Oracle Cloud vs Linode
Oracle Cloud is a large cloud with Windows, macOS, Arm and GPU machines, nested KVM on some shapes and a free Arm tier. Linode, now Akamai Cloud, rents plain Linux servers that bill by the hour, even while powered off.
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.
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.
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 | Linode: price rank | bochka: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Both give you a plain VM to build on; Oracle can offer nested KVM on some x86 shapes while Linode has none, and bochka ships Docker, /dev/kvm, a desktop and coding agents ready. | 58th of 367, with limits $413 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 | 100th of 366, with limits $376 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 Oracle's burstable VMs are cheap for short runs but throttled, Linode bills every run as at least an hour, and bochka's start limits queue big bursts. | 51st of 345, with limits $16 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 Linode bills each 10-minute user session as a full hour, Oracle's low price uses throttled burstable VMs, and bochka gives each user a sandbox with an HTTPS URL by API. | 31st of 361, with limits $115 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 | 7th of 360, with limits $679 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 Oracle Cloud ranks 1st here on price with tenancy limits raised to match, Linode fits at a higher cost, and bochka fits with snapshots and forks built in. | Cheapest of 364 $136 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 All three run Docker builds on a full VM; on Oracle and Linode you also run the runner software, the image updates and the clean-up between jobs. | 6th cheapest of 377 $102 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 Oracle's Always Free Arm allowance can cover one small dev box, though idle free VMs may be reclaimed; a Linode is a classic always-on server, and bochka keeps the disk with snapshots every minute. | 2nd cheapest of 368 $12 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 Oracle Compute nor Linode ships a desktop stream, so you install and expose one yourself; bochka streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium and computer use. | 75th of 369, with limits $97 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 | 154th of 367, with limits $49 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 | 150th of 346, with limits $32 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 | 35th of 338, with limits $642 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 | 102nd of 360, with limits $26 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 Linode rents Nvidia GPU instances by the hour; Oracle Cloud also rents Nvidia and AMD GPUs but has no priced row here, 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 | Oracle Cloud | Linode | bochka |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | A general cloud VM or bare metal server that you set up yourself | A general Linux server that you set up and run 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 Linode is a full VM with its own kernel, isolated at the hypervisor | 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 documented on E5 and Standard3 Flex VMs, not on Ampere Arm | Root and Docker; Linode staff say nested virtualization is not supported because it breaks live migration | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm ready on every machine |
| Stopping | Stopping a standard VM pauses compute billing; the boot volume is billed until you delete it | A powered-off Linode is still billed; you delete it to stop paying | A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk |
| Snapshots | Disk backups by hand or on a schedule | Paid Backups add-on: scheduled disk backups plus one manual snapshot per Linode | Automatic snapshots every minute and on stop |
| Fork | Make a custom image of the boot disk; imaging a running VM shuts it down for several minutes | Clone copies all disks to a new Linode; the docs say to power off first | Fork a running sandbox while it keeps running |
| Desktop and computer use | No desktop on Compute VMs; OCI Secure Desktops is a separate product | No desktop in the images; you install one and reach it through the Glish console | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream |
| Coding agents | None preinstalled | None; StackScripts and Marketplace apps install general software | 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 | No credentials proxy; secrets reach the server through user data or files you place | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register; switch to another account when credits run out |
| Reaching the machine | Public IPv4 and any port you open; HTTPS through your own server or a load balancer | 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 |
| Network rules | Security rules by IP range, protocol and port; domain filtering through OCI Network Firewall | Free Cloud Firewall with outbound rules by protocol, port and IP range | 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 | Account limits are raised by support ticket | 100 to 2,000 sandboxes at once by plan, self-serve |
| Windows, macOS, Arm and GPUs | Windows Server, Mac servers, Ampere Arm VMs, Nvidia and AMD GPUs | Linux on x86 only, plus Nvidia GPU instances | Linux x86 only, no GPUs; Wine for Windows apps |
| Regions | Regions across the Americas, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Australia, plus government clouds | 33 regions in 15 countries across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Oracle Cloud | Linode | bochka |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | Yes | 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) | No | 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 | Yes | No | No |
| GPU | Yes | Yes | No |
| Windows | Yes | 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 | Not published | No | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | 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
There is no comparable measurement for Oracle Cloud or Linode: neither was part of StarSling's public sandbox benchmark run of 2026-09-29. In that run bochka did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts. Speed on either cloud depends on the shape or plan you pick, and Oracle's burstable shapes guarantee only part of each vCPU.
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 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 | Oracle Cloud, 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 | $5 · Usage account · with limits | $13 · Usage account | $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 | $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 | $203 · Usage account · with limits | $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 | $49 · Usage account · with limits | $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 | $97 · Usage account · with limits | $7,200 · Usage account · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Oracle Cloud: Oracle bills per OCPU hour and per GB hour of memory while a VM runs, plus the boot disk until you delete it; the first 10 TB of outbound data each month is free. The Oracle prices on this page use burstable VMs billed at a 12.5% CPU baseline, so full-speed shapes cost more.
Linode: Each Linode size has an hourly price, rounded up to the next full hour, billed from create to delete, including while powered off. Most plans stop at a monthly cap; G8 and GPU plans have none since July 2026.
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
Every Oracle row is marked as not fitting because its price uses burstable VMs that guarantee only 12.5% of each vCPU, so a busy agent gets throttled. Linode fits most rows with no CPU baseline but rounds every instance up to a full hour, which is why 30,000 ten-minute user sessions come to $1,080 a month on Linode against $200 on bochka. A new Oracle tenancy needs an approved limit increase for 50 machines at once, and Linode raises account limits by support ticket. No one fits the 1,000-job burst as priced: Linode's tier there uses shared vCPUs, and bochka's $2,000 plan allows fewer starts per day and per hour than it needs.
| Scenario | Oracle Cloud | Linode | 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 | None that bite |
| Sandboxes for your users |
| None that bite | None that bite |
| 1,000 short jobs at once |
|
|
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Which one should you use?
Use Oracle Cloud when
you need Windows, macOS, Arm or AMD GPUs, regions in the Middle East or Africa, nested KVM on a cloud VM, or a free small Arm server.
- More kinds of machine. Useful if you need Windows, macOS, Arm or AMD GPUs: Oracle Cloud rents all of them, and Linode runs Linux on x86.
- Stopping pauses the bill. Useful for machines that sit idle: a stopped standard Oracle VM stops compute billing, while a powered-off Linode is still billed.
- A free always-on Arm box. Useful for one small personal server: Oracle's Always Free tier covers a modest Arm VM every month.
Use Linode when
you want a simple Linux server with no CPU baseline, Nvidia GPUs by the hour, or a VM next to Kubernetes, block storage and a free cloud firewall.
- No CPU baseline at the listed price. Useful for busy machines: Linode's 4 vCPU plan in our scenarios has no CPU baseline, while Oracle's lowest prices here use VMs throttled to 12.5% per vCPU.
- Fewer moving parts. Useful if you want a plain server fast: pick a size and a distribution, without shapes, tenancies and service limits to learn.
- A cloud firewall at no charge. Useful if you want outbound limits on a budget: Linode's Cloud Firewall is free and filters by protocol, port and IP range.
Where bochka fits
Oracle Cloud and Linode are general clouds, so neither is an agent sandbox. If what you are really running is agents, bochka gives each one a full VM that already has Docker, /dev/kvm, coding agents, a desktop and snapshots every minute, so your team does not build that layer on raw VMs.
Saved every minute, forked while running
When an agent breaks its machine, you want the disk from a minute ago. Oracle and Linode back up by hand, on a schedule or as a paid add-on, and both stop or power off the VM to image or clone it.
Stops that keep the disk
Agents sit idle between tasks. A powered-off Linode keeps billing until you delete it, and a stopped Oracle VM still bills its boot volume, so you script delete and rebuild yourself.
Agents, a desktop and /dev/kvm built in
Both start as empty servers: you install each agent, a desktop and the API keys, which the agent's code can then read. Linode has no nested virtualization, and Oracle documents it only on some x86 shapes.
Use bochka when what you are really running is agents and you want each one on a full VM with Docker, /dev/kvm, coding agents, a desktop, snapshots every minute, forks and free stops, without building that layer yourself. Compare it one to one: bochka vs Oracle Cloud and bochka vs Linode.
Questions people ask
Is Oracle Cloud cheaper than Linode?
On list price in our table, yes, but with a catch. One agent that never stops comes to $15 a month on Oracle and $48 on Linode, and 50 agents in parallel to $203 against $634, yet those Oracle VMs are burstable and throttled above 12.5% of each vCPU. Full-speed Oracle shapes cost more.
Which is faster, Oracle Cloud or Linode?
Neither has a comparable measurement in the public StarSling benchmark, so we cannot rank them. Speed depends on the plan: Linode sells shared and dedicated CPU plans, and Oracle's burstable shapes guarantee only part of each vCPU. bochka did 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in that run.
Can I run Docker and nested VMs on Oracle Cloud or Linode?
Both give you root, so you can install Docker. Oracle documents nested KVM on E5 and Standard3 Flex VMs but not on Ampere Arm VMs, and Linode staff say nested virtualization is not supported. On bochka, Docker and /dev/kvm are ready on every machine.
Do I pay for a stopped machine?
On Linode, yes: a powered-off Linode is billed until you delete it. On Oracle Cloud, stopping a standard VM pauses compute billing, but the boot volume is billed until you delete it. On bochka, a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Which has more regions?
Oracle Cloud has public regions across the Americas, Europe, the UK, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Australia, plus government clouds. Linode has 33 regions in 15 countries across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia. bochka runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France.
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.
Try bochka
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