Together Code Sandbox vs Claude Managed Agents
Together Code Sandbox gives you VMs started from Docker-image snapshots that you drive through an SDK, and you bring your own agent. Claude Managed Agents is a ready-made Claude agent: you send it a task, and it works in a small container that Anthropic runs.
The companies and products
Together Code Sandbox
Together AI is a cloud for running and training AI models, and Code Sandbox is its product for running code in isolated VMs.
You build a snapshot from a Docker image or Dockerfile on Together's builder, then start sandboxes from it and run commands and file operations through the together-sandbox SDK or CLI. When a sandbox ends you can save its disk, and its memory too, as a new snapshot to start more sandboxes from. It is aimed at model-generated code, agent tool calls and reinforcement learning rollouts, and it must be enabled for your organization by Together. Together also sells Code Interpreter, a separate API that runs Python code in short sessions.
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.
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. “65th cheapest of 367” means 64 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 | Together Code Sandbox: price rank | Claude Managed Agents: price rank | bochka: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month A software factory needs Docker, root and often /dev/kvm; Together runs commands as a normal user by default and Managed Agents has Docker only in limited availability, while bochka has all three on every machine. | 65th of 367, with limits $528 a month | 106th of 367, with limits $964 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB Managed Agents sessions sleep for free and wake on the next message, but files are kept only 30 days; Together sandboxes have no idle detection or wake, and a bochka disk lasts as long as you keep the sandbox. | 152nd of 366, with limits $1,095 a month | 219th of 366, with limits $2,511 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 Together's Code Interpreter runs Python in sessions billed per 60 minutes, while Managed Agents bills runtime only while the agent works, so short bursts with long gaps cost $2,190 against $756 a month here. | 326th of 345, with limits $2,190 a month | 163rd of 345, with limits $756 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 On Together every port of a sandbox is public and preview URLs are listed as coming soon, and Managed Agents has no inbound ports at all; bochka gives each sandbox token-protected HTTPS URLs on up to 50 ports. | 234th of 361, with limits $900 a month | 231st of 361, with limits $823 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 Together can save a sandbox with its memory and start many copies from it, which suits rollouts that branch from one warm state; Managed Agents has no fork, and bochka forks a running sandbox. | 315th of 360, with limits $21,900 a month | 252nd of 360, with limits $3,978 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 | 258th of 364, with limits $450 a month | 244th of 364, with limits $320 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 | 251st of 377, with limits $180 a month | 227th of 377, with limits $96 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; neither Together nor Managed Agents offers SSH, and bochka keeps the whole disk, saved every minute. | 210th of 368, with limits $22 a month | 224th of 368, with limits $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 Computer-use agents need a desktop; Together has none, Managed Agents has headless Chromium with Playwright only, and bochka streams a full Linux desktop at 60fps. | 184th of 369, with limits $600 a month | 127th of 369, with limits $288 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 Managed Agents ships headless Chromium with Playwright, on Together you install a browser in your own image, and bochka shows Chromium on a live desktop you can watch or take over. | 301st of 367, with limits $900 a month | 126th of 367, with limits $288 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 | 219th of 346, with limits $180 a month | 127th of 346, with limits $390 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 | 124th of 338, with limits $3,600 a month | 155th of 338, with limits $4,798 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 | 167th of 360, with limits $150 a month | 179th of 360, with limits $160 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 | Together Code Sandbox | Claude Managed Agents | bochka |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | A VM per sandbox, started from a Docker-image snapshot and driven through the together-sandbox SDK or CLI | A hosted Claude agent: Anthropic's harness runs Claude in an isolated Linux container per session | A full VM with its own kernel per agent, on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts, with coding agents built in |
| Getting started | The VM SDK must be enabled for your organization by Together; only Code Interpreter is self-serve | Enabled by default for all Claude API accounts, as a beta | Sign up and start a sandbox from the API, CLI or dashboard |
| Machine size | 0.1 to 16 cores, 1 to 8 GB of memory per core; disk size fixed | Up to 8 GB memory and 10 GB disk; vCPU count not published; not configurable | 2 to 16 vCPU with 2 GB per vCPU, up to 16 vCPU / 32 GB on the $100 plan and above |
| Docker, root and systemd | Commands run as user 1000 by default, root on request; Docker inside not documented | Docker listed as limited availability; root and systemd not documented | Docker, systemd and root on every machine |
| Nested virtualization | Not documented | Not documented | Yes, /dev/kvm for Android emulators and VMs |
| Shell access | Commands, interactive shells and files through the SDK and CLI; no SSH | No SSH; the sandbox is reached only through the sessions and events API | SSH, plus exec and files over the API |
| Saving state | End a sandbox with a snapshot of its disk, or disk and memory; a new sandbox resumes with its processes running | Checkpointed when a session goes idle; state kept only 30 days after the sandbox is created | Disk saved every minute and on stop, for as long as you keep the sandbox; a stopped sandbox costs nothing |
| Fork | No live fork: the parent stops, then you start many sandboxes from its snapshot | No fork or clone of a session or sandbox | Fork a running sandbox; the original keeps running |
| Idle and wake | Time to live counts from creation; no idle detection and no wake on request | An idle session resumes from its checkpoint on the next message, and idle time is not billed | Runs until you stop it or its time to live ends; started again by API |
| Reaching the sandbox | All ports public; preview URLs coming soon; an experimental inbound allowlist by IP or token | No inbound ports | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected by default; raw TCP; dedicated IPv6 or IPv4 |
| Desktop and browser | None; headless command and file access only | Headless Chromium with Playwright; no desktop or computer-use tool | Linux desktop streamed at 60fps, Chromium and computer-use tools |
| Agents | Run your own agent through execs; a Harbor guide for agent evals | Anthropic's harness with Claude models only, with caching, compaction, memory stores, multiagent threads and webhooks | Claude Code, Codex and more preinstalled, driven from outside with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Keeping API keys out of the sandbox | No credentials proxy documented | Vault secrets sit in the sandbox as placeholders and are swapped in at egress, per host | Credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; switch a credential to another account when credits run out |
| Where data lives | Regions not published | US workspace geo only; not eligible for Zero Data Retention | EU only (Germany, Finland, France), with zero data retention |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Together Code Sandbox | Claude Managed Agents | bochka |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Docker inside | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | No | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Systemd | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | No | Yes |
| Browser | No | Yes | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | No | Yes |
| SSH | No | No | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | Yes | Yes |
| Fork/clone | Yes | No | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | No | No | Yes |
| Memory fork | Yes | No | No |
| Custom image (Docker or snapshot) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | No | Yes | No |
| Wake on request | No | Yes | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | Yes | No | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | No | No | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | No | No | No |
| Egress allowlist | No | Yes | No |
| Secret proxy | No | Yes | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | No | Yes | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | No | Yes | Yes |
| Agent harness API | No | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes | Yes | No |
| GPU | No | No | No |
| Windows | No | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | No | No |
| Self-hosting | No | Yes | No |
| BYOC | No | 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 | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Not published | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | No | No | No |
| EU data residency | Not published | No | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | No | Yes |
Performance
Neither Together Code Sandbox nor Claude Managed Agents has a comparable CPU measurement: neither was part of the hpc-sandbox-benchmarks run, and Anthropic does not publish how many vCPUs a Managed Agents sandbox gets. bochka did 26.69 runs per second on the Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Together Code Sandbox and Claude Managed Agents 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 | Together Code Sandbox, a month | Claude Managed Agents, 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 · Together pay-as-you-go (prepaid credits; Code Interpreter only) · with limits | $13 · Claude API (pay-as-you-go, usage tiers) · with limits | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $22 · Together pay-as-you-go (prepaid credits; Code Interpreter only) · with limits | $53 · Claude API (pay-as-you-go, usage tiers) · 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 | $264 · Together pay-as-you-go (prepaid credits; Code Interpreter only) · with limits | $634 · Claude API (pay-as-you-go, usage tiers) · 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 | $900 · Together pay-as-you-go (prepaid credits; Code Interpreter only) · with limits | $360 · Claude API (pay-as-you-go, usage tiers) · 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 | $6,000 · Together pay-as-you-go (prepaid credits; Code Interpreter only) · with limits | $796 · Claude API (pay-as-you-go, usage tiers) · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Together Code Sandbox: Together lists Code Sandbox VMs at $0.0446 per vCPU-hour and $0.0149 per GiB-hour, but they must be enabled for your organization, so the table prices Code Interpreter: $0.03 per 60-minute session from prepaid credits, with a $5 minimum purchase.
Claude Managed Agents: Managed Agents bills model tokens at API rates plus a flat session runtime fee of $0.08 an hour, measured only while the session is running, including time spent waiting on the model. The table shows runtime only; tokens come on top and usually cost more.
Claude Managed Agents: Plans start at $20 a month, and the whole fee becomes usage credit. You pay per second while a sandbox runs, and a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Limits in those scenarios
No scenario on this page is a clean fit for either. The Together column is Code Interpreter: sessions end after 60 minutes, keep no disk, run only Python, and the machine size is not published. A Managed Agents sandbox has up to 8 GB of memory and 10 GB of disk, Docker only in limited availability, no published concurrency cap and usage-tier spend limits that pause all API use when reached. On bochka the limit that bites is starts: 1,000 short jobs at once need more starts per hour and per day than the $2,000 plan allows, so starts are queued.
| Scenario | Together Code Sandbox | Claude Managed Agents | 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 Together Code Sandbox when
you run your own agent, already use Together for models, and want light sandboxes from a tenth of a core that you can save with their memory and branch from.
- Memory snapshots to branch from. Useful for rollouts and test variants: save a sandbox with its memory and start many copies with processes still running.
- Bring your own agent, next to your models. Fits teams that run their own agent and already use Together for inference or fine-tuning, with one account and API key.
- Very small machines and a Python runner. Good for many light jobs: sandboxes start at a tenth of a core, and a Python interpreter API bills per session.
Use Claude Managed Agents when
you want Claude itself to do long text and code 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.
- Host allowlists and your own workers. Teams with strict network rules can limit sandboxes to listed hosts, or run every tool call on their own infrastructure.
Where bochka fits
Together gives you a VM but leaves the agent, browser and hosting to you, and Managed Agents gives you an agent but only Claude, in a small container you cannot reach. If your agents install things, run Docker or emulators, and start apps people need to open, bochka gives each one a full machine you can start today, with the agents, desktop and keys already set up.
A whole machine, not a small box
Together runs commands as a normal user and documents neither Docker inside nor /dev/kvm; Managed Agents caps memory at 8 GB and has Docker only in limited availability. Compose stacks and emulators stall, or you bake every tool into an image first.
Open what the agent builds
On Together every port is public until you write an experimental policy, and preview URLs are not out yet; Managed Agents has no inbound ports or SSH. bochka serves token-protected HTTPS on up to 50 ports, raw TCP and a 60fps desktop.
Any agent, driven from outside, with keys kept out
On Together you build the harness and wire each step through execs; Managed Agents runs only Anthropic's harness. bochka preinstalls Claude Code, Codex and more, and keeps real keys in a proxy for any HTTPS API.
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 Together Code Sandbox and bochka vs Claude Managed Agents.
Questions people ask
Is Together Code Sandbox cheaper than Claude Managed Agents?
It depends on the shape of the work, and neither fits the scenarios cleanly. Together's Code Interpreter costs less for long runs, such as $264 against $634 a month for 50 agents, but Managed Agents runtime costs less for many short sessions: $360 against $900 for sandboxes for your users, and $796 against $6,000 for 1,000 short jobs. Managed Agents tokens come on top.
Which is faster, Together Code Sandbox or Claude Managed Agents?
There is no comparable measurement for either. Together lets you pick up to 16 cores, while Anthropic does not publish the vCPU count of a Managed Agents sandbox. bochka did 26.69 runs per second on the hpc-sandbox-benchmarks Node.js test at 4 vCPU / 8 GB.
Can Together Code Sandbox or Claude Managed Agents run Docker?
Together builds sandboxes from Docker images, but its SDK runs commands as user 1000 by default and does not document Docker inside a sandbox. Managed Agents lists Docker as limited availability. bochka runs Docker, systemd and root on every machine and exposes /dev/kvm.
Can I run Claude Code on either?
Managed Agents runs Anthropic's own harness with Claude models, not Claude Code. On Together you install and run any agent yourself through execs. bochka has Claude Code, Codex and other agents preinstalled, driven from outside through one API.
How long do they keep my files?
Together keeps state only if you end a sandbox with a snapshot, which can include memory. Managed Agents checkpoints idle sessions but keeps sandbox state only 30 days after the sandbox is created. bochka saves the whole disk every minute until you delete the sandbox.
Try bochka
Install the CLI, then run bochka new.
Product preview
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