Blaxel vs Instabox
Both run each sandbox as a Firecracker microVM with its own kernel. Blaxel is a paid service built to sleep in seconds and wake in under 25 ms, while Instabox is an invite-only beta that launched on 2026-10-14, is free for now and gives every account 5 machines of one size.
The companies and products
Blaxel
Blaxel is a San Francisco company that runs cloud infrastructure for AI agents, and since September 2026 it is part of Baseten.
You get sandboxes, batch jobs, MCP server hosting and a model gateway. Each sandbox is a Firecracker microVM with its own kernel that drops to standby when nothing is connected and resumes in under 25 ms with its memory and running processes. It is built for agent products that start many sandboxes and want them asleep most of the time.
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, founded 2024
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. “10th cheapest of 367” means 9 of the other 366 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 | Blaxel: 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 software factory clones set-up machines: Blaxel forks with memory (private preview), Instabox forks only stopped machines, and boat forks a running sandbox with /dev/kvm for emulators. | 10th cheapest of 367 $2,373 a month | No published price | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB Blaxel wakes a sleeping assistant on request, while Instabox pauses a machine after 30 idle minutes and a visit to its port URL does not wake it. | 12th cheapest of 366 $2,832 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 Blaxel suits short code runs that sleep right away and wake in milliseconds, while Instabox has no published price and an API exec call runs at most 10 minutes, 4 at once. | 14th cheapest of 345 $144 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 Blaxel's self-serve tiers stop at 200 sandboxes at once and Instabox allows 5 machines per account, so 300 users at once fit neither today; boat fits them on a self-serve plan. | 101st of 361, with limits $926 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 | 77th of 360, with limits $4,378 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, Blaxel's public tiers cap it at 200, and boat starts a fresh VM per task from a named snapshot. | 136th of 364, with limits $704 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 that builds Android apps or VM images needs /dev/kvm, which Blaxel's Firecracker guests do not get, Instabox does not document, and boat exposes. | 57th cheapest of 377 $431 a month | No published price | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Instabox gives a dev box SSH with mosh, Blaxel has no native SSH, and boat is a plain machine you SSH into and leave on at a published price. | 265th of 368, with limits $114 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 All three run a Linux desktop with a browser; boat streams it at 60fps, and Instabox can share a view or control link to its desktop. | 14th cheapest of 369 $634 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 | 16th cheapest of 367 $317 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 | 16th cheapest of 346 $215 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 | 147th of 338, with limits $4,292 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 | 3rd cheapest of 360 $217 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 | Blaxel | Instabox | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Firecracker microVM, own kernel | Firecracker microVM, own kernel and root | Full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts |
| Machine sizes | Sizes set by RAM with CPU included (8 GB comes with 4 cores); up to 256 GB on a custom plan | 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 |
| Docker inside | Yes, with a Docker-in-sandbox image | Docker and Docker Compose run inside | Docker and Compose run inside, with root and systemd |
| Nested virtualization | No: Firecracker guests do not get /dev/kvm | Not documented | Yes: /dev/kvm, so Android emulators and VMs run inside |
| SSH | Root, terminal through the bl connect command, no native SSH | SSH through a gateway with short-lived certificates, paste-anywhere SSH tokens and mosh | Real SSH, root and systemd in every sandbox |
| Disk | Files live in memory (about half the RAM); one block volume can be attached at creation | 20 GB storage per machine; snapshots saved by hand, up to 10 | A real disk that stays, saved every minute and on stop |
| Sleep and wake | Standby a few seconds after the last connection, wakes in under 25 ms with memory and processes | Pause keeps memory and running programs; resume usually takes about a second; auto pause after 30 idle minutes | Stop keeps the disk and costs nothing; start boots the VM again |
| Fork | Fork with memory and running processes (private preview) | Fork copies a stopped machine only | Fork a running sandbox with its disk |
| Inbound traffic | Preview URL per port, public or token-protected; no raw TCP or public IP | HTTPS on up to 16 ports, open to anyone with the URL; offline while the machine is paused | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected by default; raw TCP |
| Outbound rules | Domain allow and deny lists, method and path rules, static egress IPs | Not documented | Open internet; filter inside the VM with nftables |
| Keeping API keys out of the sandbox | Proxy fills secrets into outbound HTTPS requests; sandbox never sees them (public preview) | 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 you register |
| Coding agents | Claude Code image you drive from its terminal or your own harness | 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 |
| Desktop and computer use | Desktop and browser with computer-use control | 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 |
| Regions | US (Oregon, North Virginia), London, Frankfurt | Not published | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Blaxel | Instabox | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | Not published | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | No | Not published | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Browser | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Computer-use API | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SSH | No | 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 | Yes | 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 | No | Not published | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | No | No | No |
| Egress allowlist | Yes | Not published | No |
| Secret proxy | Yes | No | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | Yes | No | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Agent harness API | No | Not published | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes | Not published | No |
| GPU | No | No | No |
| Windows | No | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | Not published | No |
| Self-hosting | No | Not published | No |
| BYOC | Yes | Not published | No |
| Open source | No | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Spend limits | No | Not published | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | 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 | Yes | Not published | Yes |
Performance
On the hpc-sandbox-benchmarks Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU and 8 GB, in the same run on September 29, 2026, boat did 26.69 runs per second and Blaxel 19.48, so boat did about 1.4 times the work in the same time. Instabox has no comparable measurement, so this page makes no speed claim for it. Instabox says you are in a new machine's shell in under a second; that has not been measured here.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Blaxel measured on: Sandbox (active time, RAM-only pricing, CPU bundled). Instabox has 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 | Blaxel, 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 | $33 · Pay-as-you-go Tier 1 | No published price | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $120 · Pay-as-you-go Tier 1 | 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 | $1,489 · Pay-as-you-go Tier 1 | 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 | $396 · Pay-as-you-go Tier 2 · 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 | $876 · Pay-as-you-go Tier 2 · with limits | No published price | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Blaxel: Blaxel charges for allocated RAM per second while a sandbox is active, with CPU included. In standby you pay only snapshot storage, and volumes are billed on their full size.
Instabox: Instabox is free during the beta, with 5 machines per user, and has no published price yet, so no bill can be compared with Blaxel's or boat's.
Instabox: Plans start at $20 a month, and the whole fee is usage credit, billed per second while a sandbox runs. A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Limits in those scenarios
Instabox allows 5 machines per account, paused and stopped ones included, so the 50-agent, user-sandbox and 1,000-job scenarios do not fit it today, and none of its scenarios can be priced. Blaxel's self-serve tiers allow 10, 50 or 200 sandboxes at once, with standby ones counted, so 300 users or 1,000 jobs at once need a sales tier, and Tier 0 and 1 delete sandboxes after 7 or 30 days. boat has no session cap on paid plans, but it limits starts per minute, hour and day, so 1,000 jobs at the same moment get queued.
| Scenario | Blaxel | Instabox | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays | None that bite |
| None that bite |
| One agent that never stops | None that bite |
| None that bite |
| 50 agents in parallel | None that bite |
| None that bite |
| Sandboxes for your users |
|
| None that bite |
| 1,000 short jobs at once |
|
|
|
Which one should you use?
Use Blaxel when
your sandboxes sit idle most of the time and must wake in milliseconds with their memory, need provider-side network rules, or must run in the US.
- Sleeps in seconds, wakes in milliseconds. For sandboxes that sit idle most of the time: one sleeps seconds after the last connection and wakes in under 25 ms.
- Network rules on the provider side. Blaxel can limit a sandbox to chosen domains, down to methods and paths, and give it static egress IPs.
- A service you can plan a fleet on. Blaxel publishes prices, several sizes, US and EU regions, and tiers of 10, 50 or 200 sandboxes at once.
Use Instabox when
you have an invite and want to try a few free 4 vCPU / 8 GiB agent machines during its beta, with memory pause and mosh.
- Free during the beta. During the beta, every account can run 5 machines of 4 vCPU / 8 GiB for free, if you get an invite.
- SSH gateway with mosh. Its SSH gateway relays mosh and gives paste-anywhere SSH tokens, so a session survives sleep and network changes.
- Pause with memory. A paused machine keeps its memory and running programs, and Instabox's docs say it usually resumes in about a second.
Where boat fits
Blaxel is built for many short-lived sandboxes that sleep most of the time, and Instabox is a free beta for trying a few machines. If your agents do hours of real work, like builds, tests, Docker and emulators, look at boat: a whole Linux machine with a real disk, a faster CPU and agents you drive from outside.
A whole Linux machine with /dev/kvm
Blaxel's Firecracker guests do not get /dev/kvm and Instabox does not document it, so an Android emulator or a VM may not start. boat exposes /dev/kvm, systemd and real SSH in every sandbox.
A real disk and forks of running work
Blaxel keeps files in memory, about half the RAM, unless you attach a volume at creation, and Instabox forks only stopped machines. boat saves the disk every minute and forks a running sandbox while the original keeps working.
Private ports and room to grow
Instabox port URLs are open to anyone and cap you at 5 machines of one size, and Blaxel has no raw TCP. boat gives token-protected HTTPS on 50 ports, raw TCP, sizes up to 16 vCPU / 32 GB and no session cap on paid plans.
Use boat when your agents do hours of real work: builds, tests, Docker and emulators on a whole Linux machine with a real disk, forks of running sandboxes, private port URLs and agents built in. Compare it one to one: boat vs Blaxel and boat vs Instabox.
Questions people ask
Is Blaxel cheaper than Instabox?
It can't be compared yet. Instabox is free during its beta, with 5 machines per user, and publishes no price for later. Blaxel bills allocated RAM per active second; for one coding agent on workdays it comes to $33 a month, against $20 on boat.
Which is faster, Blaxel or Instabox?
Only Blaxel has been measured: 19.48 runs per second on a Node.js build-and-test benchmark at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, against 26.69 for boat. Instabox says a new machine's shell is ready in under a second, but its CPU speed has not been benchmarked.
Can Blaxel and Instabox run Docker?
Yes. Blaxel runs Docker with its Docker-in-sandbox image, and Instabox runs Docker and Docker Compose inside its machines. boat runs Docker and Compose too, with systemd.
Can I run an Android emulator on Blaxel or Instabox?
An Android emulator needs /dev/kvm. Blaxel's Firecracker guests do not get it, and Instabox's docs do not say. boat exposes /dev/kvm inside every sandbox.
Do Blaxel and Instabox keep memory when a sandbox sleeps?
Both do. Blaxel goes to standby with memory and processes and wakes in under 25 ms, and Instabox pauses with memory and running programs and usually resumes in about a second. boat keeps the disk on stop and boots again on start.
Can I sign up for Instabox today?
Instabox launched on 2026-10-14 as an invite-only beta, with sign-in through GitHub or Google. Blaxel and boat both publish self-serve plans.
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