#27 in Orchestration & SchedulingUpdated 2026-08

BOINC

by BOINC · Open-source platform for volunteer scientific computing

18.5 — BenchRank score out of 100

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Overview

BOINC is an open-source platform for computing using volunteered resources. The BOINC app runs on a volunteer's computer, downloading scientific computing jobs and running them in the background. About 30 projects use it, covering disease research, climate change and pulsar discovery. Volunteers can join via Science United by research area, or install BOINC and pick specific projects.

Best for: Volunteers donating spare computer time to science projects, and researchers running such projects
Pricing: No prices are shown; the page presents BOINC as open-source software that is downloaded and run by volunteers.

Strengths and trade-offs

Strengths

Open-source, with the code published on a public GitHub repo
Jobs download and run in the background on your machine
About 30 science projects across biomedicine, physics and astronomy
Run at UC Berkeley with National Science Foundation support

Trade-offs

Volunteers must choose between Science United and per-project setup
Some GPU tasks need hand-edited app_config.xml flags to avoid errors
Aimed at volunteers and research projects, not a commercial service
No pricing, support or service terms published on the page

How this score is made up

Each dimension is scored out of 100 and combined into the headline score using fixed weights.

MCP support: 0 out of 100
Documentation: 0 out of 100
Agent friendliness: 35 out of 100
Changelog: 80 out of 100
Marketing site structure: 15 out of 100
Operational trust: 0 out of 100

Measured, but not part of the score

Useful to know, but not a mark for or against the product — so these do not affect the ranking.

Openness: 40 out of 100
Maintenance: 100 out of 100

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