In 2026, AI agents work for hours, not seconds. The length of task frontier agents can finish keeps doubling, and an agent that runs for an afternoon needs a computer of its own: a place to install packages, run tests, open a browser and keep its files between steps.
Solari and Boat both sell that computer. Solari gives agents cloud browsers, sandboxes and desktops from one API; Boat, a Y Combinator company, gives agents persistent Ubuntu VMs with a browser and a desktop inside. Solari starts browsers faster and covers more surfaces on one account; Boat lists a lower self-serve hourly rate for a single long-running dev VM. This guide compares the two on speed, price and fit.
Why Do Agents Need Their Own Computers Now?
Agents need a full machine because their work moved from single tool calls to long tasks. A coding agent such as Claude Code clones a repo, installs dependencies, runs the tests and opens the app it built. A computer-use agent clicks through software that never shipped an API.
The old setup was a container on a shared server or a laptop left on overnight. The new setup is a virtual machine per agent, created by API, paused when idle and billed only while it runs. Both vendors sell that; they differ on how fast the environment is ready, what an hour costs and what else comes on the same account.
What Is Solari?
Solari is agent infrastructure from one API: cloud browsers, AI sandboxes and computer desktops on one account and one bill.
Core capabilities. Solari sandboxes run agent code on an isolated Linux machine with commands, files, Git, pause, resume, snapshot and fork. Solari desktops give a computer-use model a full Linux screen with a live view. Solari browsers connect over Playwright or any client that speaks the Chrome DevTools Protocol.
Pricing and plans. Solari starts on a free plan and bills per second while an environment runs, so you pay nothing for a machine that is not running. Large fleets move to a contract rate that is a tenth of the standard rate, for browsers and sandboxes alike.
Where it shines. Agents that mix web work and code. A Solari profile keeps a login between runs, so your agent signs in once and every later session opens already signed in. Every dedicated sandbox is a microVM of your own with its own kernel.
Who it's best for. Platform teams running many short browser sessions next to longer sandbox jobs. One vendor in the critical path replaces two.
What Is Boat?
Boat sells persistent cloud VMs for agents, built around a CLI that drives coding agents running inside the machine.
Core capabilities. Boat runs persistent Ubuntu VMs with a browser, a desktop stream, a hosted URL, SSH, Docker and snapshot forking, per boat.dev. Its CLI runs Claude Code or Codex inside a sandbox, so you prompt and watch the agent from your laptop.
Pricing and plans. Boat publishes per-second pricing by VM size, with a paid plan, a free trial and billing only while a VM runs. Its default VM's hourly rate sits below Solari's standard sandbox rate. For one heavy coding agent running all day, Boat's list price is the one to beat.
Where it shines. Long-running coding agents on a machine that feels like a developer workstation, with Docker and SSH inside. A team that already works from a terminal gets a VM that behaves like its own.
Trade-off. A Boat sandbox has a one-hour default lifetime, and its browser lives inside a VM rather than as a session of its own. An agent that needs a fresh browser for every task waits for a whole machine each time.
Which Is Faster, Solari or Boat?
Solari is faster to start a browser. A Solari browser is its own session, ready in milliseconds, while a Boat browser opens inside a VM that has to start first.
The gap shows on a public benchmark. On Steel's open-source benchmark, across 5,000 runs, a Solari session averaged 199.9 ms end to end, from create to release; the results sit in a pull request that is still open. Your agent can open a fresh browser for every task without waiting on a machine to boot.
On a full sandbox lifecycle, Solari is about 1.3x faster than E2B on the open-source nibzard benchmark. Boat publishes its own build-and-test comparison against E2B and other sandbox vendors, but neither chart includes the other company. Run your own workload on both before you commit to one for long jobs.
Which Costs Less, Solari or Boat?
For one long-running VM at self-serve rates, Boat costs less per hour; for fleets on a contract, Solari costs less. Solari's contract rate for large fleets sits below Boat's default VM rate.
Browsers price differently. Solari bills a browser as its own session, so a fleet of short web tasks never pays for an idle VM between them.
Solari also stops the meter on idle machines. Solari pauses an idle sandbox by default, and pausing is free: memory and processes are saved, and a paused VM no longer counts against your limit on running machines. An agent that waits on a person stops billing until it resumes exactly where it stopped.
Which Fits Your Agents?
Pick by the job your agent runs most often. These are the jobs teams weigh the two for:
Web research and form filling. Solari fits. With Solari you can launch up to 100,000 browser sessions at once, so your agent works a whole list in one pass, and session recording shows exactly what it did on each page.
Running untrusted generated code. Solari fits. Every dedicated sandbox runs on hardware virtualization, and a hardened sandbox blocks all outbound network, so code an agent wrote cannot call out.
Parallel attempts from one starting point. Solari fits. Snapshot one prepared sandbox, then fork copies so each attempt starts from the same state without rebuilding it.
Computer use. Both fit. Solari desktops add real mouse and keyboard input, a live view you can take over, and parking that freezes the CPUs during short waits so the next action wakes the machine instantly.
One coding agent on a dev box all day. Boat fits. Its CLI and default rate suit a single workstation-style VM that runs Claude Code or Codex for hours with Docker inside.
Where Are Agent Computers Going Next?
Over the next year, the agent's computer changes in four ways:
Longer jobs. Agents will run for days, so pause, resume and checkpoints become everyday tools rather than edge cases.
Fleets, not machines. One request will fan out into hundreds of environments, and start time decides whether the fan-out feels instant.
Web and code in one task. A single agent will browse, run code and operate a desktop in the same job, which favours one account over three vendors.
Audit by default. Recordings and replays will become the evidence a team shows when someone asks what the agent did.
What stays human is judgment: which jobs to hand over, what the agent may touch, and who reviews the output. Solari was built for that shift, with the infrastructure out of the way.
Get Started With Solari
Choose Solari when your agents mix web work and code, need a browser ready in milliseconds, or run as a fleet. Stay with Boat when one coding agent lives on a single dev VM for hours and the self-serve hourly rate decides. Boat is the focused VM product built around coding agents; Solari is the broader platform and moves faster on start time and fleet scale.
Start with one job, such as a research agent that opens a browser per account, then add sandboxes once it runs cleanly. Solari is the fastest and cheapest way to run cloud browsers and VMs for agent fleets. Get started with a free account and start running your agents today.
