01
In-pod restart
A daemon supervises OpenClaw and restarts it the moment it dies, before anyone notices.
Compare·Molted vs Boat
Boat.dev alternative for AI agents
Boat sells some of the cheapest full VMs for agents. Molted sells the operating layer that turns compute into a production agent.
Boat, by ASCII (YC F26), gives agents full Ubuntu virtual machines: SSH and SCP, Docker inside the VM, a dedicated IP, a 60fps virtual desktop, Chrome, VS Code and Claude Code or Codex ready to go, and fast disk-level forks from a snapshot. Pricing is simple and aggressive: per-second billing with a $20 monthly minimum that buys 2,000,000 VM-seconds, about 555 hours of a 4 vCPU, 8 GB machine, in EU regions in Germany, Finland and France.Molted is not a cheaper VM. It is a managed operating environment for autonomous agents (OpenClaw today, Hermes and other runtimes on request) where the runtime, its recovery, versioned state, integrations and identity are operated for you.If you want a fast box to point a coding agent at, Boat is hard to beat. If you want an autonomous agent kept alive in production, that is a different product.
01Side by side
Molted vs Boat.
Boat
Molted
What it is
BoatPersistent Ubuntu VM sandboxes for agents and humans, with CLI, HTTP API and Python and TypeScript SDKs.
MoltedManaged operating environment for autonomous agents: OpenClaw today, Hermes and other runtimes on request.
Pricing
BoatPer second, $20/mo minimum for 2,000,000 VM-seconds of a 4 vCPU, 8 GB VM; small sizes spend at 0.5x and large at 2x. 7-day trial with 25 compute hours (October 2026).
MoltedPer instance per day, pro-rated, with the operating layer included and up to 30% off annual.
Regions
BoatEU today: Germany, Finland and France.
MoltedEU and US managed clusters, on-premise deployment and a Swiss cluster option.
Lifecycle
BoatSandboxes default to a 1-hour TTL, overridable; stopping snapshots the VM and pauses billing.
MoltedAlways-on instances with a heartbeat: the agent keeps watching and acting on its own.
Machine
BoatFull VM with Docker, systemd, a dedicated IPv4 or IPv6, a 60fps desktop and live forks from snapshots.
MoltedPremium agent compute tuned for OpenClaw, cold-start around 1.1s, with a RAM semaphore that protects shared nodes.
The agent
BoatClaude Code, Codex or OpenCode can be run inside; operating a long-running agent and its gateway is up to you.
MoltedThe runtime is the product: a supervising daemon outlives the agent process and configs are auto-repaired.
Recovery
BoatVM-level: stop, resume and fork.
Molted4-tier self-healing: crashes caught in under 60s, back in under 90s, post-mortem on every failure.
State
BoatPersistent disk with disk-level snapshots and forks.
MoltedVersioned, S3-backed filesystem with file-level diff and point-in-time restore that hot-reloads the running instance.
Integrations and identity
BoatBring your own tools, credentials and accounts.
Molted1,500+ integrations, managed browser automation (captchas, rotating geo-aware proxies, logged-in profiles) and a dedicated mailbox and phone number per agent.
Scale
BoatSelf-serve plans from 100 to 2,000 active sandboxes per account, more by agreement.
MoltedFrom one agent to hundreds at roughly 3x density, with a lifecycle API, multi-tenant isolation and a white-label dashboard.
Best for
BoatCoding agents and agent factories that need many cheap, powerful, forkable VMs.
MoltedAutonomous agents that must stay up and act across real tools for a business or its clients.
02The part nobody else builds
One OpenClaw is hard to keep alive. Thousands is impossible without recovery.
A single OpenClaw in production already fails in quiet ways: it crashes and stays down, a config corrupts and bricks the instance, memory spikes and the whole box goes with it. Run thousands of them and doing this by hand is not hard, it is impossible. You need watchers and recovery running every second. Boat does not ship any of this. Like every general cloud, machine or agent framework, it hands you infrastructure, not a system that watches your agents and brings them back. Molted is that system.
02
Pod recreation
If the pod itself fails, it is recreated automatically, with the instance state intact.
03
Known-good restore
openclaw doctor repairs corrupted configs and the versioned filesystem restores a last known-good state.
04
Critical alert
If automated recovery cannot fix it, a critical alert fires with a full post-mortem of the failure.
On top of the four tiers, a RAM semaphore throttles startups and kills by priority before a shared node runs out of memory, so high density never becomes a crash. Crashes are caught in under 60 seconds and back online in under 90, with a post-mortem on every failure.
03Why Molted
The detail behind the table.
What Boat is genuinely great at
Boat is excellent value. A full VM with Docker, systemd, a dedicated IP and a smooth desktop, billed per second, with $20 buying hundreds of hours of a 4 vCPU, 8 GB machine, puts it among the cheapest serious options for agents. Forking a running machine's disk from a snapshot is ideal for agent factories that branch work, and the CLI and docs are clearly written for agents as much as for people.
For coding agents, research agents and anything that needs a powerful Linux box for hours at a time in the EU, Boat is a strong pick, and its public comparisons are refreshingly concrete.
Cheap compute is the smallest part of an operated agent
A Boat VM is a superb box, and like any box it arrives without an operator. Sandboxes default to a one-hour TTL, so an always-on agent needs that changed; the agent's gateway, schedules, crash recovery, configuration, backups, integrations, browser sessions and identity are all yours to build and run.
Molted is that layer as a product: a supervising daemon that outlives the agent, 4-tier self-healing with a post-mortem on every failure, config auto-repair, a versioned filesystem with point-in-time restore, 1,500+ managed integrations, managed browser automation, and a mailbox and phone number per agent. Compute is what you pay for on Boat; uptime and capability are what you pay for on Molted.
Where each one fits
Use Boat when the job is compute: spin up, fork, run a coding or research agent for hours, stop. Use Molted when the job is an employee-like agent that must run every day, answer channels, watch systems and act on its own, for you or for your clients, with EU, US, on-premise or Swiss deployment.
They combine well: a Molted agent can hand heavy jobs to disposable Boat machines. The same team operates molted.cloud for 300+ clients; molted.net is the canary surface.
The verdict
Boat is one of the best deals in agent compute: full Ubuntu VMs with Docker, a desktop and live forks, per-second billing from $20 a month, in the EU. Molted is the operating layer on top of compute: always-on autonomous agents with 4-tier self-healing, versioned state, 1,500+ integrations, browser automation, per-agent identity and on-premise options. Pick Boat for cheap agent machines; pick Molted for agents that run themselves.
04FAQ
Molted vs Boat, answered.
01Is Boat cheaper than Molted?
Per unit of compute, yes. Boat's $20 monthly minimum buys 2,000,000 VM-seconds of a 4 vCPU, 8 GB VM, per its October 2026 pricing. Molted prices per agent instance per day and includes the operating layer: recovery, versioned state, integrations, browser automation and identity. Compare the cost of the box with the cost of operating the agent on it.
02Can I run OpenClaw or Hermes on Boat?
Yes. Boat VMs are full Ubuntu machines with Docker and systemd, so you can install them like on any server. Remember that sandboxes default to a one-hour TTL, and that supervision, recovery, state versioning and integrations are then yours to set up. On Molted they are the product.
03Where does Boat run?
In EU regions today: Germany, Finland and France. Molted runs EU and US managed clusters and also offers on-premise deployment and a Swiss cluster option.
04When should I pick Boat over Molted?
When you need many cheap, powerful, forkable VMs for coding or research agents, and you or your agent will operate them. Pick Molted when you need autonomous agents running in production without building and staffing the operating layer.
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