DigitalOcean vs Scaleway

Both rent plain Linux VMs you set up yourself. DigitalOcean runs in 13 regions around the world and bills per second, while Scaleway stays in Europe, bills per hour and also sells Windows and Arm64 machines.

The companies and products

DigitalOcean

DigitalOcean is a general-purpose cloud, and Droplets are its Linux virtual machines.

A Droplet is a Linux VM you rent by size, with root, a public IP, local SSD and a monthly transfer allowance. You pick an image, then install and run your own software on it, next to DigitalOcean products like Kubernetes, managed databases, load balancers and cloud firewalls. It is a server host, not an agent sandbox, so this page compares the two where they overlap: giving an agent its own Linux machine. DigitalOcean also sells two separate products in preview, Harness Runtime for agents and MicroVMs, which are not Droplets.

Founded: 2012
Product: Linux-based virtual machines on virtualized hardware
CPU: Basic plans share a hyper-thread with other Droplets; dedicated CPU plans get the full hyper-thread
Regions: 16 datacenters in 13 regions across the US, Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia
Billing: Per second with a 60 second minimum, capped at 672 hours a month; powered-off Droplets are still billed
GPUs: Nvidia H100, H200, B300, L40S and RTX Ada cards, and AMD MI300X, MI325X, MI350X and MI355X
Agent product: Harness Runtime runs agents such as Claude Code and Codex in separate microVM sandboxes, apart from Droplets

Scaleway

Scaleway is a European cloud and AI provider, part of the iliad Group, that rents virtual machines, GPUs, storage and managed services.

Scaleway Instances are KVM virtual machines you pick from fixed shapes, from small shared-vCPU Development Instances to dedicated-vCPU and Arm64 types, running Linux or Windows Server. You get root, SSH, a public IP and security groups, and you install and run your own software next to Scaleway products like managed databases, Kubernetes, object storage and GPU Instances. It is general cloud infrastructure, not an agent sandbox, so this page compares the two where they overlap: giving an agent its own Linux machine.

Company: Describes itself as Europe's sovereign cloud and AI provider, a subsidiary of the iliad Group
Isolation: Each Instance is a virtual machine on a QEMU/KVM hypervisor
Locations: Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw and Milan
Billing: CPU Instances are billed per hour of uptime, including startup and standby time; IPs and volumes bill even when powered off
GPUs: GPU Instances with Nvidia B300, H100, L4 and L40S, billed per minute
Certifications: Lists ISO/IEC 27001 and HDS; SecNumCloud qualification in progress

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. “39th cheapest of 368” means 38 of the other 367 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	DigitalOcean: price rank	Scaleway: price rank	bochka: price rank
Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Scaleway ranks well above DigitalOcean here (49th against 134th), but both hand you an empty VM, while bochka ranks 3rd with agents, snapshots and free stops built in.	134th of 367, with limits $1,187 a month	49th of 367, with limits $322 a month	3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month
Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB DigitalOcean ranks 35th and Scaleway 90th for an assistant that runs around the clock; on both you build the agent setup, HTTPS and backups yourself, which bochka has built in.	35th of 366, with limits $1,429 a month	90th of 366, with limits $208 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 DigitalOcean ranks 63rd and Scaleway 166th, because a one-minute job on DigitalOcean pays at least 60 seconds while Scaleway bills each CPU Instance for at least a full hour.	63rd of 345, with limits $60 a month	166th of 345, with limits $893 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 fits 300 user sandboxes by default: a new DigitalOcean team gets 3 Droplets and Scaleway sets quotas per shape, while bochka allows 100 to 2,000 sandboxes by plan.	54th of 361, with limits $421 a month	84th of 361, with limits $738 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 DigitalOcean ranks 31st and Scaleway 176th, since many short rollouts each pay a full hour on Scaleway and only the seconds used on DigitalOcean.	31st of 360, with limits $1,786 a month	176th of 360, with limits $18,254 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	106th of 364, with limits $357 a month	42nd cheapest of 364 $776 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 Scaleway ranks 82nd and DigitalOcean 146th; on both you run the runner software and the clean-up between jobs yourself.	146th of 377, with limits $171 a month	82nd cheapest of 377 $777 a month	4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month
24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Both fit a 24/7 dev box as a classic always-on server, with Scaleway a little ahead at 30th against 39th.	39th cheapest of 368 $48 a month	30th cheapest of 368 $41 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 Both are headless servers where you install a desktop and browser yourself, while bochka streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium and computer use.	117th of 369, with limits $263 a month	94th of 369, with limits $168 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	56th of 367, with limits $147 a month	173rd of 367, with limits $126 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	88th of 346, with limits $175 a month	149th of 346, with limits $13 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	69th of 338, with limits $1,786 a month	34th of 338, with limits $253 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	22nd of 360, with limits $199 a month	103rd of 360, with limits $29 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	DigitalOcean	Scaleway	bochka
Isolation	Every Droplet is a full VM with its own kernel	Every Instance is a full KVM VM with its own kernel	Every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel
CPU	Basic plans share hyper-threads with other Droplets; dedicated CPU plans cost more; no comparable measurement	Shared vCPU on Development and Play types, dedicated vCPU on others; no comparable measurement	Dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) hosts; 26.69 runs/s at 4 vCPU / 8 GB
Docker and nested virtualization	Root and Docker; nested VMs are mentioned in the live migration docs but not listed as a feature	Root and Docker on Linux images; nested virtualization is not documented	Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine, documented
Billing	Per second with a 60 second minimum, capped at 672 hours a month	Per hour of uptime, including startup and standby; disks and public IPv4 bill on top	Monthly plan from $20 that all becomes usage credit, spent per second on running sandboxes
Stopping	A powered-off Droplet is billed in full; you destroy it to stop paying	Standby bills as running, and a shutdown from inside puts it in standby; a console or API power-off stops compute, but volumes and IPs keep billing	A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk
Snapshots and backups	On-demand disk snapshots billed by size; paid scheduled backups from every 4 hours to weekly	Images and volume snapshots you create yourself; none automatic	Automatic snapshots every minute and on stop
Fork	Take a live snapshot, then create new Droplets from it (disk, no memory)	Create an image from the Instance, then boot new Instances from it (disk, no memory)	Fork a running sandbox in one call (disk, no memory)
Reaching the machine	Public IPv4 and IPv6 on any port; HTTPS needs your own certificates or a load balancer	Public IPv4 and IPv6 on any port; HTTPS needs your own proxy, certificates and DNS	HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; own IP
Coding agents and desktop	None on Droplets; the separate Harness Runtime product runs agents in microVMs; headless Linux	None; you install agents, a desktop and a browser yourself	Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled with a prompt, steer and events API, plus a 60fps desktop with Chromium and computer use
Keeping keys out of the machine	No credentials proxy for Droplets; you put secrets on the server yourself	Secret Manager stores secrets that the machine fetches, so they end up on it	AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register; switch a credential to another account when credits run out
How many at once	A new team gets 3 Droplets (Tier 1); Tier 5 allows 100 after prepayment, paid invoices or a request	Quotas per shape, for example 10 DEV1-L after identity checks; more through support	100 to 2,000 sandboxes by plan, raised self-serve
Outbound rules	Free cloud firewalls with outbound rules by IP range, Droplet or tag	Security groups with inbound and outbound rules by protocol, port and IP range	Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist
GPUs, Windows and Arm	Nvidia and AMD GPU Droplets; Linux on x86 only	Nvidia GPU Instances by the minute, Windows Server Instances and Arm64 Instances	No GPUs; no Windows guests (Wine for Windows apps); x86 only
Regions	13 regions in the US, Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia	EU only: Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw and Milan	EU only: Germany, Finland and France

Every feature Battleships tracks (43)

Feature	DigitalOcean	Scaleway	bochka
Full VM (own kernel)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Docker inside	Yes	Yes	Yes
Nested virtualization	Yes	Not published	Yes
Root	Yes	Yes	Yes
Systemd	Yes	Yes	Yes
Desktop GUI	No	No	Yes
Browser	No	No	Yes
Computer-use API	No	No	Yes
SSH	Yes	Yes	Yes
Persistent disk	Yes	Yes	Yes
Pause/resume	No	No	Yes
Automatic snapshots	No	No	Yes
Fork/clone	Yes	Yes	Yes
Live fork (no pause)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Memory fork	No	No	No
Custom image (Docker or snapshot)	Yes	Yes	Yes
≥24 h sessions	Yes	Yes	Yes
Idle auto-stop	No	No	No
Wake on request	No	No	No
HTTPS preview URLs	No	No	Yes
Raw TCP inbound	Yes	Yes	Yes
Public IPv4	Yes	Yes	No
Egress allowlist	Yes	Yes	No
Secret proxy	No	No	Yes
Secret proxy for any API	No	No	Yes
Preinstalled agents	No	No	Yes
Agent harness API	No	No	Yes
MCP server	Yes	No	No
GPU	Yes	Yes	No
Windows	No	Yes	No
Arm64	No	Yes	No
Self-hosting	No	No	No
BYOC	No	No	No
Open source	No	No	No
Scoped API keys	Not published	Not published	Yes
Spend limits	No	No	Yes
Usage per sandbox (API)	Yes	No	Yes
Audit logs	Not published	Yes	No
SSO	Yes	Yes	No
SOC 2	Yes	No	No
HIPAA	Yes	No	No
EU data residency	Yes	Yes	Yes
Zero data retention	Not published	Not published	Yes

Performance

DigitalOceanNot measured

ScalewayNot measured

bochka26.69 runs/s

There is no comparable measurement for DigitalOcean or Scaleway: neither was 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. Both sell shared-vCPU and dedicated-vCPU shapes, so their results would depend on the shape you pick.

Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. DigitalOcean and Scaleway 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	DigitalOcean, a month	Scaleway, 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 · Pay as you go	$14 · Usage account	$20 · $20/mo
One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month	$48 · Pay as you go	$41 · Usage account	$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	$629 · Pay as you go · with limits	$537 · Usage account	$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	$179 · Pay as you go · with limits	$734 · Usage account	$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	$357 · Pay as you go · with limits	$4,892 · Usage account	$2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits

DigitalOcean: Each Droplet size has an hourly price, billed per second with a 60 second minimum and capped at 672 hours a month. Billing runs from create to destroy, even while powered off, and snapshots and backups cost extra.

Scaleway: Each Instance shape has an hourly price, billed per hour of uptime including startup and standby, so a short job pays a full hour. Disks and public IPv4 bill on top and keep billing while an Instance is powered off.

Scaleway: 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.

Limits in those scenarios

A new DigitalOcean team can run only 3 Droplets at once, so 50 agents in parallel, 300 user sandboxes and 1,000 short jobs do not fit until it reaches a higher tier. Scaleway sets quotas per shape instead, such as 10 DEV1-L or 15 DEV1-M after identity checks, and the table prices it as if support had already raised them. Scaleway's hourly billing also makes the 1,000-job burst cost $4,892 a month, since each short job pays a full hour. On bochka the limit is a sandbox count plus starts per minute, so that burst gets queued and needs more starts per day than the $2,000 plan allows.

Scenario	DigitalOcean	Scaleway	bochka
One coding agent, workdays	None that bite	None that bite	None that bite
One agent that never stops	None that bite	None that bite	None that bite
50 agents in parallel	Pay as you go: max 3 concurrent	None that bite	None that bite
Sandboxes for your users	Pay as you go: max 3 concurrent	None that bite	None that bite
1,000 short jobs at once	Pay as you go: max 3 concurrent shared vCPUs on this tier, per-second with 672 h cap”): heavy, sustained CPU use can be slowed by other tenants	None that bite	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)

Which one should you use?

Use DigitalOcean when

your users are outside Europe, you run many short jobs that should bill by the second, or you need AMD as well as Nvidia GPUs.

Regions around the world. Useful if your users are outside Europe: Droplets run in 13 regions across the US, Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia.
Per-second billing for short jobs. Useful for many short runs: a Droplet bills per second with a 60 second minimum, where Scaleway charges a full hour.
AMD and Nvidia GPUs. Useful if your model work needs AMD cards such as the MI300X as well as Nvidia ones: DigitalOcean rents both as GPU Droplets.

Use Scaleway when

everything must stay in a European cloud, you need Windows Server or Arm64 machines, or your servers sit powered off for long stretches.

Windows and Arm64 machines. Useful if an agent must test on Windows Server or Arm64: Scaleway sells both as ordinary Instances, and DigitalOcean sells neither.
A powered-off machine bills less. Useful for servers that sit idle: powering off from the console or API stops compute billing, while a Droplet bills in full.
A cloud that stays in Europe. Useful if everything must stay in the EU: Scaleway is a European cloud that runs in Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw and Milan.

Where bochka fits

DigitalOcean and Scaleway are general clouds, so this only matters if what you are really running is agents on those VMs. Then bochka gives each agent a full VM in the EU that is ready to work, with agents, a desktop, HTTPS ports and a disk saved every minute, and stops that cost nothing.

Idle agents stop paying and keep their work

Agents sit idle between tasks. A powered-off Droplet bills in full, and a stopped Scaleway Instance still bills its disks and IP, so you either pay or delete and recreate from snapshots you made yourself.

Agents, desktop and keys built in

Both start as empty servers, so you install and supervise each agent, desktop and browser, and the keys end up on the machine. bochka preinstalls coding agents you drive from outside, a 60fps desktop and a credentials proxy.

Fleets without a ticket

A new DigitalOcean team runs 3 Droplets until it prepays or pays invoices, and Scaleway quotas per shape need support. bochka runs 100 to 2,000 sandboxes by plan, each with HTTPS on up to 50 ports.

Use bochka when the VMs are for agents: each one gets a full VM in the EU with coding agents, a desktop, HTTPS ports and minute-by-minute snapshots built in, fork while running, stops that cost nothing, and hundreds at once without a quota ticket. Compare it one to one: bochka vs DigitalOcean and bochka vs Scaleway.

Questions people ask

Is DigitalOcean cheaper than Scaleway?

For one part-time server they are close: one coding agent on workdays comes to $13 a month on DigitalOcean and $14 on Scaleway, before Scaleway's disk and IPv4. One agent that never stops comes to $41 a month on Scaleway against $48 on DigitalOcean, and bochka comes to $26.

Which is faster, DigitalOcean or Scaleway?

Neither has a comparable measurement, so there is no fair speed ratio between them. Both sell shared-vCPU shapes and dedicated-vCPU shapes, so results would depend on the shape you pick. bochka measured 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts.

Can DigitalOcean and Scaleway run Docker and nested VMs?

Docker works on both, since each machine is a full VM with root. DigitalOcean's live migration docs mention nested VMs without listing them as a feature, and Scaleway's docs do not cover nested virtualization. On bochka, Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm are documented on every machine.

Do I pay for a stopped machine?

On DigitalOcean, yes: a powered-off Droplet bills in full until you destroy it. On Scaleway, standby bills like a running Instance, and a console or API power-off stops compute but not disks and IPs. On bochka, a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.

Can I run 50 machines at once?

Not on a new account for either. A new DigitalOcean team gets 3 Droplets, and Scaleway allows 10 DEV1-L after identity checks, with more through support. With limits raised, 50 agents in parallel come to $629 a month on DigitalOcean and $537 on Scaleway, against $317 on bochka.

Where does my data run?

DigitalOcean has 13 regions, including Frankfurt, Amsterdam and London in Europe. Scaleway runs only in Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw and Milan. bochka runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France, with EU data residency.

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