Coder vs Google Cloud Workstations
Coder
coder.com
Google Cloud Workstations
cloud.google.comSide by side
| Figure | Coder | Google Cloud Workstations |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $0.05/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 3 | 3 |
| Spec score · Cloud IDEs | 8.9 (#1) | 7.9 (#11) |
| Spec score · Coding Playgrounds | 9.0 (#11) | 8.4 (#33) |
| Spec score · Cloud Development Environments | 9.0 (#3) | 7.9 (#16) |
| Compliance | Coder's site displays a SOC 2 Type II certification badge. | Google announced that Cloud Workstations is covered under the Google Cloud HIPAA BAA on September 24, 2026. |
| Free plan | Yes | No |
Plans
Google Cloud Workstations
- Workstation management fee$0.05 a month
- Control plane$0.20 a month
- Usage-based pricing — e2-standard-2 (us-central1)$0.17 a month
In their own words
Coder
Coder is a self-hosted platform for AI coding agents and cloud development environments running on infrastructure controlled by the customer. Workspaces are defined with Terraform and connect through a secure WireGuard tunnel. Developers can access them through VS Code, JetBrains, Cursor, a web terminal, remote desktop or SSH. Idle workspaces can stop automatically and restart when needed. Coder Agents lets developers delegate development work and research through chat or an API, provisioning a workspace to carry out tasks. Supported model providers include Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Bedrock and self-hosted endpoints. The agent loop runs in Coder’s control plane, keeping LLM credentials out of workspaces. Coder documents integrations with GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket and JFrog Artifactory. The Community plan costs nothing and includes unlimited self-hosted workspaces, one platform integration and up to five active agents. Community support is through GitHub and Discord. The CLI is available for Linux, macOS and Windows, alongside API, web and self-hosted platforms.
Google Cloud Workstations
Google Cloud Workstations has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.