AWS AgentCore vs Instabox

AgentCore is an AWS platform that runs agent sessions in 2 vCPU microVMs and gives them managed code and browser tools inside your AWS account. Instabox, which launched today as an invite-only beta, gives each agent its own 4 vCPU Linux VM with root, Docker and SSH, free for now.

The companies and products

AWS AgentCore

Amazon Bedrock AgentCore is a set of AWS services to deploy and run AI agents: a Runtime that hosts your agent code, plus built-in Code Interpreter and Browser tools.

AgentCore is not a sandbox product first. It is a hyperscaler's agent platform: you push a container image or code, and each Runtime session gets its own Firecracker microVM that you reach through AgentCore APIs. Around it sit managed tools (Code Interpreter, Browser) and services for memory, identity, gateways and evaluations, and an Instances compute type runs longer sessions on EC2 in your own account. It is built for teams who already build on AWS and want agents to stay inside their account, IAM and VPC.

Isolation: Runtime: a dedicated microVM per session; Code Interpreter and Browser run in a containerized environment
Session size: Runtime and Code Interpreter up to 2 vCPU / 8 GB, Browser 1 vCPU / 4 GB, not adjustable
Session length: Up to 8 hours per lifecycle on microVMs, 15 minutes idle by default; up to 14 days on Instances
Compute types: Serverless microVMs (arm64 Linux containers) or Instances: AWS-managed EC2 in your account, x86_64 or arm64, GPUs available
Regions: 17 commercial AWS regions across the US, EU, Asia Pacific, Canada and South America, plus GovCloud
Compliance: Listed as a HIPAA eligible AWS service

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
Machine size: 4 vCPUs and 8 GiB of memory, the same for every machine; 20 GB storage
Machines per account: 5, in any state: paused and stopped ones count
Price: Free during the beta; no published price yet
Access: Invite-only beta; sign in with GitHub or Google
Regions: Not published; more regions are on the roadmap as an idea
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. “7th cheapest of 345” means 6 of the other 344 providers run 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	AWS AgentCore: 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 A coding agent on AgentCore gets 2 vCPU and stops after 8 hours; Instabox gives one 4 vCPU size and forks only stopped machines, while boat forks running sandboxes up to 16 vCPU / 32 GB.	100th of 367, with limits $888 a month	No published price	3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month
Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB AgentCore's 8-hour microVM lifecycle means an always-on assistant needs the Instances type on EC2; Instabox documents no run cap but pauses after 30 idle minutes unless you turn that off.	64th of 366, with limits $1,300 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 AgentCore Code Interpreter is built for short code runs and bills only CPU actually used; an Instabox API exec call runs at most 10 minutes, 4 at once.	7th cheapest of 345 $114 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 AgentCore sessions have no open ports and Instabox allows 5 machines per account, so neither gives many users a sandbox with a link; boat gives each one HTTPS URLs on up to 50 ports.	210th of 361, with limits $506 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	125th of 360, with limits $8,075 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, paused and stopped ones included, limits how many evals run at once; AgentCore Code Interpreter allows 1,000 concurrent sessions by default.	33rd cheapest of 364 $650 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 Android apps or VM images need /dev/kvm, which boat exposes and neither AgentCore nor Instabox documents.	52nd cheapest of 377 $399 a month	No published price	4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month
24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB A dev box needs SSH and a disk that keeps installed packages: AgentCore has neither outside its storage mount, while Instabox has SSH with mosh and boat has SSH with a published price.	228th of 368, with limits $52 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 AgentCore Browser drives a browser, not a desktop; Instabox has a Linux desktop with a screenshot and click API where you bring the model, and boat streams a desktop at 60fps.	104th of 369, with limits $202 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	4th cheapest of 367 $144 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	27th cheapest of 346 $287 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	165th of 338, with limits $5,458 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	62nd of 360, with limits $294 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	AWS AgentCore	Instabox	boat
Isolation	Firecracker microVM per Runtime session; Code Interpreter and Browser in a containerized environment	Firecracker microVM per machine, with its own kernel and root	Full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts
Machine size	2 vCPU / 8 GB per microVM session (Browser 1 vCPU / 4 GB), not adjustable; bigger EC2 types only on Instances	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
Session length	Up to 8 hours per lifecycle on microVMs, stopped after 15 idle minutes by default; up to 14 days on Instances	No maximum run time documented; pauses after 30 idle minutes by default, which you can change or turn off	No cap on paid plans; you set the time to live
What survives a stop	Only one storage mount under /mnt, up to 1 GB, in preview; EBS volumes on Instances; the rest resets	The machine's files are kept, counted against 200 GB of storage per account	The whole disk, saved every minute and on stop
Pause with memory	No pause or resume of a session	Pause keeps memory and running programs; resume usually takes about a second	Stop keeps the disk; start boots the machine again
Snapshots and fork	No user snapshots or fork of a session	Snapshots saved by hand, up to 10; fork copies a stopped machine only	Automatic snapshots every minute; fork a running sandbox with its disk
Docker and /dev/kvm	Root inside the microVM; Docker and /dev/kvm not documented	Docker and Docker Compose run inside; nested virtualization not documented	Root, Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm for Android emulators and VMs
Port URLs	No open ports; sessions are reached only through AgentCore APIs with IAM or JWT	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	No SSH	SSH through a gateway with short-lived certificates, paste-anywhere SSH tokens and mosh	SSH into every sandbox
Network controls	VPC mode with security groups, PrivateLink and a NAT gateway for a fixed outbound IP	Not documented	Open internet, no provider-side allowlist
Browser and desktop	Managed Chromium with live view, session recording and replay, profiles and proxies; no full desktop	Linux desktop with a browser on one template, screenshot and click API, shareable view or control links; you bring the model	Full Linux desktop streamed at 60fps, with Chromium and a computer-use agent
Coding agents	AWS's own managed harness built on Strands Agents, or your own agent code in any framework	Templates and saved agent sign-ins in snapshots; you run the agent yourself	Claude Code, Codex and five more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API
Keeping API keys out of the sandbox	AgentCore Identity stores OAuth tokens and API keys and hands them to your agent code	Vault writes your secrets into each machine as environment variables or files	Credentials proxy: real keys never enter the sandbox, for model providers and any HTTPS API
Regions	17 commercial AWS regions plus GovCloud	Not published	EU only (Germany, Finland, France)

Every feature Battleships tracks (43)

Feature	AWS AgentCore	Instabox	boat
Full VM (own kernel)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Docker inside	Not published	Yes	Yes
Nested virtualization	No	Not published	Yes
Root	Yes	Yes	Yes
Systemd	No	Not published	Yes
Desktop GUI	No	Yes	Yes
Browser	Yes	Yes	Yes
Computer-use API	Yes	Yes	Yes
SSH	No	Yes	Yes
Persistent disk	Yes	Yes	Yes
Pause/resume	No	Yes	Yes
Automatic snapshots	No	No	Yes
Fork/clone	No	Yes	Yes
Live fork (no pause)	No	No	Yes
Memory fork	No	No	No
Custom image (Docker or snapshot)	Yes	Yes	Yes
≥24 h sessions	No	Yes	Yes
Idle auto-stop	Yes	Yes	No
Wake on request	Yes	No	No
HTTPS preview URLs	No	Yes	Yes
Raw TCP inbound	No	Not published	Yes
Public IPv4	No	No	No
Egress allowlist	Yes	Not published	No
Secret proxy	No	No	Yes
Secret proxy for any API	No	No	Yes
Preinstalled agents	No	Not published	Yes
Agent harness API	No	Not published	Yes
MCP server	Yes	Not published	No
GPU	Yes	No	No
Windows	No	No	No
Arm64	Yes	Not published	No
Self-hosting	No	Not published	No
BYOC	Yes	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)	No	Yes	Yes
Audit logs	Yes	Not published	No
SSO	Yes	No	No
SOC 2	Yes	Not published	No
HIPAA	Yes	Not published	No
EU data residency	Yes	Not published	Yes
Zero data retention	Not published	Not published	Yes

Performance

AWS AgentCoreNot measured

InstaboxNot measured

boat26.69 runs/s

There is no comparable measurement for either: AgentCore and Instabox were not part of the hpc-sandbox-benchmarks run, so this page makes no speed claim between them. boat did 26.69 runs per second on its Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. Instabox says a new machine's shell is ready in under a second; that 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. AWS AgentCore 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	AWS AgentCore, 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	$26 · Pay-as-you-go (Instances) · with limits	No published price	$20 · $20/mo
One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month	$107 · Pay-as-you-go (Instances) · with limits	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	$1,286 · Pay-as-you-go (Instances) · with limits	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	$423 · Pay-as-you-go · 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	$1,615 · Pay-as-you-go (Instances)	No published price	$2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits

AWS AgentCore: Runtime microVMs, Code Interpreter and Browser bill per second for CPU actually used and for peak memory. The 4 vCPU shape in these scenarios is the Instances type: the EC2 on-demand price plus a 12% management fee, with EBS storage and data transfer billed by AWS on top.

Instabox: Instabox is free during the beta ("Free until we figure it out"), with 5 machines per user, and publishes no price or rate yet. No bill can be compared with AgentCore's until it does.

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

AgentCore's serverless sessions stop at 2 vCPU / 8 GB and 8 hours, so the 4 vCPU scenarios here use the Instances type, and files outside the storage mount reset after a stop. Instabox has no published per-resource rate, so none of the scenarios can be priced, and its 5 machines per account, paused and stopped ones included, rule out the 50-agent and user-sandbox scenarios today. boat has no session cap on paid plans, but for 1,000 short jobs at once its $2000 plan queues starts above 90 per minute.

Scenario	AWS AgentCore	Instabox	boat
One coding agent, workdays	files survive a stop only in the session storage mount: packages installed elsewhere reset disk beyond 0 GiB: price unknown	no published per-resource rate	None that bite
One agent that never stops	Pay-as-you-go (Instances): sessions capped at 336 h files survive a stop only in the session storage mount: packages installed elsewhere reset disk beyond 0 GiB: price unknown	no published per-resource rate	None that bite
50 agents in parallel	files survive a stop only in the session storage mount: packages installed elsewhere reset disk beyond 0 GiB: price unknown	no published per-resource rate	None that bite
Sandboxes for your users	different kind of product: code interpreter	no published per-resource rate	None that bite
1,000 short jobs at once	disk beyond 0 GiB: price unknown	no published per-resource rate	max 2,400 starts/day (needs ~6,667) max 600 starts/hour (needs ~1,000) bursts above 90 starts/min are queued (a burst of 333 takes ~4 min to start)

Which one should you use?

Use AWS AgentCore when

your agents must stay inside your AWS account and VPC, need a GPU, or are short code and browser tasks that fit its managed tools.

It lives inside your AWS account. Teams built on AWS keep agents behind their own IAM, VPC, security groups and PrivateLink, in 17 commercial regions.
GPUs and two-week sessions on Instances. Agents that need a GPU or a session of up to 14 days can run on EC2 in your account.
Managed tools that bill only for what they use. For short code runs and browser tasks, Code Interpreter and Browser charge only for CPU actually used, with live view and replay.

Use Instabox when

you want to try a few free 4 vCPU / 8 GiB agent machines during its beta, with SSH, mosh and pause with memory.

A whole 4 vCPU machine, free during the beta. Each account can run 5 Linux VMs of 4 vCPU / 8 GiB with root and Docker, free while the beta lasts.
Pause with memory. A paused machine keeps its memory and running programs and usually resumes in about a second.
SSH gateway with mosh. Its SSH gateway relays mosh and gives paste-anywhere SSH tokens, so a session survives sleep and network changes.

Where boat fits

If your agents do long, real work on a machine, such as installs, builds, Docker and emulators, AgentCore's 2 vCPU, 8-hour sessions are tight and Instabox's single size and 5-machine cap are a beta's limits. boat gives each agent a full VM up to 16 vCPU / 32 GB with no session cap on paid plans, a disk saved every minute, and published plans you can plan a fleet around.

A bigger machine with Docker and /dev/kvm

AgentCore microVMs stop at 2 vCPU and 8 hours, with Docker and /dev/kvm undocumented; the way out is Instances, EC2 you run in your own account. Instabox has one 4 vCPU / 8 GiB size and no documented /dev/kvm.

Fork running work and keep the whole disk

AgentCore has no snapshots or fork, and only a 1 GB mount survives a stop. Instabox forks only stopped machines, and saving a snapshot stops a running one first, ending its programs. boat forks a running sandbox.

Private links to what the agent serves

AgentCore sessions have no open ports, so you proxy traffic through your own code. Instabox port URLs are open to anyone who has them, so you add your own login. boat's 50 port URLs carry a token by default.

Use boat when your agents need a bigger machine for hours, Docker and /dev/kvm, forks of running work, private port URLs, or more than five machines, on terms published today. Compare it one to one: boat vs AWS AgentCore and boat vs Instabox.

Questions people ask

Is AWS AgentCore cheaper than Instabox?

It can't be compared yet. Instabox is free during the beta and publishes no price, so there is no bill to set against AgentCore's per-second AWS rates. The scenario table shows AgentCore's and boat's monthly prices.

Which is faster, AgentCore or Instabox?

Neither has a comparable CPU measurement, so this page makes no speed claim between them. Instabox says a new machine's shell is ready in under a second, and its docs say a paused machine usually resumes in about a second; neither has been measured here.

Can AgentCore or Instabox run Docker?

Instabox's docs say Docker and Docker Compose run inside a machine. AgentCore runs your container image as root in a microVM, but its docs do not say Docker works inside a session. boat runs Docker and also exposes /dev/kvm.

How long can a session run on each?

An AgentCore microVM session lasts up to 8 hours and stops after 15 idle minutes by default; the Instances type runs up to 14 days. Instabox documents no maximum run time but pauses a machine after 30 idle minutes unless you turn that off.

Can I use Instabox today?

Instabox launched on 2026-10-14 as an invite-only beta, with sign-in through GitHub or Google. Each account can have 5 machines, all 4 vCPU / 8 GiB with 20 GB storage.

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