bochka vs Northflank

Both give each agent a Linux machine with its own kernel. bochka keeps the whole machine between runs and ships the agent, desktop and browser inside it, while Northflank is a broad cloud platform with GPUs, many regions and your own cloud.

Where bochka stands out

The whole machine comes back

bochka saves a sandbox's whole disk every minute and when it stops, and a stopped sandbox costs nothing. Start it again and every package, file and config the agent left is still there. You can also fork a running sandbox into a copy with the same disk.

Agents you drive from outside

Claude Code, Codex and five other agents come preinstalled in every bochka sandbox. You send a prompt, steer the agent mid-task and follow its events through one API, and real API keys stay outside the machine in a credentials proxy.

A desktop and a browser inside

Every bochka sandbox can show a 60fps Linux desktop with Chromium, ready for computer-use agents, and you can embed the stream in your app. It also has /dev/kvm, so Android emulators and VMs run inside.

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
Hardware: Dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) hosts
Regions: EU: Germany, Finland, France
Plans: From $20 a month, all of it usage credit, 7-day trial

Northflank

Northflank is a London developer platform for running services, jobs and databases on Kubernetes, and Sandboxes is its product for running untrusted code.

A Northflank sandbox is a container image deployed as a service: CPU sandboxes run in Kata microVMs with their own kernel, and GPU sandboxes run under gVisor. You create and drive them from the JavaScript or Python SDK, the CLI or the dashboard, on Northflank's cloud or inside your own. It suits teams that already want one platform for apps, databases, GPUs and sandboxes.

Kind of product: Full developer platform (services, jobs, databases, GPUs) with sandboxes as one workload type
Isolation: CPU sandboxes in microVMs (Kata), GPU sandboxes under gVisor
Regions: US, Canada, Brazil, UK, EU, Switzerland, Asia, Australia and South Africa; fixed per project
Your own cloud: Run on AWS, GCP, Azure, Oracle, CoreWeave and others, or put the control plane in your VPC on Enterprise
GPUs: L4, A100, H100, RTX PRO 6000 and more, billed per hour
Compliance: SOC 2 Type 2 and HIPAA

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	Northflank: price rank
Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month A coding agent installs packages all over the machine; on Northflank only attached volumes survive a pause, while bochka keeps the whole disk.	3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month	159th of 367, with limits $1,477 a month
Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An assistant that lives on its machine for weeks needs its tools and files to stay put across stops, which bochka does by default.	5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month	173rd of 366, with limits $1,365 a month
Code interpreter bursts 100 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 200,000 sessions of 1 min a month Short code runs on small machines are where Northflank's per-second plans from a tenth of a vCPU fit well.	186th of 345, with limits $2,000 a month	84th of 345, with limits $115 a month
Sandboxes for your users 300 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 23 min a month Both can give each user a machine; bochka adds HTTPS on up to 50 ports and a whole disk that survives, Northflank adds regions around the world.	Cheapest of 361 $209 a month	89th of 361, with limits $815 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	342nd of 360, with limits $1,762 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	134th of 364, with limits $689 a month
CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month Both fit; bochka adds /dev/kvm for Android emulators and VM builds, and its stops are free.	4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month	38th cheapest of 377 $352 a month
24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB	18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month	151st of 368, with limits $59 a month
Computer-use agents 50 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 20,000 sessions of 15 min a month bochka ships a 60fps Linux desktop and Chromium for computer use; on Northflank you would build and stream a desktop yourself.	6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month	151st of 369, with limits $371 a month
Browser-use agents 50 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 10 min a month bochka has Chromium ready inside every sandbox; Northflank has no browser product, so you install and run one in your image.	7th cheapest of 367 $200 a month	200th of 367, with limits $194 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	196th of 346, with limits $117 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	83rd of 338, with limits $2,049 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	141st of 360, with limits $99 a month
GPU eval jobs 10 at once · 8 vCPU / 32 GB · 500 sessions of 30 min a month Northflank has GPU sandboxes from L4 to H100 and up; bochka is CPU only.	Can't run it	4th cheapest of 98 $693 a month
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	Northflank
Isolation	Full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts	Kata microVM with its own kernel for CPU; gVisor for GPU
What survives a stop	The whole disk, saved every minute and on stop; stopped sandboxes cost nothing	Only attached volumes, which bill while paused; the rest of the disk and all processes reset
Snapshots and fork	Automatic disk snapshots; fork a running sandbox	Filesystem snapshots of a running or stopping sandbox, opt-in; restore into a new one
Nested virtualization	Yes, /dev/kvm for Android emulators and VMs	Not documented inside a sandbox
Desktop and browser	60fps Linux desktop, Chromium and computer use built in	Headless; access by SDK, browser terminal or SSH
Coding agents	Seven agents preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API	Harnesses with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode or Pi; you talk to the agent through a terminal or SSH
Keeping API keys out of the sandbox	Credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; switch a credential to another account when credits run out	Header injection for listed hosts in the network policy API; otherwise secrets are env vars or files in the container
Inbound access	HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected by default; raw TCP; dedicated IPv4 or IPv6	HTTPS ports on a code.run domain, private by default; public TCP and UDP need a separate load balancer
Outbound rules	Open internet, no provider-side allowlist	Network policies with allow lists by IP, CIDR or domain, documented for your own cluster
Changing size	Up to 16 vCPU / 32 GB on the $100 plan and above	Plans from 0.1 vCPU up to 20 vCPU / 40 GB, more on request; a resize restarts the sandbox
GPUs	No	L4, A100, H100, RTX PRO 6000 and more
Regions	EU only (Germany, Finland, France)	US, Europe, Asia, Australia, South America and Africa
Self-hosting	No	Bring your own cloud, or the control plane in your VPC on Enterprise
Compliance and transparency	SOC 2 is in progress. We're open about where we stand: live status and data retention policy.	SOC 2

Every feature Battleships tracks (43)

Feature	bochka	Northflank
Full VM (own kernel)	Yes	Yes
Docker inside	Yes	Yes
Nested virtualization	Yes	No
Root	Yes	Not published
Systemd	Yes	Not published
Desktop GUI	Yes	No
Browser	Yes	No
Computer-use API	Yes	No
SSH	Yes	Yes
Persistent disk	Yes	Yes
Pause/resume	Yes	Yes
Automatic snapshots	Yes	Yes
Fork/clone	Yes	Yes
Live fork (no pause)	Yes	Yes
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	Yes
Raw TCP inbound	Yes	Yes
Public IPv4	No	No
Egress allowlist	No	Yes
Secret proxy	Yes	Yes
Secret proxy for any API	Yes	Yes
Preinstalled agents	Yes	Yes
Agent harness API	Yes	No
MCP server	No	No
GPU	No	Yes
Windows	No	No
Arm64	No	Yes
Self-hosting	No	Yes
BYOC	No	Yes
Open source	No	No
Scoped API keys	Yes	Not published
Spend limits	Yes	Not published
Usage per sandbox (API)	Yes	Yes
Audit logs	No	Yes
SSO	No	Yes
SOC 2	No	Yes
HIPAA	No	Yes
EU data residency	Yes	Yes
Zero data retention	Yes	Not published

Performance

bochka26.69 runs/s

NorthflankNot measured

There is no comparable CPU measurement for Northflank Sandboxes: it has no result on the hpc-sandbox-benchmarks test bochka is measured on. bochka did 26.69 runs per second on that Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts.

Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Northflank 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	Northflank, 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	$32 · Developer Sandbox (free tier) · with limits
One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month	$26 · $20/mo	$108 · Developer Sandbox (free tier) · with limits
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	$1,322 · Developer Sandbox (free tier) · with limits
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	$361 · Developer Sandbox (free tier) · 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	$688 · Developer Sandbox (free tier) · with limits

bochka: Plans start at $20 a month, and the whole fee is usage credit. You pay per second while a sandbox runs, and a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its whole disk.

Northflank: Northflank bills per second for the plan size you pick, with no monthly fee, until you pause the sandbox; there is no idle auto-pause. Volumes cost $0.15 per GB a month even while paused, and outbound traffic costs $0.06 per GB.

Limits in those scenarios

In the first four scenarios the limit that bites on Northflank is what survives a stop: only attached volumes keep their files, so packages installed anywhere else reset. Northflank also does not publish how many sandboxes can run at once, so 300 or 1,000 at a time is not confirmed. bochka's limit is in the burst scenario: even the $2,000 plan queues starts above 90 a minute, so 1,000 short jobs at once do not all start together.

Scenario	bochka	Northflank
One coding agent, workdays	None that bite	files survive a stop only in attached volumes: packages installed elsewhere reset
One agent that never stops	None that bite	files survive a stop only in attached volumes: packages installed elsewhere reset
50 agents in parallel	None that bite	files survive a stop only in attached volumes: packages installed elsewhere reset how many machines can run at once: limit not published, probably fine at 50 (the typical published limit is 50)
Sandboxes for your users	None that bite	not confirmed: how many machines can run at once (you need 300; the typical published limit is 50)
1,000 short jobs at once	max 2,400 starts/day (needs ~6,667) max 600 starts/hour (needs ~1,000) bursts above 90 starts/min are queued (a burst of 333 takes ~4 min to start)	not confirmed: how many machines can run at once (you need 1,000; the typical published limit is 50)

Which one should you use?

Use Northflank when

you need GPUs next to the agent, regions outside Europe, or sandboxes inside your own cloud account next to the rest of your apps.

GPU sandboxes. For agents that train, fine-tune or run models: Northflank has GPU sandboxes from L4 to H100 and up.
Regions around the world. For users far from Europe: Northflank runs in the US, Asia, Australia, South America and Africa too.
Your own cloud, and one platform. For teams that must run in their own AWS, GCP or Azure account, or want apps and sandboxes on one platform.

Use bochka when

your agents work on one machine for hours or days and should find it as they left it: installs, Docker, emulators, a desktop and a browser, with the agent itself driven from your code.

The whole machine comes back. On Northflank a pause wipes everything outside attached volumes, so an agent reinstalls its tools each time unless you plan volumes or snapshots for every path it touches.
Agents you drive from outside. Northflank Harnesses start the agent for you, but you reach it through a terminal or SSH, so running many agents from your own code means building that control layer yourself.
A desktop and a browser inside. Northflank sandboxes are headless, so a computer-use or browser agent needs you to build an image with a desktop, a browser and a way to stream it.

Questions people ask

Is bochka cheaper than Northflank?

In four of the five scenarios on this page, yes: one agent that never stops is $26 a month on bochka against $108 on Northflank. For 1,000 short jobs at once, Northflank's small per-second plans cost less, and bochka's plans queue the starts.

Does a Northflank sandbox keep its files when paused?

Only files on attached volumes. Pausing scales the sandbox to zero, and the rest of its disk and all running processes are lost. bochka keeps the whole disk on every stop.

Can I run Claude Code or Codex in each?

Yes. Northflank Harnesses start Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode or Pi, and you connect through a browser terminal or SSH. bochka preinstalls seven agents and adds an API to prompt, steer and follow them from your code.

Does Northflank have GPUs?

Yes, GPU sandboxes run under gVisor with cards from L4 to H100 and more. bochka runs on CPUs only.

Can I run Docker and Android emulators in each?

Both give each sandbox its own kernel, so Docker can run inside. bochka also exposes /dev/kvm for Android emulators and VMs; Northflank does not document that inside a sandbox.

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.

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