bochka vs Verda
Verda is a GPU cloud: you rent Nvidia GPUs and plain CPU virtual machines by the hour in Helsinki. bochka is built for agents, with a desktop, coding agents, minute-by-minute snapshots and free stops on every VM.
Where bochka stands out
Free stops, snapshots every minute, live fork
A stopped bochka sandbox costs nothing, and its disk is snapshotted every minute and on stop. You can fork a sandbox while it runs. On Verda a shut-down instance keeps billing at its full rate, and a volume can only be cloned once its machine is shut down.
Coding agents and a desktop built in
bochka ships Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and other agents inside each sandbox, and you drive them from outside with a prompt, steer and events API. Every sandbox also has a 60fps desktop with Chromium and computer use. A Verda instance is a clean Ubuntu VM: you install the agent, a browser and a VNC server yourself.
HTTPS ports and keys out of the sandbox
Each bochka sandbox can serve HTTPS on up to 50 ports behind a token, with no certificates to set up. bochka's credentials proxy keeps real AI keys out of the sandbox and works with any HTTPS API you register. A Verda instance gets a public IP, and TLS, the firewall and your keys are yours to set up.
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
Verda
Verda, called DataCrunch until 2025, is a European AI cloud that rents Nvidia GPUs, CPU machines and GPU clusters.
You create a GPU or CPU instance, add a disk and an SSH key, and get a full Linux VM with root and its own public IP. Verda also sells GPU clusters with InfiniBand and serverless containers that scale to zero for inference. It is built for teams that train, fine-tune and serve AI models, not as a sandbox for agents.
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 | Verda: price rank |
|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Verda gives you a raw VM to set up yourself, and a stopped instance keeps billing, so a fleet of coding agents that pause and resume is a compromise there. | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month | 88th of 367, with limits $788 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An always-on assistant fits on a Verda CPU VM, but you install the agent, the browser and the desktop yourself; bochka ships them ready. | 5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month | 133rd of 366, with limits $901 a month |
| Code interpreter bursts 100 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 200,000 sessions of 1 min a month Verda's serverless containers scale to zero and wake on a request, which suits short bursts better than bochka's start limits. | 186th of 345, with limits $2,000 a month | 99th of 345, with limits $165 a month |
| Sandboxes for your users 300 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 23 min a month Verda does not publish how many instances an account can run at once, so 300 user sandboxes means asking for a higher quota first. | Cheapest of 361 $209 a month | 71st of 361, with limits $629 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 | 20th of 360, with limits $1,097 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 | 91st of 364, with limits $123 a month |
| CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month Both fit: Verda's dedicated EPYC cores work well as CI runners, and bochka adds per-second billing and free stops between jobs. | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month | 10th cheapest of 377 $142 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB | 18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month | 36th cheapest of 368 $45 a month |
| Computer-use agents 50 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 20,000 sessions of 15 min a month Verda has no built-in desktop, only a guide to install a VNC server yourself, while bochka streams a 60fps desktop with computer use. | 6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month | 82nd of 369, with limits $123 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 | 169th of 367, with limits $110 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 | 184th of 346, with limits $103 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 | 84th of 338, with limits $2,057 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 | 122nd of 360, with limits $66 a month |
| GPU eval jobs 10 at once · 8 vCPU / 32 GB · 500 sessions of 30 min a month Only Verda fits: it rents Nvidia GPUs from V100 to GB300, and bochka has no GPUs. | Can't run it | 14th cheapest of 98 $1,039 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 | Verda |
|---|---|---|
| Kind of product | Sandboxes for AI agents: VMs with agents, desktop and hosting ready | GPU and CPU cloud: raw VMs, GPU clusters and serverless containers |
| Isolation | Every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel | Every instance is a full VM on KVM/QEMU |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine | Root on your own VM, so you can install Docker; nested virtualization is not documented |
| GPUs | None | Nvidia V100 up to GB300, on-demand or spot, plus clusters with InfiniBand |
| Biggest machine | 16 vCPU / 32 GB on the $100 plan and up | CPU instances up to 360 vCPU / 1,440 GB |
| Stopping a machine | A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk | A shut-down instance keeps billing; only Delete stops the charge, and kept volumes bill at $0.20/GiB-month |
| Snapshots and fork | Snapshots every minute and on stop; fork a running sandbox | Clone a volume once its instance is shut down or it is detached; no snapshots of a running machine |
| Desktop and computer use | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream | No built-in desktop; a guide to install XFCE and TigerVNC yourself |
| Coding agents | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API | An MCP server and CLI agent mode so an outside agent can manage Verda machines |
| Reaching the machine | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; dedicated IPv6 or IPv4 | A free public IPv4 per instance and SSH; you set up TLS and the firewall (ufw) yourself |
| Keeping keys out of the machine | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register | Secrets only for serverless containers; on instances you place keys yourself |
| Scale to zero | No wake on request; you start a stopped sandbox through the API | Serverless containers scale to zero when idle and start again on the next request |
| Regions | EU only: Germany, Finland, France | EU only: three data centers in Helsinki, Finland |
| 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 | Verda |
|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | Not published |
| Root | Yes | Yes |
| 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 | No |
| Automatic snapshots | Yes | No |
| Fork/clone | Yes | Yes |
| 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 | Yes |
| HTTPS preview URLs | Yes | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | Yes | No |
| 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 | Yes |
| GPU | No | Yes |
| Windows | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | No |
| Self-hosting | No | No |
| BYOC | No | No |
| Open source | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Yes | Not published |
| Spend limits | Yes | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | No | Yes |
| SSO | No | No |
| SOC 2 | No | Yes |
| HIPAA | No | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Yes | Not published |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement: Verda was not part of the public StarSling benchmark run. bochka did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in that run, on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) hosts. Verda says its CPU instances use dedicated AMD EPYC cores clocked at 3.3 GHz.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Verda 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 | Verda, 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 | $18 · Pay as you go |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $26 · $20/mo | $45 · 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 | $622 · 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 | $254 · Pay as you go · 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 | $507 · Pay as you go · 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.
Verda: Verda charges a prepaid balance in 10-minute blocks and refunds the unused part when you delete early. CPU machines cost $0.012 per vCPU-hour with 4 GB of RAM each, the disk is extra at $0.20/GiB-month, and a shut-down instance keeps billing until you delete it.
Limits in those scenarios
Verda does not publish how many instances an account can run at once, so 300 sandboxes for your users or 1,000 short jobs at once are not confirmed until you get a higher quota. On bochka the limit is a sandbox count by plan plus starts per minute, so the 1,000-job burst is queued and needs more starts per day than the $2,000 plan allows. Verda's smallest CPU machine is 4 vCPU / 16 GB, so small sandboxes cost the same as medium ones there. If a Verda balance runs out, its instances are stopped and its volumes deleted, with 96 hours to restore them.
| Scenario | bochka | Verda |
|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays | None that bite |
|
| One agent that never stops | 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 Verda when
your work needs GPUs, a GPU cluster, a single very large CPU machine, or an inference endpoint that scales to zero.
- GPUs and GPU clusters. Useful if your work trains, fine-tunes or serves models: Verda rents Nvidia GPUs from V100 to GB300, on-demand or spot.
- Very large CPU machines. Useful for one huge job: Verda CPU instances go up to 360 dedicated vCPU and 1,440 GB of RAM.
- Containers that scale to zero. Useful for inference endpoints: Verda's serverless containers sleep when idle and wake on the next request.
Use bochka when
you run agents: VMs that come with coding agents, a desktop, HTTPS ports and a credentials proxy, and that cost nothing while stopped.
- Free stops, snapshots every minute, live fork. Agents sit idle between tasks. On Verda you either pay full price for an idle machine or delete it and keep a volume that still bills, then rebuild it to resume.
- Coding agents and a desktop built in. Without these, you write and maintain the setup scripts, the agent runner and the desktop stream for every machine. Verda's MCP server lets an agent manage machines, not work inside one.
- HTTPS ports and keys out of the sandbox. An agent that holds a real API key can leak it in a log or a commit. On Verda the key has to live on the machine, and every preview server needs its own TLS and firewall rules.
Questions people ask
Is bochka cheaper than Verda?
It depends on the scenario. One coding agent on workdays costs $20 a month on bochka and $18 on Verda, but one agent running all month is $26 versus $45, and 50 agents in parallel are $317 versus $622. For 1,000 short jobs at once Verda comes to $507 and bochka to $2,000, though neither fits without higher limits.
Is Verda the same company as DataCrunch?
Yes. DataCrunch was founded in Helsinki in 2020 and became Verda in 2025. It runs GPU and CPU instances, GPU clusters and serverless containers from data centers in Finland.
Does bochka have GPUs like Verda?
No. bochka runs Linux VMs on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts and has no GPUs. If your agents need to train or serve models, rent the GPUs on Verda.
Does a stopped Verda instance cost money?
Yes. Verda's docs say shut-down instances continue to charge your account, and only Delete stops the instance charge. Volumes you keep after a delete bill at $0.20/GiB-month. A stopped bochka sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Where does my data run?
Both run only in the EU. Verda has three data centers in Helsinki, Finland. bochka runs in Germany, Finland and France, with EU data residency and a zero data retention option.
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. Verda says on its homepage that it is SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certified.
Start a sandbox
Install the CLI, then run bochka new.
Product preview
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