 vCPU / 8 GB at once, 8-hour sessions, 1,100 sessions a month, Docker inside | $944 · Pay-as-you-go (no platform fee) | $629 · Pay as you go · with limits | $317 · $20/mo × 3 seats |
| Sandboxes for your users 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 30,000 sessions of 10 minutes a month, up to 300 at once | $269 · Pay-as-you-go (no platform fee) | $179 · Pay as you go · with limits | $200 · $100/mo × 2 seats |
| 1,000 short jobs at once 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 1,000 at once, 3 minutes each, 200,000 jobs a month | $502 · Pay-as-you-go (no platform fee) | $357 · Pay as you go · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
AWS EC2: EC2 bills each instance per second (60 second minimum) at its list rate, here the Graviton c7g sizes on demand, with no platform fee. EBS disks and public IPv4 addresses bill on top, also while stopped, and lower rates need a 1-year or 3-year commitment.
DigitalOcean: Each Droplet size has a fixed hourly price, here the shared Basic sizes, billed per second with a 60 second minimum and capped at 672 hours a month. Billing runs from create to destroy, including while powered off, and snapshots and backups cost extra.
DigitalOcean: You pick a monthly plan from $20, and all of it becomes usage credit spent per second on running sandboxes. A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Limits in those scenarios
Both clouds start new accounts small. A new AWS account can run 5 vCPUs of standard On-Demand instances per region, one 4 vCPU machine, and AWS raises it with usage or on request; EC2's always-on price shown also needs a 3-year commitment. A new DigitalOcean team is on Tier 1 with 3 Droplets at once, so 50 agents in parallel, sandboxes for your users and the 1,000-job burst do not fit until it reaches a higher tier. On bochka the 1,000-job burst is the one that does not fit, because starts per minute, hour and day are capped and the burst is queued.
| Scenario | AWS EC2 | DigitalOcean | bochka |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays | None that bite | None that bite | None that bite |
| One agent that never stops |
| None that bite | None that bite |
| 50 agents in parallel | None that bite |
| None that bite |
| Sandboxes for your users | None that bite |
| None that bite |
| 1,000 short jobs at once | None that bite |
|
|
Which one should you use?
Use AWS EC2 when
you need Windows, macOS or Arm, regions all over the world, memory hibernation, or long-term commitment discounts, and you have the people to run a large cloud.
- Windows, macOS and Arm. Useful if your work needs more than x86 Linux: EC2 runs Windows, Graviton Arm and Mac instances, and Droplets run only Linux.
- Regions almost everywhere. Useful if users sit far from DigitalOcean's 13 regions: EC2 runs in 39 regions across every continent but Antarctica.
- Memory hibernation and domain rules. Useful if a machine must resume with its processes intact, or only reach chosen domains: EC2 offers hibernation and DNS Firewall.
Use DigitalOcean when
you want simple Linux servers with one predictable price per size, data transfer included and free firewalls, and a few long-lived machines are enough.
- One simple price per size. Useful if you want a bill you can predict: each Droplet size has one hourly price, capped at 672 hours a month, IPv4 included.
- Data transfer included. Useful if your machines send a lot of data: each Droplet brings thousands of GiB of transfer, and extra costs $0.01 per GiB.
- Free outbound firewall rules. Useful if you want to limit where a server connects by IP range without paying for an extra firewall product.
Where bochka fits
Both EC2 and DigitalOcean rent general servers, and both are strong for websites, databases and GPU work. If what you are really running is agents, each one wants a ready machine it can break, park and branch, and on either cloud you build that yourself. bochka gives every agent a full VM with its own kernel, Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm, with the agent tooling already there.
Agents and keys built in
An EC2 instance and a Droplet both start empty, with your AI keys sitting inside where any root process can read them. bochka ships coding agents you drive from outside, and its credentials proxy keeps real keys out of the machine.
Free stops, minute snapshots, fork
A stopped EC2 instance still bills its disk and IPv4, and a powered-off Droplet bills in full. Copying either means an image or snapshot and a fresh boot. bochka saves the disk every minute, stops for free and forks a running sandbox.
Desktop and HTTPS ready
Neither cloud gives a Linux machine a desktop or an HTTPS URL, so you set up VNC, certificates and a load balancer per machine. bochka streams a 60fps desktop and serves up to 50 ports on token-protected HTTPS URLs.
Use bochka when the machines are for agents: a full VM each with coding agents driven from outside, keys kept out, a desktop, HTTPS URLs, minute-by-minute snapshots, free stops and forks. Compare it one to one: bochka vs AWS EC2 and bochka vs DigitalOcean.
Questions people ask
Is AWS EC2 cheaper than DigitalOcean?
Usually not in the scenarios we priced. One coding agent on workdays comes to $13 a month on DigitalOcean against $21 on EC2, and one agent that never stops to $48 against $51, where EC2 needs a 3-year commitment. 50 agents in parallel come to $629 on DigitalOcean against $944 on EC2, but DigitalOcean needs a higher tier than a new team gets.
Which is faster, EC2 or DigitalOcean?
We have no comparable measurement for either one. EC2 speed depends on the instance family you choose, and DigitalOcean's Basic Droplets share hyper-threads with other customers while its dedicated CPU plans do not. bochka did 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in StarSling's public benchmark.
Can EC2 and Droplets run Docker and nested VMs?
Both run Docker, since each machine is a full VM with root. EC2 supports KVM inside virtual C8i, M8i and R8i instances and on metal instances, while DigitalOcean mentions nested VMs in its live migration docs but does not list them as a feature. On bochka, /dev/kvm is documented on every machine.
Do I pay for a stopped machine?
On EC2, a stopped instance stops compute charges but still bills its EBS disk and any public IPv4. On DigitalOcean, a powered-off Droplet bills in full until you destroy it. On bochka, a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Which has more regions?
EC2 runs in 39 regions and 124 availability zones. DigitalOcean has 13 regions in the US, Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia. bochka runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France, with EU data residency.
Is bochka SOC 2 compliant?
SOC 2 is in progress. We're open about where we stand: live status at status.bochka.xyz and our data retention policy at docs.bochka.xyz/data-retention.
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