bochka vs OVHcloud
An OVHcloud Public Cloud instance is a plain OpenStack VM that you install, secure and look after yourself. bochka also gives each agent a full VM, but with snapshots every minute, stops that cost nothing, fork of a running machine, HTTPS ports, a desktop and coding agents already built in.
Where bochka stands out
Stops that keep the disk, and fork while running
bochka saves a sandbox's disk every minute and when it stops, and a stopped sandbox costs nothing. You can fork a running sandbox in one call. On OVHcloud, a turned-off or paused instance bills at the same rate; shelving frees the compute, and copying a machine means taking a backup and creating a new instance from it.
Coding agents and a desktop built in
Every bochka sandbox has Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and other agents ready, and you drive them from outside with a prompt, steer and events API. It also streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium for computer use. The credentials proxy keeps real AI keys out of the machine and can switch to another account when one runs out of credits.
Nested VMs you can rely on
bochka documents Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine, so an agent can run emulators or its own VMs. OVHcloud passes the vmx flag to instances, but its own FAQ answers "yes and no": a live migration, which can happen at any time, may make the guest kernel panic.
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
OVHcloud
OVHcloud is a French cloud provider; its Public Cloud rents OpenStack virtual machines, storage and networking by the second.
A Public Cloud instance is a Linux or Windows VM picked from families such as General Purpose (B3), Compute (C3), Memory (R3), GPU and the shared-resource Discovery range (D2). You run your own software on it, next to OVHcloud products like private networks, gateways, load balancers, Kubernetes and object storage, through a Control Panel, an API or OpenStack tools. It is general infrastructure, not an agent sandbox, so this page compares the two where they overlap: giving an agent its own Linux machine.
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 | OVHcloud: price rank |
|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Both give a full Linux VM with root and Docker, but an OVHcloud instance starts empty and bills until deleted, while bochka comes with agents, snapshots and free stops. | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month | 90th of 367, with limits $814 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An OVHcloud instance can run an assistant around the clock, but you build the agent setup, the HTTPS endpoint and the backups yourself; bochka has them built in. | 5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month | 136th of 366, with limits $934 a month |
| Code interpreter bursts 100 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 200,000 sessions of 1 min a month OVHcloud fits one-minute runs better: it bills by the second after a 1-minute minimum with no plan fee, while bochka's start limits make big bursts a compromise. | 186th of 345, with limits $2,000 a month | 56th of 345, with limits $43 a month |
| Sandboxes for your users 300 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 23 min a month 300 sandboxes of 2 vCPU need 600 vCPU, more than OVHcloud's largest self-serve quota of 512 vCPU, so you would ask support first; bochka allows 100 to 2,000 sandboxes by plan. | Cheapest of 361 $209 a month | 43rd of 361, with limits $299 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 | 27th of 360, with limits $1,280 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 | 99th of 364, with limits $231 a month |
| CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month Both run Docker builds on a full VM; on OVHcloud you run the runner software, the images and the clean-up yourself. | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month | 29th cheapest of 377 $300 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Both fit a 24/7 dev box: an OVHcloud instance is a classic always-on server, and a bochka machine keeps its disk with snapshots every minute. | 18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month | 23rd cheapest of 368 $34 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; on OVHcloud you install the desktop, the browser and the control loop yourself. | 6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month | 108th of 369, with limits $231 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 | 174th of 367, with limits $128 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 | 159th of 346, with limits $65 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 | 47th of 338, with limits $1,290 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 | 120th of 360, with limits $64 a month |
| GPU eval jobs 10 at once · 8 vCPU / 32 GB · 500 sessions of 30 min a month Only OVHcloud fits: it rents Nvidia GPU instances by the hour, 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 | OVHcloud |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | A sandbox API for agents, on full VMs | A general OpenStack VM you set up and run yourself |
| Isolation | Every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel | Every instance is a fully isolated VM with its own kernel |
| CPU | Dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) hosts; 26.69 runs/s at 4 vCPU / 8 GB | Dedicated vCPUs on B3, C3 and R3; shared resources on Discovery (D2); no comparable measurement |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine, documented | Root and Docker; the vmx flag is passed, but OVHcloud warns a live migration can make the guest kernel panic |
| Stopping | A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk | Turn off and pause bill at the same rate; shelve frees compute and bills only a disk snapshot |
| Snapshots | Automatic snapshots every minute and on stop | On-demand instance backups, or a schedule such as daily backups keeping the last 7 or 14 |
| Fork | Fork a running sandbox in one call (disk, no memory) | Take an instance backup, then create a new identical instance from it (disk, no memory) |
| Reaching the machine | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; own IP | Public IPv4 on any port; HTTPS needs your own certificates or a load balancer |
| Desktop and computer use | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream | None built in; you install a desktop and connect over SSH or RDP |
| Coding agents | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API | None; you install and drive agents yourself, for example over SSH |
| Keeping keys out of the machine | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register; switch a credential to another account when credits run out | No credentials proxy; secrets live on the instance or are fetched from inside it |
| Outbound rules | Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist | Security groups with inbound and outbound rules by IP range, port and protocol |
| GPUs and Windows | No GPUs; no Windows guests (Wine for Windows apps) | Nvidia GPU instances such as L4 and L40S; Windows Server images with the license included |
| Regions | EU only: Germany, Finland, France | Europe, Canada, the US, Singapore and Sydney, plus Local Zones |
| 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 | OVHcloud |
|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | Yes |
| 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 | 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 | No |
| Raw TCP inbound | Yes | Yes |
| 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 | Yes |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Yes | Not published |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for OVHcloud: its instances were not part of the public StarSling benchmark run where bochka did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. Results would depend on the family you pick, since B3 and C3 have dedicated resources and Discovery (D2) instances share theirs.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. OVHcloud 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 | OVHcloud, 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 | $8 · Usage account |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $26 · $20/mo | $34 · 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 | $406 · 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 | $128 · 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 | $256 · 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.
OVHcloud: OVHcloud bills every second an instance exists, after a 1-minute minimum, until you delete it; turned-off and paused instances bill at the same rate, and shelved ones bill only their snapshot. The prices here use the shared Discovery d2 instances; since October 2026, dedicated B3, C3 and R3 instances also bill local storage and a public IPv4 on top.
Limits in those scenarios
OVHcloud limits each project with quotas, raised in steps of 20, 50, 100 and 200 VMs by buying prepaid credit, and free-trial accounts may not get raises until a first invoice is paid. 50 agents of 4 vCPU need the 200-VM step, and 300 user sandboxes (600 vCPU) or 1,000 short jobs at once go past its 512 vCPU, so those need support first. The cheap Discovery instances also share their CPU, so heavy builds can slow down. On bochka the limit is a sandbox count (100 to 2,000 by plan) plus starts per minute, so the 1,000-job burst gets queued and needs more starts per day than the $2,000 plan allows.
| Scenario | bochka | OVHcloud |
|---|---|---|
| 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 |
|
| Sandboxes for your users | None that bite |
|
| 1,000 short jobs at once |
|
|
Which one should you use?
Use OVHcloud when
you need GPUs, Windows servers, regions outside the EU, or long-lived servers that sit on private networks next to Kubernetes and other managed services in one cloud.
- GPUs by the hour. Useful if your agents train or serve models: OVHcloud rents Nvidia GPU instances, such as L4 and L40S, by the hour.
- Regions around the world. Useful if your users are outside Europe: OVHcloud runs instances in Canada, the US, Singapore and Sydney as well as Europe.
- A whole cloud around the server. Useful if the agent's machine must run Windows, or sit on private networks next to Kubernetes, databases and firewall rules.
Use bochka when
you want each agent on its own full VM that is ready to work: coding agents, a desktop, HTTPS ports and minute-by-minute snapshots built in, reliable /dev/kvm, fork while running, and stops that cost nothing.
- Stops that keep the disk, and fork while running. Agents sit idle between tasks. On OVHcloud you pay the full rate for an idle instance or shelve it and wait for an unshelve, and scheduled backups run daily, so rolling back a broken machine can lose a day of work.
- Coding agents and a desktop built in. An OVHcloud instance starts as an empty OS image, so you install, update and supervise each agent, desktop and key yourself, and the agent can read any key you put on it.
- Nested VMs you can rely on. Agents that test Android apps or build VM images need KVM inside the sandbox. On OVHcloud a host maintenance you do not control can crash that work mid-run.
Questions people ask
Is bochka cheaper than OVHcloud?
Not for one agent on workdays: that comes to $8 a month on OVHcloud's shared Discovery instances, if you delete the instance every night, against $20 on bochka. One agent that never stops comes to $26 on bochka against $34 on OVHcloud, and 50 agents in parallel come to $317 against $406. For 300 user sandboxes OVHcloud comes to $128 against $200 on bochka, but its quota for that many is not confirmed.
Do I pay for an OVHcloud instance that is turned off?
Yes. Turned-off and paused instances bill at the same rate until you delete them. Shelving frees the compute and bills only a disk snapshot, and the instance comes back when you unshelve it. On bochka, a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Can I run Docker and nested VMs on OVHcloud?
Docker works, since an instance is a full VM with root. Nested virtualization is enabled, but OVHcloud's FAQ warns that a live migration can make the guest kernel panic. On bochka, Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm are documented on every machine.
Does OVHcloud have an agent sandbox product?
Not in Public Cloud. It sells general VMs, storage, networking and managed services with an API, OpenStack tools and a Control Panel, and you install agents yourself and drive them over SSH. bochka is built for agents, with coding agents, a desktop and a credentials proxy in every sandbox.
Where does my data run?
bochka runs only in the EU (Germany, Finland and France), with EU data residency and a zero data retention option. OVHcloud has many regions in Europe, plus Canada, the US, Singapore and Sydney.
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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