Oracle Cloud vs IONOS Cloud
Oracle Cloud and IONOS Cloud both rent plain KVM servers that you set up yourself. Oracle is a worldwide cloud with many GPUs, Windows, Mac and Arm machines and a free tier; IONOS is a German cloud with data centers in Europe and the US and Cubes billed by the minute.
The companies and products
Oracle Cloud
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is Oracle's general-purpose cloud: compute, storage, networking, databases and AI services in regions around the world.
OCI Compute rents virtual machines and bare metal servers on x86 (AMD, Intel) and Arm (Ampere), plus GPU machines and Mac servers. You pick a shape, an OS image, a network and a disk, and then install and run everything inside the VM yourself. It is not a sandbox product, so this page compares the part that overlaps: running agent code on a VM.
IONOS Cloud
IONOS Cloud is the public cloud of IONOS, a German hosting company in the United Internet group. It is a hyperscaler-style IaaS cloud, not an agent sandbox.
You rent KVM virtual machines: Cubes (fixed sizes from 1 to 16 vCPU with a local NVMe disk, billed by the minute), vCPU servers up to 60 vCPU and 230 GB of RAM, Dedicated Core servers and H200 GPU VMs. You build them in the Data Center Designer or through the Cloud API, SDKs and Terraform, next to block storage, private networks, firewalls and managed services. It is for teams that want to run their own servers in Germany, the rest of Europe or the US, and set up everything on them themselves.
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. “Cheapest of 364” means no 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 | Oracle Cloud: price rank | IONOS Cloud: price rank | bochka: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month bochka ranks 3rd with Docker, a desktop, coding agents and snapshots ready; on either cloud you build that stack on a VM yourself. | 58th of 367, with limits $413 a month | 64th of 367, with limits $492 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB | 100th of 366, with limits $376 a month | 107th of 366, with limits $540 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 Short code runs are cheap on both clouds, but each run waits for a full VM boot and your account limits. | 51st of 345, with limits $16 a month | 53rd of 345, with limits $27 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 bochka ranks 1st for sandboxes for your users; on Oracle Cloud or IONOS Cloud you build the sandbox layer, the URLs and the cleanup yourself. | 31st of 361, with limits $115 a month | 35th of 361, with limits $182 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 Both clouds suit big rollout fleets on price (Oracle Cloud ranks 7th, IONOS Cloud ranks 9th), as long as your account limits are raised to match. | 7th of 360, with limits $679 a month | 9th of 360, with limits $740 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 Oracle Cloud ranks 1st of 364 for agent evals and fits fully, while IONOS Cloud ranks 93rd as a compromise; bochka ranks 10th with a full fit. | Cheapest of 364 $136 a month | 93rd of 364, with limits $137 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 IONOS Cloud ranks 1st of 377 for CI runners, Oracle Cloud ranks 6th and bochka ranks 4th; all three fit, since a CI job just needs a plain VM. | 6th cheapest of 377 $102 a month | Cheapest of 377 $60 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB A dev box that stays on all month is what both clouds are built for: Oracle Cloud ranks 2nd, IONOS Cloud ranks 9th and bochka ranks 18th. | 2nd cheapest of 368 $12 a month | 9th cheapest of 368 $20 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 cloud streams a desktop from its VMs, so you install and expose one yourself; bochka ranks 6th with a 60fps desktop and computer use built in. | 75th of 369, with limits $97 a month | 86th of 369, with limits $137 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 | 154th of 367, with limits $49 a month | 156th of 367, with limits $74 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 | 150th of 346, with limits $32 a month | 153rd of 346, with limits $40 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 | 35th of 338, with limits $642 a month | 39th of 338, with limits $897 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 | 102nd of 360, with limits $26 a month | 105th of 360, with limits $38 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 | Oracle Cloud | IONOS Cloud | bochka |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | Plain cloud VMs and bare metal servers that you set up yourself | Plain KVM servers (Cubes, vCPU and Dedicated Core servers) that you set up yourself | A sandbox VM made for agents, created and driven by API |
| Isolation | Every VM has its own kernel on a KVM hypervisor; bare metal also available | Every server is a KVM VM with its own kernel | Every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Root on every VM, Docker is yours to install; nested KVM is documented on E5 and Standard3 Flex VMs, not on Ampere Arm VMs | Root Linux VM where you install Docker; running your own VMs inside is not documented | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm ready on every machine |
| Stopping a machine | Stopping a standard VM pauses compute billing; the boot volume is billed until you delete it | Suspended Cubes keep billing, so you snapshot and delete them to stop paying; a stopped vCPU server stops compute billing, its volumes keep billing | A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk |
| Snapshots and forks | Backups by hand or on a schedule; imaging a running VM shuts it down for several minutes | Manual full snapshots of one volume, usable only in the same location; new VMs from a snapshot get the disk, not memory | Snapshots every minute and on stop; fork a running sandbox while it keeps running |
| Desktop and computer use | No desktop on Compute VMs; OCI Secure Desktops is a separate desktop-as-a-service product | None; a remote console for troubleshooting servers | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream |
| Coding agents | None preinstalled; Oracle's AI agent service builds business agents, not coding agents in a VM | None in the VM; an MCP server lets your own AI client manage IONOS resources | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Keeping keys out of the machine | Secrets live in OCI Secret Management and the VM fetches them, so the key ends up inside the machine | None; you put secrets into the VM yourself | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register; switch a credential to another account when credits run out |
| Reaching the machine | Public IPv4 per VM and any port you open in security rules; HTTPS through your own server or a load balancer | Public IP on each VM and any port you open; reserved IPv4 billed per 30 days; private LANs and load balancers | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; dedicated IPv6 or IPv4 |
| Network rules | Security lists and network security groups by IP range, protocol and port; domain filtering through OCI Network Firewall | Network Security Groups with ingress and egress rules by IP, port and protocol | Open internet on every plan; no provider-side allowlist |
| Running many at once | Default or trial service limits per tenancy; more needs a limit increase request, which may not be approved | Limits not published; you ask IONOS Cloud Support to raise them | 100 to 2,000 sandboxes at once by plan, self-serve |
| GPUs | Nvidia B200, H200, H100 and A100 and AMD MI300X, in VMs and bare metal | NVIDIA H200 PCIe VMs with 1 to 8 GPUs, in Frankfurt and Worcester | None |
| Windows, macOS and Arm | Windows Server images, Mac servers and Ampere Arm VMs | Windows Server VMs with a licence billed per vCPU | Linux x86 only; Wine for Windows apps |
| Regions | Regions across the Americas, Europe, the UK, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Australia, plus government and sovereign clouds | Germany, the UK, France, Spain and the US | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Oracle Cloud | IONOS Cloud | bochka |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Systemd | Yes | Not published | 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 | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | No | 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 | Yes | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | Yes | Not published | 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 | Yes | No |
| GPU | Yes | Yes | No |
| Windows | Yes | Yes | No |
| Arm64 | Yes | No | 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 | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Not published | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Not published | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | No | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for Oracle Cloud or IONOS Cloud: neither was in StarSling's public sandbox benchmark run of 2026-09-29, where bochka did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) hosts. On Oracle, speed depends on the shape you pick, and burstable shapes guarantee only a part of each vCPU; on IONOS, the CPU model varies by location.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Oracle Cloud and IONOS Cloud 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 | Oracle Cloud, a month | IONOS Cloud, 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 | $5 · Usage account · with limits | $5 · Pay as you go | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $15 · Usage account · with limits | $20 · Pay as you go | $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 | $203 · Usage account · with limits | $240 · Pay as you go | $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 | $49 · Usage account · with limits | $74 · 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 | $97 · Usage account · with limits | $148 · Pay as you go · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Oracle Cloud: Oracle bills per OCPU hour (one x86 OCPU is two vCPUs) and per GB hour of memory while a VM runs, plus the boot disk until you delete it, and the first 10 TB of outbound data each month is free. The Oracle prices in our table use burstable E4 VMs billed at a 12.5% CPU baseline, so they are far below a full-speed VM.
IONOS Cloud: IONOS bills Cubes by the minute at a fixed rate per size with the NVMe disk included, and vCPU servers per core and per GB of RAM. Suspended Cubes keep billing, so the low workday figure assumes you snapshot and delete the machine each night; traffic past 2 TB a month costs extra.
IONOS Cloud: 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
Oracle's prices in these scenarios come from burstable VMs that guarantee only 12.5% of each vCPU, so an agent that builds and tests all day gets throttled, and every Oracle row is marked as not fitting; a new tenancy also needs an approved limit increase before 50 agents or 1,000 jobs run at once. IONOS does not publish how many machines an account can run at once: 50 is probably fine, but 300 sandboxes for your users and 1,000 short jobs at once are not confirmed. On bochka the 1,000-job burst needs more starts per day and per hour than the $2,000 plan allows, and starts above 90 a minute are queued.
| Scenario | Oracle Cloud | IONOS Cloud | bochka |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 Oracle Cloud when
you need many GPU types, macOS or Arm, regions outside Europe and the US, or a free small Arm box, and you will build your own sandbox layer.
- The widest choice of machines. Useful if your agents need many GPU types, macOS or Arm: Oracle Cloud rents Nvidia and AMD GPUs, Mac servers and Ampere VMs.
- Regions all over the world. Useful if your data must live in Asia, the Middle East, Africa or Australia, where Oracle Cloud has regions and IONOS does not.
- A free always-on box. Useful for one small personal box: Oracle's Always Free tier covers a modest Arm VM every month.
Use IONOS Cloud when
you want full-speed plain VMs from a German company, in Europe, the UK or the US, next to the rest of your IONOS cloud.
- Full-speed VMs at a low list price. Useful if your agents work hard all day: the IONOS machines in our table run at full speed, while Oracle's low rows are throttled burstable VMs.
- A German cloud with simple sizes. Useful if you want a European company and fixed Cube sizes with a local NVMe disk, billed by the minute.
- Europe, the UK and the US. Useful if you need servers in Germany, France, Spain, the UK or the US, close to the rest of your IONOS cloud.
Where bochka fits
Oracle Cloud and IONOS Cloud are general clouds, not agent sandboxes, and bochka is not a general cloud: it has no GPUs, no Windows guests and runs only in the EU. If what you are really running is agents, bochka gives each one a full VM that already has Docker, /dev/kvm, a desktop, coding agents and snapshots every minute, so you skip building that layer on raw VMs.
Coding agents you drive from outside
On both clouds you install each agent, write the code that prompts and watches it, and put the real API key on the VM, where code the agent runs can read it. bochka ships the agents, a driving API and a credentials proxy.
Saved every minute, forked while running
On Oracle, imaging a running VM shuts it down for several minutes and the boot disk is billed while stopped. On IONOS, a suspended Cube keeps billing unless you snapshot, delete and rebuild it. bochka saves every minute and stops for free.
A desktop and many sandboxes at once
Neither cloud streams a desktop from its VMs, so computer-use agents need your own desktop image and stream. Both also cap how many VMs you run until support raises the limit; bochka runs 100 to 2,000 by plan, self-serve.
Use bochka when you are really running agents and want full VMs that already have Docker, /dev/kvm, a desktop, coding agents, a credentials proxy, snapshots every minute and free stops, without building that layer on raw cloud VMs. Compare it one to one: bochka vs Oracle Cloud and bochka vs IONOS Cloud.
Questions people ask
Is Oracle Cloud cheaper than IONOS Cloud?
On list price, a little: one agent running all month comes to $15 on Oracle and $20 on IONOS, and 50 agents in parallel to $203 against $240. But those Oracle figures are burstable VMs throttled above 12.5% of each vCPU, so they do not fit a busy agent, while the IONOS machines run at full speed. bochka comes to $26 and $317 for the same two.
Which is faster, Oracle Cloud or IONOS Cloud?
We have no comparable measurement for either: neither was in StarSling's public benchmark, where bochka did 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. Oracle's speed depends on the shape you pick, and IONOS's CPU model varies by location.
Can Oracle Cloud and IONOS Cloud run Docker?
Yes, you install it yourself on a root Linux VM on either cloud. Oracle documents nested KVM on E5 and Standard3 Flex VMs, not on Ampere Arm VMs; IONOS does not document running VMs inside. bochka has Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm ready on every machine.
Does a stopped machine cost money?
On Oracle, stopping a standard VM pauses compute billing, but the boot volume is billed until you delete it. On IONOS, suspended Cubes continue to incur costs, so you snapshot and delete a Cube to stop paying. On bochka a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Which has GPUs?
Both. Oracle rents Nvidia B200, H200, H100 and A100 and AMD MI300X; IONOS rents NVIDIA H200 VMs with 1 to 8 GPUs in Frankfurt and Worcester. bochka has no GPUs.
Where does my data run?
Oracle Cloud has regions across the Americas, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Australia. IONOS runs in Germany, France, Spain, the UK and the US. bochka runs only in the EU (Germany, Finland and France), with EU data residency.
Try bochka
Install the CLI, then run bochka new.
Product preview
More comparisons
- bochka vs Oracle Cloud
- bochka vs IONOS Cloud
- AWS EC2 vs Oracle Cloud
- Google Compute Engine vs Oracle Cloud
- Azure Virtual Machines vs Oracle Cloud
- Oracle Cloud vs DigitalOcean
- Oracle Cloud vs Hetzner Cloud
- Oracle Cloud vs Vultr
- Oracle Cloud vs Linode
- Oracle Cloud vs Scaleway
- Oracle Cloud vs OVHcloud
- Oracle Cloud vs Contabo