bochka vs Open Telekom Cloud
Open Telekom Cloud, now called T Cloud Public, is a full public cloud from Deutsche Telekom: you rent VMs, disks and networks and build the rest yourself. bochka is made for agent work, with Docker, /dev/kvm, a desktop and coding agents ready in every VM.
Where bochka stands out
Coding agents you drive from outside
bochka ships Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and other agents inside each VM, and you drive the agents inside from outside with a prompt, steer and events API. Its credentials proxy keeps real AI keys out of the VM and can switch to another account when one runs out of credits. Open Telekom Cloud sells the VM; everything that runs on it is yours to build.
Emulators and a desktop, ready
Every bochka VM has /dev/kvm, so Android emulators and nested VMs run inside, plus a 60fps desktop with Chromium and computer use you can embed in your app. Open Telekom Cloud does not document nested virtualization on its VMs and gives you a VNC console for logging in, not a desktop for agents.
Free stops, snapshots every minute
bochka snapshots the disk every minute and when the VM stops, and a stopped sandbox costs nothing. You can fork a running sandbox with one call. On Open Telekom Cloud the disk keeps billing while the VM is stopped, and snapshots and images are steps you trigger or schedule.
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
Open Telekom Cloud
Open Telekom Cloud, renamed T Cloud Public in January 2026, is the public cloud of T-Systems, part of Deutsche Telekom. It is a hyperscaler, not a sandbox product.
It is an infrastructure-as-a-service cloud built on OpenStack: Elastic Cloud Server VMs, block disks, networks, load balancers, Kubernetes, databases and GPU servers, run from data centers in Germany and the Netherlands. You set each VM up yourself through the console, the OpenStack APIs or tools like Terraform. It is built for companies that want a European cloud for all their IT, not only for agent code.
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 | Open Telekom Cloud: price rank |
|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Open Telekom Cloud can host a software factory, but you build the VM images, networks and agent tooling yourself, and its VMs do not expose /dev/kvm for emulators. | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month | 208th of 367, with limits $2,445 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An always-on assistant fits on an Open Telekom Cloud VM, but the disk keeps billing when it is stopped and there are no built-in agents or credentials proxy. | 5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month | 273rd of 366, with limits $4,845 a month |
| Code interpreter bursts 100 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 200,000 sessions of 1 min a month Open Telekom Cloud has no plan start limits, so 1,000 short jobs at once fit if your tenant quota allows it; bochka's start limits make big bursts a compromise. | 186th of 345, with limits $2,000 a month | 150th of 345, with limits $439 a month |
| Sandboxes for your users 300 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 23 min a month For sandboxes inside your product, bochka gives you an embeddable desktop, HTTPS URLs and a sandbox API; on Open Telekom Cloud you build that layer on raw VMs. | Cheapest of 361 $209 a month | 134th of 361, with limits $1,557 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 | 106th of 360, with limits $6,590 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 | 35th cheapest of 364 $667 a month |
| CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month Both run CI jobs; bochka starts a ready VM with Docker per job, while on Open Telekom Cloud you manage runner images, networks and quotas yourself. | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month | 266th of 377, with limits $339 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB | 18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month | 77th cheapest of 368 $103 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 and computer use; Open Telekom Cloud only offers a VNC console for logging in, so you install and stream a desktop yourself. | 6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month | 205th of 369, with limits $688 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 | 276th of 367, with limits $684 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 | 298th of 346, with limits $699 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 | 258th of 338, with limits $13,556 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 | 243rd of 360, with limits $340 a month |
| GPU eval jobs 10 at once · 8 vCPU / 32 GB · 500 sessions of 30 min a month Only Open Telekom Cloud fits: it rents Nvidia GPU servers from T4 to H100, and bochka has no GPUs. | 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 | Open Telekom Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Cloud VMs made for AI agents, created and driven through one API | A general public cloud (IaaS on OpenStack) with VMs, storage, networks and managed services |
| Isolation | Every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel | Every Elastic Cloud Server is a KVM VM with its own kernel; physical servers and dedicated hosts too |
| Nested virtualization | /dev/kvm on every machine, so emulators and VMs run inside | Not documented for Elastic Cloud Server VMs |
| Ready to work | Root, systemd, Docker, a desktop and coding agents ready when the VM starts | You pick an OS image and install Docker and tools yourself, then set up a network, security group and disk |
| Files after a stop | Snapshots every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing | The block disk is kept and billed while the VM is stopped; compute stops billing, except local-disk flavors and dedicated hosts |
| Snapshots and copies | Fork a running sandbox with one call; named snapshots as templates | Disk snapshots on demand, scheduled backups, and full-server images from a running VM to launch copies |
| Desktop and computer use | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream | A VNC console for remote login; no computer-use API |
| Reaching the machine | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; dedicated IPv6 or IPv4 | Elastic IPs (public IPv4) per server, load balancers, web application firewall, VPN and Direct Connect |
| Outbound internet | Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist | Security group rules, network ACLs, NAT gateways and a Cloud Firewall with domain-name rules |
| Keeping keys out of the sandbox | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register; switch a credential to another account when credits run out | Key Management and Cloud Secret Management services; the secret is read inside the VM |
| Coding agents | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API | None; you install and run agents yourself |
| GPUs | None | Nvidia T4, L4, A40, V100, A100, H100 and H100 NVL flavors |
| Windows | No Windows guests; Wine for Windows apps | Windows Server images, including managed Windows |
| Regions | EU only: Germany, Finland, France | EU only: Germany (EU-DE) and the Netherlands (EU-NL) |
| 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 | Open Telekom Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | No |
| 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 | Not published |
| Public IPv4 | No | Yes |
| Egress allowlist | No | Yes |
| 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 | Yes |
| SOC 2 | No | Yes |
| HIPAA | No | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Yes | Not published |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement: Open Telekom Cloud was not part of StarSling's public sandbox benchmark. In that run, at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, bochka did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) hosts.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Open Telekom Cloud 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 | Open Telekom Cloud, 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 | $28 · Pay as you go |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $26 · $20/mo | $103 · Pay as you go |
| 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 | $1,218 · Pay as you go |
| 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 | $684 · Pay as you go |
| 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 | $1,321 · Pay as you go |
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.
Open Telekom Cloud: Open Telekom Cloud bills compute per second in its pay-per-use model and invoices monthly, with prices set in euros and taxes on top. Block disks, Elastic IPs and outbound traffic are billed on their own, and the disk keeps billing while a VM is stopped; we priced the scenarios on the x1e.xlarge.2 flavor (4 vCPU / 8 GiB).
Limits in those scenarios
Open Telekom Cloud has no plan caps on sandboxes or starts, which is why 1,000 short jobs at once fit there and not on bochka, where they need more starts per day than the $2,000 plan allows. Its limits are tenant quotas you see in the console and raise through the Support Center. The x1e flavor used in these scenarios also comes with no capacity guarantee and a commercial limit of 50,000 euros a month per business partner. On bochka, the limits are a sandbox count (100 to 2,000 by plan) and starts per minute, with no session cap on paid plans.
| Scenario | bochka | Open Telekom Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays | 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 Open Telekom Cloud when
you need GPUs, Windows Server, physical servers or a full European cloud with databases, Kubernetes and network controls around your VMs.
- GPU servers. Useful if your agents train or run models: Open Telekom Cloud rents Nvidia GPU servers, from T4 up to H100 NVL.
- A whole cloud around the VM. Useful if you want databases, Kubernetes, firewalls and private networks from the same European provider as your VMs.
- Windows, physical servers and long reservations. Useful if you need Windows Server, a whole physical machine, or fixed prices locked in for one to three years.
Use bochka when
you run AI agents: ready VMs with Docker, /dev/kvm, a desktop and coding agents built in, disks that snapshot every minute and stops that cost nothing.
- Coding agents you drive from outside. On a raw cloud VM you write the code that installs, starts, prompts and watches every agent, and the API key sits inside the machine the agent controls. That is weeks of platform work before the first task runs.
- Emulators and a desktop, ready. Agents that test mobile apps need /dev/kvm, and computer-use agents need a desktop with a stream. On Open Telekom Cloud that means renting a physical server or dedicated host, and installing and streaming a desktop yourself.
- Free stops, snapshots every minute. Agent work comes in bursts, so most VMs sit idle most of the day. On Open Telekom Cloud each idle VM still pays for its disk and IP, and you write the snapshot and cleanup jobs yourself.
Questions people ask
Is bochka cheaper than Open Telekom Cloud?
In four of the five scenarios we priced, yes: one agent running all month comes to $26 on bochka and $103 on Open Telekom Cloud, and 50 agents in parallel come to $317 versus $1,218. One coding agent on workdays is the closest, at $20 versus $28. For 1,000 short jobs at once, Open Telekom Cloud fits at $1,321 and bochka does not fit even at $2,000.
Is Open Telekom Cloud a sandbox for AI agents?
No. It is a general public cloud where you rent VMs, disks and networks and set them up yourself. You can run agents on its VMs, but there are no built-in agents, desktop, credentials proxy or sandbox API like bochka has.
What is the difference between Open Telekom Cloud and T Cloud Public?
They are the same cloud. T-Systems renamed Open Telekom Cloud to T Cloud Public in January 2026, as part of its T Cloud family.
Does bochka have GPUs or Windows like Open Telekom Cloud?
No. bochka has no GPUs and no Windows guests; it runs Linux VMs and has Wine docs for Windows apps. If you need Nvidia GPU servers or Windows Server, Open Telekom Cloud has both.
Where does my data run?
Both stay in the EU. bochka runs in Germany, Finland and France, with EU data residency and a zero data retention option. Open Telekom Cloud runs in Germany (EU-DE) and the Netherlands (EU-NL).
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. Open Telekom Cloud lists BSI C5, SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 among its certifications.
Start a sandbox
Install the CLI, then run bochka new.
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