Claude Managed Agents vs AWS AgentCore
Claude Managed Agents is Anthropic's ready-made agent: you send events, and Claude works in a container Anthropic runs, with no agent loop for you to write. AWS AgentCore hosts the agent code you bring, in any framework, inside microVM sessions in your AWS account's world of IAM and VPCs.
The companies and products
Claude Managed Agents
Claude Managed Agents is Anthropic's ready-made agent harness: Claude runs as an autonomous agent in a cloud sandbox that Anthropic manages, and you talk to it through an events API.
This is an agent platform, not a sandbox you rent. You define an agent (model, prompt, tools, MCP servers, skills) and an environment, then start sessions, send messages as events and stream back what Claude does; the harness handles tool calls, prompt caching and compaction. Each session gets its own Ubuntu container, or runs its tools on a worker you host yourself. It is built for teams that want Claude doing long tasks without building their own agent loop or sandbox.
AWS AgentCore
Amazon Bedrock AgentCore is a set of AWS services to deploy and run AI agents: a Runtime that hosts your agent code, plus built-in Code Interpreter and Browser tools.
AgentCore is not a sandbox product first. It is a hyperscaler's agent platform: you push a container image or code, and each Runtime session gets its own Firecracker microVM that you reach through AgentCore APIs. Around it sit managed tools (Code Interpreter, Browser) and services for memory, identity, gateways and evaluations, and an Instances compute type runs longer sessions on EC2 in your own account. It is built for teams who already build on AWS and want agents to stay inside their account, IAM and VPC.
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. “106th cheapest of 367” means 105 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 | Claude Managed Agents: price rank | AWS AgentCore: price rank | bochka: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Neither is a clean fit for a coding agent: Managed Agents has up to 8 GB of memory and Docker only in limited availability, and AgentCore stops at 2 vCPU and 8 hours; bochka gives a full VM with Docker and a URL to open the app. | 106th of 367, with limits $964 a month | 100th of 367, with limits $888 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB Managed Agents sleeps between messages for free but keeps sandbox state only 30 days, and AgentCore needs the Instances type on EC2 to outlast 8 hours; bochka ranks 5th here and simply keeps running. | 219th of 366, with limits $2,511 a month | 64th of 366, with limits $1,300 a month | 5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month |
| Code interpreter bursts 100 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 200,000 sessions of 1 min a month AWS AgentCore ranks 7th here: its Code Interpreter is built for short code runs and bills only for CPU actually used, while Managed Agents is a whole agent session rather than a code tool. | 163rd of 345, with limits $756 a month | 7th cheapest of 345 $114 a month | 186th of 345, with limits $2,000 a month |
| Sandboxes for your users 300 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 23 min a month Neither has inbound ports, so your users cannot open what their sandbox is running; bochka ranks 1st here with HTTPS URLs on up to 50 ports per sandbox. | 231st of 361, with limits $823 a month | 210th of 361, with limits $506 a month | Cheapest of 361 $209 a month |
| RL rollouts 1,000 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 1,000,000 sessions of 3 min a month | 252nd of 360, with limits $3,978 a month | 125th of 360, with limits $8,075 a month | 34th of 360, with limits $2,000 a month |
| Agent evals 250 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 15,000 sessions of 20 min a month AgentCore fits agent evals with fresh managed sessions, while Managed Agents runs only Anthropic's harness with Claude models; bochka ranks 10th with a full machine per run and fork. | 244th of 364, with limits $320 a month | 33rd cheapest of 364 $650 a month | 10th cheapest of 364 $200 a month |
| CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month | 227th of 377, with limits $96 a month | 52nd cheapest of 377 $399 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB A dev box needs SSH and a disk that lasts, and neither has SSH; Managed Agents state expires after 30 days, and AgentCore resets everything outside its storage mount. | 224th of 368, with limits $48 a month | 228th of 368, with limits $52 a month | 18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month |
| Computer-use agents 50 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 20,000 sessions of 15 min a month Managed Agents has headless Chromium only and AgentCore Browser drives a browser, not a desktop; bochka streams a full Linux desktop at 60fps. | 127th of 369, with limits $288 a month | 104th of 369, with limits $202 a month | 6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month |
| Browser-use agents 50 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 10 min a month AWS AgentCore ranks 4th here with a managed Chromium that has live view and session replay; Managed Agents can script headless Chromium with Playwright, and bochka ranks 7th with Chromium on a live desktop. | 126th of 367, with limits $288 a month | 4th cheapest of 367 $144 a month | 7th cheapest of 367 $200 a month |
| Scraping & bots (startup scale) 50 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 100,000 sessions of 3 min a month | 127th of 346, with limits $390 a month | 27th cheapest of 346 $287 a month | 6th cheapest of 346 $90 a month |
| Mass scraping & bots (undetectable) 1,000 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 3,000,000 sessions of 2 min a month | 155th of 338, with limits $4,798 a month | 165th of 338, with limits $5,458 a month | 71st of 338, with limits $1,800 a month |
| Parallel red teaming 200 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 5,000 sessions of 30 min a month | 179th of 360, with limits $160 a month | 62nd of 360, with limits $294 a month | 2nd cheapest of 360 $200 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 | 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 | Can't run it |
Key features
| Feature | Claude Managed Agents | AWS AgentCore | bochka |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | A hosted Claude agent: Anthropic's harness runs Claude in a sandbox and you send it events | An AWS agent platform: hosted sessions for your own agent code, plus managed Code Interpreter and Browser tools | A sandbox platform: each agent gets its own full Linux machine, with coding agents built in |
| Isolation | Isolated Linux container per session | Firecracker microVM per Runtime session; Code Interpreter and Browser in a containerized environment | Full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts |
| Machine size | Up to 8 GB memory and 10 GB disk; vCPU not published; not configurable | 2 vCPU / 8 GB per microVM session, not adjustable; bigger EC2 types only on Instances | Up to 16 vCPU / 32 GB on the $100 plan and above |
| Agent it runs | Anthropic's harness with Claude models only | Your own agent code in any framework, or AWS's managed harness built on Strands Agents | Claude Code, Codex and five more preinstalled, driven from outside with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Session length | No session cap published; idle sessions are checkpointed and resume on the next message | Up to 8 hours per lifecycle on microVMs, stopped after 15 idle minutes by default; up to 14 days on Instances | No cap on paid plans; you set the time to live |
| What persists | Files and packages are checkpointed when idle, but kept only 30 days after the sandbox is created | Only one storage mount under /mnt, up to 1 GB, in preview; EBS volumes on Instances; the rest resets | The whole disk, saved every minute and on stop, for as long as you keep the sandbox |
| Fork | No fork or clone of a session or sandbox | No user snapshots or fork of a session | Fork a running sandbox with its disk |
| Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm | Docker listed as limited availability; root, systemd and /dev/kvm not documented | Root inside the microVM; arm64 container images; Docker and /dev/kvm not documented | Root, Docker, systemd and nested virtualization for Android emulators and VMs |
| Inbound access | No inbound ports or SSH; reached only through the sessions and events API | No open ports or SSH; reached only through AgentCore APIs with IAM or JWT | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected by default; raw TCP; SSH |
| Idle time | Runtime accrues only while a session is running; idle sessions cost nothing and wake on the next message | CPU billed only while used, but a microVM session keeps billing memory until its idle timeout, 15 minutes by default | A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk; you start it again by API |
| Browser and desktop | Headless Chromium with Playwright; no desktop or computer-use tool | Managed Chromium with live view, session recording and replay, profiles and proxies; no full desktop | Full Linux desktop streamed at 60fps, with Chromium and computer use |
| Network controls | Unrestricted, or limited to listed hosts plus optional package registries and MCP servers | VPC mode with security groups, PrivateLink and a NAT gateway for a fixed outbound IP | Open internet, no provider-side allowlist |
| Keeping API keys out of the sandbox | Vault secrets live in the sandbox as placeholders and are swapped in at egress, per host | AgentCore Identity stores OAuth tokens and API keys and hands them to your agent code | Credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; switch a credential to another account when credits run out |
| Regions | US workspace geo only for stored data and code execution | 17 commercial AWS regions plus GovCloud | EU only (Germany, Finland, France), with zero data retention |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Claude Managed Agents | AWS AgentCore | bochka |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | No | Yes |
| Root | Not published | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | Not published | No | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | No | Yes |
| Browser | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | Yes | Yes |
| SSH | No | No | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | Yes | No | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | Yes | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | No | No | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | No | No | Yes |
| Memory fork | No | No | No |
| Custom image (Docker or snapshot) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | Yes | No | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | Yes | Yes | No |
| Wake on request | Yes | Yes | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | No | No | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | No | No | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | No | No | No |
| Egress allowlist | Yes | Yes | No |
| Secret proxy | Yes | No | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | Yes | No | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | Yes | No | Yes |
| Agent harness API | Yes | No | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes | Yes | No |
| GPU | No | Yes | No |
| Windows | No | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | Yes | No |
| Self-hosting | Yes | No | No |
| BYOC | Yes | Yes | No |
| Open source | No | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Yes | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | No | Yes | No |
| EU data residency | No | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | No | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for either: neither Claude Managed Agents nor AWS AgentCore was part of the hpc-sandbox-benchmarks run, and Anthropic does not publish how many vCPUs a sandbox gets. bochka did 26.69 runs per second on the Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. An AgentCore microVM session stops at 2 vCPU, so a like-for-like test would need its Instances type.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Claude Managed Agents and AWS AgentCore have 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 | Claude Managed Agents, a month | AWS AgentCore, a month | bochka, 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 | $13 · Claude API (pay-as-you-go, usage tiers) · with limits | $26 · Pay-as-you-go (Instances) · with limits | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $53 · Claude API (pay-as-you-go, usage tiers) · with limits | $107 · Pay-as-you-go (Instances) · with limits | $26 · $20/mo |
| 50 agents in parallel 50 machines of 4 vCPU / 8 GB at once, 8-hour sessions, 1,100 sessions a month, Docker inside | $634 · Claude API (pay-as-you-go, usage tiers) · with limits | $1,286 · Pay-as-you-go (Instances) · with limits | $317 · $20/mo × 3 seats |
| Sandboxes for your users 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 30,000 sessions of 10 minutes a month, up to 300 at once | $360 · Claude API (pay-as-you-go, usage tiers) · with limits | $423 · Pay-as-you-go · with limits | $200 · $100/mo × 2 seats |
| 1,000 short jobs at once 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 1,000 at once, 3 minutes each, 200,000 jobs a month | $796 · Claude API (pay-as-you-go, usage tiers) · with limits | $1,615 · Pay-as-you-go (Instances) | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Claude Managed Agents: Managed Agents bills model tokens at API list rates plus a flat session runtime fee, measured only while the session is running, including time spent waiting on the model. The tables show runtime only; tokens come on top and usually cost more than the runtime.
AWS AgentCore: Runtime microVMs, Code Interpreter and Browser bill per second for CPU actually used and for peak memory. The 4 vCPU shape in these scenarios is the Instances type: the EC2 on-demand price plus a 12% management fee, with storage and data transfer on top.
AWS AgentCore: 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 disk.
Limits in those scenarios
A Managed Agents sandbox has up to 8 GB of memory and 10 GB of disk, an unpublished vCPU count and Docker only in limited availability, so no scenario here counts as a clean fit for it; Anthropic publishes no concurrency cap, only 300 creates per minute and usage-tier spend limits. AgentCore microVM sessions stop at 2 vCPU / 8 GB and 8 hours, so the 4 vCPU scenarios use the Instances type, and files outside the storage mount reset after a stop. AgentCore is the only one of the three that fits 1,000 short jobs at once, where bochka's plan queues starts above 90 per minute.
| Scenario | Claude Managed Agents | AWS AgentCore | bochka |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 Claude Managed Agents when
you want Claude itself to do long tasks with no harness to build, idle time that costs nothing, and the option to run tools on your own workers.
- No agent loop to build. Teams that want Claude doing long tasks get the harness, caching, compaction, memory and webhooks ready to use.
- Idle sessions sleep for free. Agents that wait a long time between messages pay runtime only while working, and resume on the next message.
- Tools on your own workers. Teams that want tool calls and files on their own machines can run self-hosted sandboxes while Anthropic keeps the orchestration.
Use AWS AgentCore when
you already build on AWS, bring your own agent code, need agents inside your VPC or in many regions, or want managed code and browser tools at scale.
- It lives inside your AWS account. Teams built on AWS keep agents behind their own IAM, VPC, security groups and PrivateLink, in 17 commercial regions.
- Bring any agent framework. Teams with their own agent code in any framework can host it as is, with managed Code Interpreter and Browser tools next to it.
- GPUs and two-week sessions on Instances. Agents that need a GPU or a session of up to 14 days can run on EC2 in your account.
Where bochka fits
Both are agent platforms that give each session a small, closed sandbox you reach only through their APIs. If your agents need a real machine to install, build, run Docker and serve an app, with a disk that lasts and the choice of Claude Code, Codex or other agents, look at bochka instead.
A whole machine with Docker and /dev/kvm
Managed Agents gives a container with up to 8 GB of memory and Docker only in limited availability, and AgentCore stops at 2 vCPU. Getting more on AgentCore means the Instances type, running EC2 in your own account.
A disk that lasts, with fork
Managed Agents drops sandbox state 30 days after creation, and AgentCore keeps only a 1 GB mount, so setup runs again. Neither can fork a sandbox, so trying three fixes means building the state three times.
Open what the agent builds
Neither has inbound ports or SSH, so a dev server the agent starts cannot be clicked. bochka gives each sandbox HTTPS URLs on up to 50 ports, raw TCP, SSH and a 60fps desktop.
Use bochka when your agents need a real machine: Docker, emulators, a desktop and browser, ports you can open, a disk that lasts, and the choice of Claude Code, Codex or other agents. Compare it one to one: bochka vs Claude Managed Agents and bochka vs AWS AgentCore.
Questions people ask
Is Claude Managed Agents cheaper than AWS AgentCore?
For runtime alone, Managed Agents costs less in all five scenarios on this page, for example $53 a month against $107 a month for an agent that never stops. But Managed Agents adds model tokens on top, which usually cost more than the runtime, and AgentCore is the only one that fits 1,000 short jobs at once.
Which is faster, Claude Managed Agents or AWS AgentCore?
Neither was measured in the hpc-sandbox-benchmarks run, so there is no fair CPU comparison. Anthropic does not publish a sandbox's vCPU count, and an AgentCore microVM session gets up to 2 vCPU. bochka did 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB.
Can Claude Managed Agents or AWS AgentCore run Docker?
Managed Agents lists Docker as limited availability, and AgentCore runs your arm64 container image as root but does not document Docker or /dev/kvm inside a session. bochka runs Docker and exposes /dev/kvm for Android emulators and VMs.
How long can a session run on each?
Managed Agents publishes no session cap, and idle sessions resume on the next message, but sandbox state is kept only 30 days after creation. An AgentCore microVM session lasts up to 8 hours, or up to 14 days on the Instances type. bochka has no session cap on paid plans.
Can I open a web app my agent built on either one?
Not directly. Neither has inbound ports or SSH: Managed Agents is reached through its events API and AgentCore through its own APIs. bochka gives each sandbox HTTPS URLs on up to 50 ports, raw TCP and SSH.
Where does my data live?
Managed Agents stores data and runs code in the US workspace geo only today. AgentCore runs in 17 commercial AWS regions plus GovCloud. bochka runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France.
Try bochka
Install the CLI, then run bochka new.
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