bochka vs Contabo
Contabo is a classic hosting company: you rent a KVM server by the month and set it up yourself. bochka starts sandbox VMs from an API in seconds, saves them every minute, and ships a desktop and coding agents you drive from outside.
Where bochka stands out
State saved every minute, and forks
bochka snapshots a running sandbox every minute and again when it stops, so a bad agent step loses at most a minute. You can fork a running sandbox into copies, or save it as a named template others start from. A Contabo Cloud VPS 4 has one manual disk snapshot slot, restored in place, and Cloud VDS has none.
Coding agents you drive from outside
bochka ships Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and other agents in every sandbox, and one API prompts them, steers them mid-task and streams their events. Its credentials proxy keeps real AI keys out of the sandbox. On Contabo you install the agents, write the glue to run them over SSH, and store keys on the server.
A desktop and nested virtualization ready
Every bochka sandbox can show a 60fps desktop with Chromium for computer use, and has Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm ready. A Contabo VPS is a headless server, and nested virtualization works only on the pricier Cloud VDS line.
The companies and products
bochka
bochka.xyz runs sandboxes for AI agents: each one is a full Linux VM with its own kernel.
You start a machine with one command or one API call, then SSH in, run Docker, open a desktop, or let a built-in agent (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and others) work in it. The disk stays between sessions, and a stopped sandbox costs nothing.
- Isolation
- Full VM per sandbox, own kernel
- Regions
- EU: Germany, Finland, France
Contabo
Contabo is a German hosting company, founded in Munich in 2003, that rents VPS, dedicated-core VDS, GPU and dedicated servers by the month.
A Contabo Cloud VPS is a KVM virtual machine with shared vCPU cores, a fixed RAM allocation, a static IPv4 and root access, which you order, pay for and then manage yourself. It is a VPS host, not a sandbox product: there is no per-second billing, no agent tooling and no managed HTTPS in front of the server. It fits people who want one cheap server that runs all month in a region of their choice.
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. “3rd cheapest of 367” means 2 of the other 366 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 | bochka: price rank | Contabo: price rank |
|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month A software factory starts and stops many machines a day; bochka does that by API per second, while Contabo bills each server for a whole month. | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month | 79th of 367, with limits $660 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB Both can keep an assistant running for months; bochka adds saved state every minute and a built-in agent API, while on Contabo you install and watch everything yourself. | 5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month | 95th of 366, with limits $330 a month |
| Code interpreter bursts 100 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 200,000 sessions of 1 min a month Neither suits many one-minute code runs well: Contabo bills by the month, and bochka's start limits make big bursts a compromise. | 186th of 345, with limits $2,000 a month | 159th of 345, with limits $660 a month |
| Sandboxes for your users 300 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 23 min a month Handing a fresh sandbox to each of your users needs fast starts and stops; Contabo servers take minutes to provision after payment and bill monthly. | Cheapest of 361 $209 a month | 153rd of 361, with limits $1,980 a month |
| RL rollouts 1,000 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 1,000,000 sessions of 3 min a month | 34th of 360, with limits $2,000 a month | 108th of 360, with limits $6,600 a month |
| Agent evals 250 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 15,000 sessions of 20 min a month | 10th cheapest of 364 $200 a month | 177th of 364, with limits $1,650 a month |
| CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month Both run CI jobs on real VMs; bochka bills only while a job runs, while a Contabo runner is rented for the month whether it is busy or not. | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month | 133rd cheapest of 377 $2,980 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Contabo fits one server that runs all month very well: a flat monthly rent buys a 4 vCPU / 8 GB box with root and a static IP. | 18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month | Cheapest of 368 $6.6 a month |
| Computer-use agents 50 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 20,000 sessions of 15 min a month bochka streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium for computer use; a Contabo VPS is headless until you install and stream a desktop yourself. | 6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month | 140th of 369, with limits $330 a month |
| Browser-use agents 50 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 10 min a month | 7th cheapest of 367 $200 a month | 232nd of 367, with limits $330 a month |
| Scraping & bots (startup scale) 50 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 100,000 sessions of 3 min a month | 6th cheapest of 346 $90 a month | 258th of 346, with limits $330 a month |
| Mass scraping & bots (undetectable) 1,000 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 3,000,000 sessions of 2 min a month | 71st of 338, with limits $1,800 a month | 184th of 338, with limits $6,600 a month |
| Parallel red teaming 200 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 5,000 sessions of 30 min a month | 2nd cheapest of 360 $200 a month | 321st of 360, with limits $1,320 a month |
| GPU eval jobs 10 at once · 8 vCPU / 32 GB · 500 sessions of 30 min 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 |
Key features
| Feature | bochka | Contabo |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Sandbox VMs for agents, started and stopped from an API | Monthly-rented VPS and VDS servers you set up yourself |
| Isolation | Full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts | KVM VM; Cloud VPS shares vCPU cores, Cloud VDS has dedicated cores |
| Starting a machine | A new sandbox from the API in seconds, billed per second | Order and pay, then provisioning takes a few minutes; minimum term of one month |
| Nested virtualization | /dev/kvm on every machine | Not supported on any VPS plan; supported on Cloud VDS |
| Docker, root and systemd | Ready on every machine | Full root on the VM; you install Docker yourself |
| Saved state | Snapshots every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing | 1 to 5 manual disk snapshots by plan, kept 30 days, restored in place; none on Cloud VDS |
| Fork and templates | Fork a running sandbox; named snapshots as templates, shareable by code | No fork; custom images upload as ISO or QCOW2 |
| Desktop and computer use | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream | Headless server; a VNC console for setup and rescue |
| Coding agents | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API | None built in; 1-Click images for apps like n8n, Ollama and OpenClaw |
| Keeping keys out of the machine | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register | None; secrets live inside the server |
| Reaching the machine | HTTPS URLs with TLS for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; dedicated IPv6 or IPv4 | Static public IPv4 and /64 IPv6, all ports; domains and TLS are yours to set up |
| GPUs | None | GPU VPS with an Nvidia RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell |
| Windows | No Windows guests; Wine for Windows apps | Windows Server 2016 to 2025 as a licensed add-on |
| Regions | EU only: Germany, Finland, France | EU, UK, US, Singapore, Japan, India and Australia |
| Compliance and transparency | SOC 2 is in progress. We're open about where we stand: live status and data retention policy. | No SOC 2 report published |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | bochka | Contabo |
|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | No |
| Root | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | Yes | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | Yes | No |
| Browser | Yes | No |
| Computer-use API | Yes | No |
| SSH | Yes | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | Yes | No |
| Automatic snapshots | Yes | No |
| Fork/clone | Yes | No |
| Live fork (no pause) | Yes | No |
| Memory fork | No | No |
| Custom image (Docker or snapshot) | Yes | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | Yes | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | No | No |
| Wake on request | No | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | Yes | No |
| Raw TCP inbound | Yes | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | No | Yes |
| Egress allowlist | No | No |
| Secret proxy | Yes | No |
| Secret proxy for any API | Yes | No |
| Preinstalled agents | Yes | No |
| Agent harness API | Yes | No |
| MCP server | No | No |
| GPU | No | Yes |
| Windows | No | Yes |
| Arm64 | No | No |
| Self-hosting | No | No |
| BYOC | No | No |
| Open source | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Yes | Not published |
| Spend limits | Yes | Not published |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Yes | No |
| Audit logs | No | Not published |
| SSO | No | No |
| SOC 2 | No | No |
| HIPAA | No | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Yes | Not published |
Performance
Contabo is not in the hpc-sandbox-benchmarks run, so there is no comparable CPU measurement for it. bochka was measured on that Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, and the table shows its score. Contabo's Cloud VPS uses shared vCPU cores and its Cloud VDS dedicated cores; we don't guess how either would score.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Contabo has 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 | bochka, a month | Contabo, 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 | $20 · $20/mo | $7 · Usage account |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $26 · $20/mo | $7 · Usage account |
| 50 agents in parallel 50 machines of 4 vCPU / 8 GB at once, 8-hour sessions, 1,100 sessions a month, Docker inside | $317 · $20/mo × 3 seats | $330 · Usage account |
| Sandboxes for your users 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 30,000 sessions of 10 minutes a month, up to 300 at once | $200 · $100/mo × 2 seats | $1,980 · Usage account · with limits |
| 1,000 short jobs at once 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 1,000 at once, 3 minutes each, 200,000 jobs a month | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits | $6,600 · Usage account · with limits |
bochka: 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.
Contabo: Contabo charges a flat monthly rent per server, whether it is busy or idle, with lower rates for longer terms. Each machine you need at the same time is a full month's rent, so short bursts still pay for the whole month.
Limits in those scenarios
Contabo publishes no limit on how many servers one account can run, and big orders can wait on identity checks and stock. New servers take a few minutes after payment, so 300 user sandboxes or 1,000 short jobs at once mean renting that many servers for a full month. Cloud VPS cores are shared, so heavy, sustained CPU use can slow down. On bochka, concurrency goes from 100 to 2,000 by plan, but start-rate limits mean even the top plan can't launch 1,000 short jobs at once without queueing.
| Scenario | bochka | Contabo |
|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays | None that bite |
|
| One agent that never stops | None that bite | None that bite |
| 50 agents in parallel | None that bite |
|
| Sandboxes for your users | None that bite |
|
| 1,000 short jobs at once |
|
|
Which one should you use?
Use Contabo when
you want one cheap server that runs all month, a GPU or Windows Server, or a machine outside Europe.
- One server that runs all month. Useful for one always-on server: a flat monthly rent buys a 4 vCPU / 8 GB VPS with a static IPv4.
- Regions around the world. Useful if your users are far from Europe: Contabo has servers in the US, UK, Asia and Australia.
- GPUs and Windows Server. Useful if you need a GPU or Windows: Contabo rents RTX PRO 6000 servers and Windows Server licenses.
Use bochka when
agents start, stop and fork machines all day: each sandbox is a full VM from an API in seconds, saved every minute, with a desktop and coding agents you drive from outside.
- State saved every minute, and forks. Agents sometimes wreck an install or delete files. With one manual snapshot slot you must remember to take it first, and there is no way to split one good machine into ten for parallel attempts.
- Coding agents you drive from outside. On a plain VPS the agent's API keys sit on a disk the agent can read and leak. You also build and maintain the code that starts, prompts and watches each agent yourself.
- A desktop and nested virtualization ready. Computer-use agents need a screen, and Android emulators or Firecracker need /dev/kvm. On Contabo you set up and stream a desktop yourself, and move up to Cloud VDS for KVM.
Questions people ask
Is bochka cheaper than Contabo?
It depends on the shape of the work. For one agent on workdays or one that never stops, Contabo's monthly rent is lower: $7 against $20 and $26 on bochka. For 50 agents in parallel they are close, $317 on bochka against $330, and 300 sandboxes for your users come to $200 on bochka against $1,980, which also doesn't fit on Contabo.
Does Contabo have hourly billing?
No. Contabo rents servers by the month with a minimum first term of one month, and its listed prices assume a 24-month term. bochka bills per second while a sandbox runs, and a stopped one costs nothing.
Can I run Claude Code on a Contabo VPS?
Yes, you get root and can install it yourself, then run it over SSH with your API key on the server. bochka preinstalls Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and others, drives them through an API, and keeps real keys out of the sandbox with its credentials proxy.
Does Contabo support nested virtualization?
Not on its VPS plans; Contabo's docs say nested virtualization is not supported on any VPS plan family. Its Cloud VDS line with dedicated cores does support it. Every bochka sandbox has /dev/kvm.
Where do bochka and Contabo run?
bochka runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France, with EU data residency. Contabo has 11 locations in the EU, the UK, the US, Singapore, Japan, India and Australia.
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.
Start a sandbox
Install the CLI, then run bochka new.
Product preview
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