spark-vm vs a raw VPS
This is the comparison we like most, because it's the one we can lose on price and still recommend honestly: a $4/month droplet plus your evenings. A raw VPS is compute with no customer story at all — just a box. spark-vm isn't a cheaper box; it's the stack that turns a box into an agent's computer. Different job: the VPS sells you a machine; spark-vm makes it safe to hand to an agent.
| spark-vm (self-hosted) | Raw VPS, hand-rolled | |
|---|---|---|
| Machine cost | Whatever your box costs — $0 on hardware you own, ~$4+/mo on a droplet. | ~$4/mo. Cheapest compute on this page, by far. |
| Agent access | Tailnet-first: Tailscale + SSH, no public ingress by default. The agent gets a user, not your root. | You configure SSH, keys, firewall, and network policy yourself — and maintain them. |
| Secrets handling | Credential proxy. The agent writes hsurr: placeholders; real values swap on allowlisted hosts, every swap audited. |
Your problem. Env files, a vault you run, or the agent holding raw keys. |
| Human approvals | Built in. Sensitive actions pause for a tap on your phone. | Your problem. Hope you notice the invoice. |
| Scheduled jobs | Job runner CLI with watch/status across sessions. | Cron works — until the agent's crontab collides with yours at 2am. |
| Desktop | Included. The agent can drive a real desktop. | You install and secure VNC/RDP yourself. |
| Ops burden | One install script; the stack is the ops. | You are the ops. Patching, backups, key rotation, incident response — forever. |
| License | MIT open source — the stack itself is free either way. This page is about your time, not our price. | |
When to pick the raw VPS instead
Intellectual honesty first: hand-rolling wins clearly when —
- You are the opsYou already run infrastructure, enjoy it, and have opinions about your own hardening. The $4 droplet plus your muscle is unbeatable.
- Exotic requirementsCustom kernels, niche distros, hardware the stack doesn't target — roll your own.
- LearningDoing it by hand is the best way to understand what the stack automates. We mean that.
What the stack actually adds
spark-vm self-hosted runs on the same $4 droplet — it just adds the three things that make a box safe to hand to an autonomous agent — Muse, Grok Bot, Dots, or your own: the credential proxy (the agent never sees raw secrets), the approvals plane (you tap before it spends), and tailnet-first networking (no public attack surface by default). The machine is cheap. The mistakes are expensive.