boat
The official website states that Boat is a persistent Linux cloud sandbox for AI agents, offering SSH, Docker, virtual desktops, snapshot forking, and external agent calls. It charges by the second and does not count downtime, making it suitable for batch execution of coding, testing, and browser tasks.
Updated: 2026-10-27
What is boat?
Boat is a cloud-based Linux sandbox designed for AI agents, programmatic calls, and human users. Its official website states that each sandbox is a persistent Ubuntu virtual machine with SSH and SCP, Docker, an independent IP, a virtual desktop, and snapshot branching capabilities. You can drive internal agents from outside via CLI, API, or SDK. Its positioning is to let agents perform tasks in a complete machine while allowing humans to retain access to observe, take over, and reuse the environment.
Who is it for?
- Engineering teams that need to provide isolated execution environments for agents such as Claude Code, Codex, or OpenCode.
- Agent factories that need to run coding, testing, crawling, or browser tasks in batch and parallel.
- Independent developers who need temporary development machines that can be started quickly, duplicated rapidly, and stopped at any time.
- Platform teams that need to centrally manage cloud VMs of various sizes, snapshots and API calls.
Key features
6Full Virtual Machine
The official website states that the sandbox is a persistent Ubuntu VM, capable of running Docker, systemd, databases, and cron, and can be used just like a local development machine.
Pre-configured environment
The official website states that Docker, VS Code, Chrome, Ghostty, GitHub CLI, Rust, Node.js, and Bun are pre-installed, allowing direct use of common development toolchains.
Drive Agents Externally
The official website states that you can use `boat prompt` to run Claude or Codex within the sandbox. It also supports wrapping any arbitrary harness from the outside and invoking it via CLI, API, or SDK.
Snapshots and Forking
The official description states that it supports snapshots, pause-based billing, and disk-level forking, enabling the quick replication of multiple execution environments from a baseline.
Desktop & Browser
The official website states that it comes with a built-in 60fps virtual desktop, allowing you to open web applications, games, 3D scenes, and IDEs.
Scalability and Pricing
The official website states that billing is per second with no charges for downtime; a $20 starting plan includes approximately 2 million VM seconds, and it can scale from 100 to 2000 concurrent sandboxes.
How to use boat
- 1For programmatic scenarios, prioritize using the HTTP API or SDK; if shell integration is required, the official website recommends adding `--json` to the CLI to obtain stable JSONL output.
- 2Save a snapshot before pausing, clarify which files and dependencies need to be reused, and avoid losing state when restoring next time.
- 3Choose VM specifications based on task types: small, medium, large, and extra-large models have different speeds; when mixing them, estimate the budget first.
- 4Set team rules for the default TTL, auto-stop, and concurrency limits to prevent unclaimed sandboxes from continuously consuming credits.
- 5When dealing with external services, keys or production data, first verify the agent's behavior with read-only tasks, then gradually expand permissions.
Traffic & popularity
Data month Sep 2026
boat receives about 25.5K visits per month and ranks #761,032 worldwide.
Monthly visits
7 monthsTraffic sources
- Direct44.9%
- Social33.2%
- Referrals10.5%
- Search8.2%
- Mail1.1%
- Other2.2%
Top countries
- United States78.3%
- India14.8%
- Egypt6.0%
- Canada0.9%
Estimated from third-party traffic data.
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