Founder is here.

I'd that they are both trying to solve the container hosting issues, but with very different approaches.

Docker Cloud = VM cluster + Swarm, meaning that it is essentially a managed VM service. For developers, Docker Cloud creates the cluster on other cloud providers, and manage the cluster to deploy containers for you. In other words, you can focus on containers, the infrastructure is managed by Docker Cloud for you (of course you need to pay for that).

On the other hand, Hyper.sh is container native. You simply run containers, with worrying the cluster, not because it is managed, but that there is no cluster at all. How? Hyper.sh is built on secure Docker runtime, which is as fast as linux container, but as secure as VM. Therefore, the secure container becomes the new build block, rather than being nested in VM for isolation.

Given this, the whole cluster, capacity planning, scheduling and management thing is gone in Hyper.sh. And yes, you no longer need to pay for the cluster management.