Google Compute Engine vs Linode

Both rent you a full Linux VM that you set up yourself. Google Compute Engine is a hyperscaler with per-second billing, GPUs up to B200, Windows and Arm, while Linode, now Akamai Cloud, is a simpler server host that bills by the hour and keeps billing until you delete the machine.

The companies and products

Google Compute Engine

Google Compute Engine is Google Cloud's general-purpose VM service, not a sandbox product: you rent virtual machines by the second and set them up yourself.

You pick a machine type (E2, N2D, C3D, Arm T2A, GPU families and more), a boot image and a network, and Compute Engine boots a KVM-based VM with its own kernel and root access. Disks are Persistent Disk or Hyperdisk volumes, traffic goes through VPC firewall rules, and anything agent-specific (agents, desktops, HTTPS URLs, key handling) is yours to build. It is built for every kind of server workload, from websites to GPU training, across Google Cloud's worldwide regions.

Kind of product: General cloud VMs (a hyperscaler), not an agent sandbox
Isolation: Each instance is a full VM on Google's KVM-based hypervisor
Regions: 43 regions and 130 zones
Billing: Per second after a 1 minute minimum; a stopped VM stops CPU and memory charges, while disks and external IPs bill as long as they exist
Nested virtualization: Linux KVM only, and not on E2, memory-optimized, Arm or AMD VMs (except N4D); must be enabled per VM
Quota: Per-region CPU quotas that vary by project, plus a global CPU cap on some new projects; free trial accounts cannot request increases

Linode

Linode is a general-purpose cloud, now sold as Akamai Cloud, and a Linode is one of its Linux virtual machines.

A Linode is a Linux VM you rent by size, with root, a public IP, local disk and, on older plans, a monthly transfer allowance. You pick a distribution, then install and run your own software on it, next to Akamai Cloud products like Kubernetes, block storage, NodeBalancers, VPCs 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.

Founded: 2003; Akamai completed its acquisition of Linode in March 2022
Product: Compute Instances: virtual machines for general-purpose Linux workloads
CPU: Shared CPU plans keep costs down for dev and low-traffic servers; Dedicated CPU plans give competition-free guaranteed CPU
Regions: 33 compute regions in 15 countries across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia
Billing: Hourly, rounded up to the next hour; powered-off instances are still billed; most plans have a monthly cap, but G8 and GPU plans have none since July 2026
GPUs: Nvidia RTX 4000 Ada, RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell (on request) and Quadro RTX 6000; HGX B300 through sales
Compliance: Akamai's compliance programs list SOC 2 and HIPAA

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. “16th cheapest of 364” means 15 of the other 363 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	Google Compute Engine: price rank	Linode: price rank	bochka: price rank
Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Neither ships agents, preview URLs or forks, so on Compute Engine or Linode you build that layer yourself; bochka has it on every machine.	120th of 367, with limits $1,106 a month	145th of 367, with limits $1,292 a month	3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month
Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB	177th of 366, with limits $1,433 a month	164th of 366, with limits $1,200 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 Compute Engine bills per second after one minute, so short runs come to about $133 a month there against $1,200 on Linode, which bills each run as a full hour.	92nd of 345, with limits $133 a month	174th of 345, with limits $1,200 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 Ten-minute user sessions favor Compute Engine's per-second billing over Linode's hourly rounding, but both leave HTTPS access and per-user tooling to you; bochka ships them.	92nd of 361, with limits $836 a month	114th of 361, with limits $1,090 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 Thousands of short rollouts suit Compute Engine far better than Linode, where every rollout is billed as a full hour.	36th of 360, with limits $2,085 a month	186th of 360, with limits $24,000 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	16th cheapest of 364 $263 a month	55th cheapest of 364 $1,080 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 CI that boots Android emulators or VM images needs /dev/kvm, which Linode does not support, Compute Engine's E2 VMs lack, and bochka has on every machine.	41st cheapest of 377 $359 a month	137th cheapest of 377 $4,320 a month	4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month
24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB A 24/7 dev box suits Linode, a classic always-on server, better than Compute Engine, whose lowest always-on rate needs a 3-year commitment.	82nd cheapest of 368 $109 a month	40th cheapest of 368 $48 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 Neither has a desktop in its Linux images, so you install and stream one yourself; bochka streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium and computer use.	129th of 369, with limits $293 a month	272nd of 369, with limits $1,440 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	212th of 367, with limits $244 a month	311th of 367, with limits $1,080 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	218th of 346, with limits $179 a month	190th of 346, with limits $108 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	108th of 338, with limits $2,978 a month	89th of 338, with limits $2,160 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	152nd of 360, with limits $120 a month	189th of 360, with limits $182 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 Of the three, only Linode is priced here with its hourly Nvidia GPU instances; Compute Engine GPUs are not in our pricing data, and bochka has no GPUs.	Can't run it	78th of 98, with limits $1,500 a month	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	Google Compute Engine	Linode	bochka
What you get	A general cloud VM on a hyperscaler; you install and wire everything else	A general Linux server you set up and run yourself	An agent sandbox: a full VM with agents, desktop, URLs and snapshots set up
Billing while running	Per second after a 1 minute minimum	Hourly, rounded up to the next full hour; monthly cap on most plans	Per second, from the credit of a monthly plan
Stopped machines	CPU and memory stop billing; disks and external IPs keep billing	A powered-off Linode is still billed; you delete it to stop paying	A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk
Docker and nested virtualization	Docker, root and systemd; nested KVM only on some Intel families and N4D, not on E2, Arm or other AMD VMs	Root and Docker; Linode staff say nested virtualization is not supported	Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine
Operating systems and CPUs	Linux and Windows Server on Intel, AMD and Arm	Linux on shared or dedicated CPU plans	Linux on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) hosts; Wine for Windows apps
Snapshots	On demand or on a schedule you set	Paid Backups add-on: scheduled backups plus one manual snapshot per Linode	Automatic snapshots every minute and on stop
Pause and fork	Suspend keeps memory for up to 60 days; cloning means a machine image and a new VM	No pause; clone copies disks to a new Linode, and the docs say to power off first	Fork a running sandbox in one call; resume reboots from disk (no memory snapshots)
Coding agents	None preinstalled; you install agents and drive them over SSH	None; StackScripts and Marketplace apps install general software	Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, driven from outside with a prompt, steer and events API
Keeping keys out of the machine	No credential proxy; service account tokens and Secret Manager values are read inside the VM	No credential proxy; secrets reach the server through user data or files you place	AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; switch a credential to another account when credits run out
Desktop and computer use	No managed desktop, browser or computer-use API on Linux VMs	No desktop in the images; you install one and reach it through the Glish console	60fps desktop with Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream
Reaching the machine	External IPv4 and any port; HTTPS needs your own certificate and a load balancer or web server	Public IPv4 on any port; HTTPS needs your own certificates or a NodeBalancer	HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; own IP
Outbound network rules	VPC egress rules by IP and port; domain rules on the paid Cloud NGFW Standard tier	Free Cloud Firewall with outbound rules by protocol, port and IP range	Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist
GPUs	Nvidia GPUs from T4 and L4 up to H100, H200, B200 and GB200	Nvidia RTX 4000 Ada, RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell and Quadro RTX 6000 by the hour; HGX B300 through sales	None
Regions	43 regions and 130 zones worldwide	33 regions in 15 countries across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia	EU only: Germany, Finland, France

Every feature Battleships tracks (43)

Feature	Google Compute Engine	Linode	bochka
Full VM (own kernel)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Docker inside	Yes	Yes	Yes
Nested virtualization	No	No	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	Yes	No	Yes
Automatic snapshots	No	No	Yes
Fork/clone	Yes	Yes	Yes
Live fork (no pause)	Yes	No	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	No	No	No
GPU	Yes	Yes	No
Windows	No	No	No
Arm64	Yes	No	No
Self-hosting	No	No	No
BYOC	No	No	No
Open source	No	No	No
Scoped API keys	Not published	Yes	Yes
Spend limits	No	No	Yes
Usage per sandbox (API)	Yes	No	Yes
Audit logs	Yes	Yes	No
SSO	Yes	Yes	No
SOC 2	Yes	Yes	No
HIPAA	Yes	Yes	No
EU data residency	Yes	Yes	Yes
Zero data retention	Not published	Not published	Yes

Performance

Google Compute EngineNot measured

LinodeNot measured

bochka26.69 runs/s

There is no comparable measurement for Compute Engine or Linode: neither was part of the public StarSling benchmark run we use. In that run, on 2026-09-29, bochka did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. Speed on both clouds depends on the machine family or plan you pick, such as E2 versus newer Intel and AMD chips, or Linode's shared versus dedicated CPU.

Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Google Compute Engine and Linode 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	Google Compute Engine, a month	Linode, 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	$31 · Pay-as-you-go billing account (no plan fee)	$13 · Usage account	$20 · $20/mo
One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month	$64 · Pay-as-you-go billing account (no plan fee) · with limits	$48 · 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	$1,291 · Pay-as-you-go billing account (no plan fee)	$634 · 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	$378 · Pay-as-you-go billing account (no plan fee)	$1,080 · 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	$690 · Pay-as-you-go billing account (no plan fee)	$7,200 · Usage account · with limits	$2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits

Google Compute Engine: Compute Engine bills each VM per second after a 1 minute minimum at its list rate, priced here as E2 sizes on demand in us-central1 (the 4 vCPU size has 16 GiB of memory). Disks and external IPs bill on top, also while stopped, and the lowest always-on rate needs a 3-year commitment.

Linode: Each Linode size has an hourly price, rounded up to the next full hour, and billing runs from create to delete, including while it is powered off. Most plans stop at a monthly cap; G8 dedicated and GPU plans have no cap, and backups and extra transfer cost extra.

Linode: 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

Linode rounds every instance up to a full hour, so 10-minute user sessions come to $1,080 a month there against $378 on Compute Engine, and the 1,000-job burst reaches $7,200 on shared vCPUs that other tenants can slow. Compute Engine limits vCPUs per region with quotas that vary by project, so 50 agents or 300 user sandboxes may need a quota request first, and a free trial account cannot ask for more. Linode raises a new account's limits by support ticket. On bochka, the burst is queued by start limits of 90 a minute, 600 an hour and 2,400 a day on the $2,000 plan.

Scenario	Google Compute Engine	Linode	bochka
One coding agent, workdays	None that bite	None that bite	None that bite
One agent that never stops	3-year commitment	None that bite	None that bite
50 agents in parallel	None that bite	None that bite	None that bite
Sandboxes for your users	None that bite	None that bite	None that bite
1,000 short jobs at once	None that bite	shared vCPUs on this tier: heavy, sustained CPU use can be slowed by other tenants	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 Google Compute Engine when

you run many short jobs, need GPUs up to B200, Windows or Arm, or want memory suspend and domain-level egress rules, and have the people to build agent tooling on top.

Short jobs billed by the second. Useful for bursts of short jobs: Compute Engine bills per second after one minute, while Linode bills every run as an hour.
Windows, Arm and top-end GPUs. Useful if you need Windows Server, Arm machines or Nvidia GPUs up to H200, B200 and GB200.
Memory suspend and domain rules. Useful if a VM must resume with its processes running, or outbound traffic must be limited to chosen domains.

Use Linode when

you want simple Linux servers that stay up all month at a steady price with a monthly cap, next to Kubernetes, block storage and a free firewall.

Steady servers without a commitment. Useful for a machine that runs all month: a 4 vCPU / 8 GB Linode comes to $48 a month with no commitment.
A bill with a ceiling. Useful if you want a known bill: most Linode plans stop charging at a monthly cap, though G8 and GPU plans do not.
A free firewall next to the server. Useful if you want outbound rules by protocol, port and IP range from a Cloud Firewall that costs nothing.

Where bochka fits

Compute Engine and Linode are clouds for any server, so neither knows what an agent needs. If what you are really running is agents, bochka gives each one a full VM that is ready to work, with /dev/kvm, coding agents, a desktop, HTTPS URLs and a disk saved every minute. Keep Compute Engine or Linode for GPUs, Windows or regions outside the EU.

/dev/kvm on every machine

An agent that tests Android apps or builds VM images needs hardware virtualization. Linode does not support it, and Compute Engine offers it only on some Intel families and N4D, enabled per VM, not on E2.

Free stops, minute snapshots and forks

Agents sit idle between tasks. A powered-off Linode keeps billing until you delete it, and a stopped Compute Engine VM keeps billing its disks. Copying a busy agent means a machine image or a powered-off clone.

Agents, desktop and URLs ready

Both start as an empty server, so you install and supervise each agent, desktop stream and key, then add certificates and a load balancer or NodeBalancer for HTTPS. Any key you place there is readable by the agent's code.

Use bochka when what you are running is agents: each one on its own full VM with /dev/kvm, coding agents driven from outside, a desktop, HTTPS URLs, snapshots every minute, forks and stops that cost nothing. Compare it one to one: bochka vs Google Compute Engine and bochka vs Linode.

Questions people ask

Is Google Compute Engine cheaper than Linode?

For machines that run for hours, Linode usually is: one workday agent comes to $13 a month against $31, and 50 agents in parallel to $634 against $1,291. For short sessions Compute Engine wins: sandboxes for your users cost $378 on Compute Engine against $1,080 on Linode, and the 1,000-job burst $690 against $7,200, because Linode bills each run as a full hour.

Which is faster, Compute Engine or Linode?

We have no comparable measurement for either one. Both sell several CPU families or plans, so speed depends on what you pick. bochka did 26.69 runs per second in the StarSling Node.js benchmark at 4 vCPU / 8 GB.

Can Compute Engine or Linode run Docker and nested VMs?

Both run Docker with root on a full VM. Nested virtualization is not supported on Linode, and on Compute Engine it works only with Linux KVM on some machine types, not on E2, Arm or AMD VMs except N4D. On bochka, /dev/kvm is on every machine.

Do I pay for a stopped VM?

On Linode, yes: a powered-off Linode is billed in full until you delete it. On Compute Engine, a stopped VM stops CPU and memory charges, but its disks and external IPs keep billing. On bochka, a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.

Which has more regions and GPUs?

Compute Engine runs in 43 regions and rents Nvidia GPUs up to H200, B200 and GB200. Linode runs in 33 regions in 15 countries with RTX 4000 Ada, RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell and Quadro RTX 6000 instances. bochka runs only in the EU and has no GPUs.

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Install the CLI, then run bochka new.

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