Agent sandbox boat.dev hits 1,026 paying subscribers with $20/mo per-second-billed VMs
ycombinator · x · 2026-10-24
Y Combinator amplified a post from agent-sandbox startup boat.dev showing a steep subscriber curve up to 1,026 active paying users within about a year, with the founder marveling at how many people now pay for cloud VMs.
boat.dev pitches itself as "the cheapest, most powerful sandbox for agents": full Ubuntu VMs pre-installed with Docker, VS Code, Chrome, GitHub CLI, Rust, Node.js and Bun, plus SSH/SCP access, dedicated IPv4/IPv6, a 60fps virtual desktop, and disk-level forking from snapshots. Billing is per-second with a $20/mo minimum (555 hours of 4 vCPU/8 GB time) across three tiers (2/4/8 vCPU at 0.5x/1x/2x rates), with a 7-day free trial of 25 compute hours. It claims to undercut E2B, Daytona, Modal and Vercel Sandbox.
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