Agent 37 vs Instabox
Agent 37 starts each agent in a gVisor sandbox that sleeps with its memory kept and wakes on the next request, with a full VM type you can opt into and per-minute billing. Instabox, a free invite-only beta that launched today, gives every machine its own Firecracker microVM with root and Docker, in one 4 vCPU / 8 GiB size and up to 5 machines per account.
The companies and products
Agent 37
Agent 37 hosts AI agents, one isolated, always-on sandbox per user, behind one API.
You create an instance from a template (Hermes, OpenClaw, Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Pi, Grok or your own Docker image) and talk to it through a chat API, files, exec, SSH and HTTPS URLs. The default instance is a container enforced by gVisor; a VM type gives a full Linux machine with its own kernel for Docker, Kubernetes and Android emulators. It is built for companies that give each of their customers an agent.
- Where it runs
- Dedicated servers in the United States
- Instance types
- Default (shared), Performance (dedicated cores), VM
- Compliance
- SOC 2 Type I, Type II in progress
Instabox
Instabox, made by InsForge, gives each AI agent its own Linux computer in the cloud. It launched on 2026-10-14 as an invite-only beta.
Each Instabox machine is a Firecracker microVM with its own kernel, root and Docker, started from one of four templates (agent-browser, universal, herdr or orca) or from your own snapshot. Every machine is 4 vCPU / 8 GiB with 20 GB of storage, and you drive it from a CLI, a TypeScript SDK or an HTTP API, with SSH, mosh, public port URLs and a desktop for computer use. It is aimed at developers who want a cloud box for a coding agent.
- Isolation
- Firecracker microVM per machine
- Machines per account
- 5, in any state: paused and stopped ones count
- Company
- InsForge AI, Inc.
Which use cases each one fits
For each use case, Battleships prices every sandbox provider on the same workload and sorts them from the cheapest monthly bill up. “2nd cheapest of 367” means 1 of the other 366 providers runs that workload, with every feature it needs, for less. “With limits” means the provider runs it but misses something, so it is listed after every full match. Open a use case for its whole ranking and what each provider misses.
| Use case and its workload | Agent 37: price rank | Instabox: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month Docker works on every Instabox machine but only on Agent 37's VM type; neither forks a running machine, and boat does, with sizes up to 16 vCPU / 32 GB. | 2nd cheapest of 367 $551 a month | No published price | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB Agent 37 is built for one always-on assistant per user that sleeps when idle and wakes on the next message; Instabox also pauses with memory, but a visit to a port URL does not wake it. | Cheapest of 366 $279 a month | No published price | 5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month |
| Code interpreter bursts 100 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 200,000 sessions of 1 min a month | Cheapest of 345 $22 a month | No published price | 186th of 345, with limits $2,000 a month |
| Sandboxes for your users 300 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 23 min a month Agent 37 holds up to 200 instances on its top self-serve tier, and Instabox allows 5 machines per account, both counting stopped ones; boat plans go up to 2,000 at once. | 30th of 361, with limits $79 a month | No published price | Cheapest of 361 $209 a month |
| RL rollouts 1,000 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 1,000,000 sessions of 3 min a month | 6th of 360, with limits $363 a month | No published price | 34th of 360, with limits $2,000 a month |
| Agent evals 250 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 15,000 sessions of 20 min a month Instabox's 5-machine cap limits how many evals run at once; Agent 37 goes to 200 after top-ups, and boat runs each eval on its own full VM. | 90th of 364, with limits $58 a month | No published price | 10th cheapest of 364 $200 a month |
| CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month CI jobs that build Docker images need Agent 37's VM type, while Instabox runs Docker on every machine; jobs that need /dev/kvm get it on boat and on Agent 37's VM type. | 2nd cheapest of 377 $84 a month | No published price | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Both keep a machine and its disk; Instabox adds mosh and paste-anywhere SSH tokens, Agent 37 has a published price, and boat adds systemd and raw TCP. | 3rd cheapest of 368 $12 a month | No published price | 18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month |
| Computer-use agents 50 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 20,000 sessions of 15 min a month Agent 37 adds a noVNC desktop through a template build, Instabox has a desktop template with a screenshot and click API, and boat streams a 60fps desktop in every sandbox. | Cheapest of 369 $53 a month | No published price | 6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month |
| Browser-use agents 50 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 10 min a month | 48th of 367, with limits $29 a month | No published price | 7th cheapest of 367 $200 a month |
| Scraping & bots (startup scale) 50 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 100,000 sessions of 3 min a month | Cheapest of 346 $32 a month | No published price | 6th cheapest of 346 $90 a month |
| Mass scraping & bots (undetectable) 1,000 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 3,000,000 sessions of 2 min a month | 36th of 338, with limits $648 a month | No published price | 71st of 338, with limits $1,800 a month |
| Parallel red teaming 200 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 5,000 sessions of 30 min a month Neither Agent 37 nor Instabox can fork a running machine, so each attempt starts from scratch; boat forks a running sandbox to try many paths at once. | Cheapest of 360 $43 a month | No published price | 2nd cheapest of 360 $200 a month |
| GPU eval jobs 10 at once · 8 vCPU / 32 GB · 500 sessions of 30 min a month | Can't run it | No published price | Can't run it |
| macOS agents 5 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 1,000 sessions of 20 min a month | Can't run it | No published price | Can't run it |
Key features
| Feature | Agent 37 | Instabox | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isolation | gVisor sandbox by default; full VM with its own kernel as an opt-in type | Firecracker microVM with its own kernel and root for every machine | Every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel, on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts |
| Docker and systemd | Docker only on the VM type, at 2.5x the default compute rate; no init system, even on the VM type | Docker and Docker Compose run inside every machine; systemd not documented | Docker, Compose and systemd in every sandbox |
| Nested virtualization | /dev/kvm on the VM type, with a ready Android template | Not documented | /dev/kvm in every sandbox, Android emulator works |
| Machine sizes | Shapes from 2 vCPU / 4 GB up to 16 vCPU / 32 GB after a first top-up | One size for everyone: 4 vCPU / 8 GiB with 20 GB storage; other sizes are refused | Several sizes, up to 8 vCPU / 16 GB on the $20 plan and 16 vCPU / 32 GB on $100 and above |
| Machines per account | 1 before a top-up, then 10, 50 and 200 as top-ups grow; sleeping and stopped ones count; email for more | 5, in any state: paused and stopped ones count | Plans go up to 2,000 sandboxes at once |
| Sleep and pause | Opt-in auto-sleep after a quiet period, memory checkpointed, wakes on the next request | Pause keeps memory and running programs; auto-pause after 30 idle minutes; a visit does not wake it | Stop keeps the disk and costs nothing; start boots the machine again |
| Fork and snapshots | No fork; daily backups plus one on-demand backup, restored in place only | Fork copies a stopped machine only; up to 10 snapshots saved by hand, and saving stops a running machine unless the server allows a live save | Fork a running sandbox; disk saved every minute; named snapshots as shareable templates |
| Custom images | Your own linux/amd64 Docker image as a template | Four templates (agent-browser, universal, herdr, orca) or your own snapshot | Templates from named snapshots, no Dockerfile builds |
| Coding agents | Hermes, OpenClaw, Claude Code, Codex, Grok, OpenCode, Pi, with a chat API per instance | Templates and saved agent sign-ins in snapshots; you run the agent yourself | Seven agents preinstalled, driven from outside with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Keeping API keys out of the sandbox | Managed LLM, search and Composio through a per-instance token; your own keys go in as env vars | Vault writes your secrets into each machine as environment variables or files | Credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API; real keys never enter the sandbox |
| Desktop and computer use | noVNC desktop through a template build or the Ubuntu VM template | Linux desktop with a browser on one template, screenshot and click API, shareable view or control links | 60fps Linux desktop with Chromium and a computer-use agent in every sandbox |
| Port URLs | HTTPS URL per port, signed URLs, custom domains; no public IP | HTTPS on up to 16 ports, open to anyone with the URL; offline while the machine is paused | HTTPS on up to 50 ports, token-protected by default; raw TCP too |
| SSH | SSH through a WebSocket tunnel, root by default | SSH gateway with short-lived certificates, paste-anywhere SSH tokens and mosh | SSH into every sandbox |
| Regions | Dedicated servers in the United States | Not published | EU only (Germany, Finland, France), EU data residency |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Agent 37 | Instabox | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | No | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | Not published | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Browser | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Computer-use API | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SSH | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | Yes | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Memory fork | No | No | No |
| Custom image (Docker or snapshot) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | Yes | Yes | No |
| Wake on request | Yes | No | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | No | No | No |
| Egress allowlist | No | Not published | No |
| Secret proxy | Yes | No | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | No | No | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Agent harness API | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| MCP server | No | Not published | No |
| GPU | No | No | No |
| Windows | No | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | Not published | No |
| Self-hosting | No | Not published | No |
| BYOC | No | Not published | No |
| Open source | No | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Not published | Yes | Yes |
| Spend limits | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Not published | No |
| SSO | No | No | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Not published | No |
| HIPAA | No | Not published | No |
| EU data residency | No | Not published | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
Neither Agent 37 nor Instabox has a result on the hpc-sandbox-benchmarks Node.js build-and-test loop, so there is no comparable measurement for either. boat did 26.69 runs per second there at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. Agent 37 says its default instances share host resources and sells dedicated cores on its Performance type; Instabox says a new machine's shell is ready in under a second, which has not been measured.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Agent 37 and Instabox have no published run in this suite yet, so there is no like-for-like number to compare.
Pricing in five scenarios
Each bill is priced from the providers' public price lists by the open Battleships engine, with the cheapest plan that runs the scenario.
| Scenario | Agent 37, a month | Instabox, a month | boat, a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, 8 hours a day, 22 days a month, files kept between days | $6 · Wallet (any top-up) | No published price | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $12 · Wallet (any top-up) | No published price | $26 · $20/mo |
| 50 agents in parallel 50 machines of 4 vCPU / 8 GB at once, 8-hour sessions, 1,100 sessions a month, Docker inside | $329 · Wallet ($100 lifetime top-ups) | No published price | $317 · $20/mo × 3 seats |
| Sandboxes for your users 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 30,000 sessions of 10 minutes a month, up to 300 at once | $33 · Wallet ($250 lifetime top-ups) · with limits | No published price | $200 · $100/mo × 2 seats |
| 1,000 short jobs at once 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 1,000 at once, 3 minutes each, 200,000 jobs a month | $73 · Wallet ($250 lifetime top-ups) · with limits | No published price | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Agent 37: A prepaid wallet with no plan fee, metered per minute: $0.80 per vCPU and $0.70 per GB of RAM per month while running, and $0.09 per GB of disk per month even while stopped or asleep. Performance compute costs 4x and VM compute 2.5x the default rate.
Instabox: Instabox is free during the beta ("Free until we figure it out"), with 5 free machines per user, and has no published price, so no bill can be compared with Agent 37's yet.
Instabox: Plans start at $20 a month, and the whole fee is usage credit. You pay per second while a sandbox runs, and a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Limits in those scenarios
Agent 37 counts sleeping and stopped instances toward a cap of 200 on its top self-serve tier, so the scenarios with 300 or 1,000 machines at once do not fit it, and a 4 vCPU / 8 GB instance takes at most 20 GB of disk. Instabox allows 5 machines per account in any state, one 4 vCPU / 8 GiB size with 20 GB storage, and API exec calls of at most 10 minutes, 4 at once; with no published rate, none of the scenarios can be priced on it. boat's limit in the table is its cap on starts, which stops it in the 1,000-at-once burst.
| Scenario | Agent 37 | Instabox | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays |
|
| None that bite |
| One agent that never stops |
|
| None that bite |
| 50 agents in parallel |
|
| None that bite |
| Sandboxes for your users |
|
| None that bite |
| 1,000 short jobs at once |
|
|
|
Which one should you use?
Use Agent 37 when
you host one mostly idle assistant per customer in the US that should sleep with its memory kept, wake on the next message and bill per minute at published rates.
- Sleeps and wakes on the next request. For assistants that sit idle most of the day, an instance sleeps with its memory kept and wakes when the next message arrives.
- Room to grow, with a published price. Agent 37 bills per minute from a wallet at published rates, offers sizes up to 16 vCPU / 32 GB and holds up to 200 instances.
- Bring a Dockerfile, pick dedicated cores. Agent 37 builds templates from your own Docker image, and sells a Performance type on dedicated cores for steady speed.
Use Instabox when
you want to try a few free 4 vCPU / 8 GiB microVMs with Docker during its invite-only beta, and like mosh and memory pause.
- A microVM with Docker on every machine. Every Instabox machine is a Firecracker microVM with its own kernel, root and Docker, with no special type to opt into.
- Free to try during the beta. During the invite-only beta, each account can run 5 machines of 4 vCPU / 8 GiB for free; no later price is published.
- SSH gateway with mosh. Its SSH gateway relays mosh and gives paste-anywhere SSH tokens, so a terminal session survives sleep and network changes.
Where boat fits
If your agents do hours of real work, like installs, builds, Docker and emulators, look at boat. Every sandbox is a full VM with systemd and /dev/kvm, you can fork it while it runs, and real API keys stay outside it. boat publishes its sizes, plans and EU regions today.
Fork work that is already running
Agent 37 has no fork, and its backups restore only in place. Instabox forks only a stopped machine, so its running programs end first. boat copies a running sandbox and the original keeps working.
A full Linux server by default
Agent 37's default type cannot run Docker, and its VM type costs 2.5x and has no init system. Instabox has one 4 vCPU / 8 GiB size and does not document /dev/kvm. boat has systemd, Docker and /dev/kvm in every size.
Keys the agent cannot read
On Agent 37 your own keys sit inside the instance as env vars, and Instabox's Vault writes secrets into the machine. One prompt injection can leak them. boat's proxy keeps real keys outside for any HTTPS API.
Use boat when your agents need a full VM with systemd and /dev/kvm, forks of running work, private port URLs and keys kept outside, at more than a handful of machines. Compare it one to one: boat vs Agent 37 and boat vs Instabox.
Questions people ask
Is Agent 37 cheaper than Instabox?
It can't be compared yet. Instabox is free during its beta and publishes no price, so there is no bill to set against Agent 37's per-minute wallet. Agent 37's and boat's prices for each scenario are in the table above.
Which is faster, Agent 37 or Instabox?
Neither has a measured CPU score on the benchmark used here, so there is no fair answer. Instabox says a new shell is ready in under a second, and its docs say a paused machine usually resumes in about a second. Agent 37 wakes from a memory checkpoint in a few seconds.
Can Agent 37 and Instabox run Docker?
Instabox runs Docker and Docker Compose on every machine. Agent 37 runs Docker only on its VM type, which bills compute at 2.5x; its default gVisor type cannot run a Docker daemon. boat runs Docker in every sandbox.
Can I fork a running machine on Agent 37 or Instabox?
No. Agent 37 has no fork, and its backups restore only onto the same instance. Instabox's fork copies a stopped machine. boat forks a running sandbox and keeps the original working.
How many machines can I run?
Agent 37 allows 1 instance before a top-up and up to 200 after $250 of top-ups, counting sleeping and stopped ones; beyond that you email them. Instabox allows 5 machines per account, paused and stopped ones included.
Where do Agent 37 and Instabox run?
Agent 37 runs on dedicated servers in the United States. Instabox does not publish its regions. boat runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France.
Try boat
Install the CLI, then run boat new.
7-day free trial