Islo vs Instabox
Islo and Instabox both give each agent its own microVM with root and Docker. Islo is a paid service with egress rules, request logs and coding agents built in, while Instabox is an invite-only free beta with one machine size, 5 machines per account and a Linux desktop.
The companies and products
Islo
Islo is an agent sandbox from Incredibuild: each coding agent gets its own microVM, with network rules and credentials handled at a gateway.
An Islo sandbox is a Linux microVM with its own kernel, built from a container image, with Claude Code, Cursor CLI and Codex preinstalled. Outbound traffic can pass through a gateway that allows or blocks hosts, injects credentials and logs every request. It is built for teams that run coding agents, evals and RL rollouts in the background, on Islo's cloud or in their own cloud account.
- Launched
- May 4, 2026
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. “30th cheapest of 366” means 29 of the other 365 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 | Islo: 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 Neither documents /dev/kvm, so Android emulators and VMs inside the sandbox need boat; Instabox also has one 4 vCPU / 8 GiB size and forks only stopped machines. | 326th of 367, with limits $7,402 a month | No published price | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB Both can keep a machine running with no session cap and pause it with memory kept; only Islo wakes a paused sandbox on the next request or webhook. | 30th cheapest of 366 $9,928 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 | 153rd of 345, with limits $503 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 Instabox allows 5 machines per account and Islo's Team plan is reported at 50 running sandboxes, so 300 user sandboxes at once fit neither without a custom deal. | 171st of 361, with limits $3,160 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 | 167th of 360, with limits $15,265 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 Islo has a Harbor integration and gateway rules that stop trials from looking up answers; Instabox's 5-machine cap limits how many evals run at the same time. | 198th of 364, with limits $2,456 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 Islo bills per core and GB while a sandbox runs and can run 50 at once on Team; Instabox's 5 machines and lack of a published price make it hard to plan CI on. | 119th cheapest of 377 $1,507 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 work as a cloud dev box over SSH; Instabox adds mosh and paste-anywhere SSH tokens, and Islo adds a published per-hour rate. | 112th cheapest of 368 $402 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 Instabox has a Linux desktop with a screenshot and click API, Islo sandboxes are headless, and boat streams a 60fps desktop with a computer-use agent. | 310th of 369, with limits $2,210 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 Islo has a browser for testing inside the sandbox, Instabox has a browser on a desktop template, and boat adds a 60fps desktop and a computer-use API. | 113th of 367, with limits $1,105 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 | 66th cheapest of 346 $748 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 | 265th of 338, with limits $14,966 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 | 47th of 360, with limits $746 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 | Islo | Instabox | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isolation | A microVM with its own kernel for each sandbox | A Firecracker microVM with its own kernel and root | A full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts |
| Machine sizes | You choose CPU cores, memory and disk per sandbox | 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 | Docker inside, with sudo | Docker and Docker Compose inside, with root | Docker and Compose inside, with root and systemd |
| Nested virtualization | Not documented | Not documented | Yes, /dev/kvm for Android emulators and VMs |
| Desktop and computer use | Headless, with a browser for testing; no desktop or computer-use API | Linux desktop with a browser on one template, screenshot and click API, shareable view or control links | 60fps Linux desktop with Chromium, a computer-use API and an embeddable stream |
| Pause and resume | Pause keeps files, processes and memory; wakes on the next exec, file access or webhook | Pause keeps memory and running programs; resume usually takes about a second; pauses after 30 idle minutes by default | Stop keeps the disk and costs nothing; start boots the machine again |
| Fork and snapshots | Snapshot a running sandbox's files, then start new sandboxes from it | Fork copies a stopped machine only; saving a snapshot stops a running machine first, up to 10 | Fork a running sandbox; disk saved every minute and on stop |
| Port URLs | HTTPS share links anyone with the URL can open, expiring after 24 hours by default; no raw TCP | 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 and its own IP |
| SSH | SSH and port-forward through the CLI | SSH through a gateway with short-lived certificates, paste-anywhere SSH tokens and mosh | SSH into every sandbox |
| Outbound internet rules | Gateway allows or denies by host, path and HTTP method, with default deny and rate limits | Not documented | Open internet; no provider-side allowlist |
| Keeping API keys out of the sandbox | Gateway injects stored credentials into outbound requests; keys never reach the sandbox | 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 |
| Coding agents | Claude Code, Cursor CLI and Codex preinstalled; factory lines run agent steps on a schedule, webhook or GitHub, Slack and Linear events | Templates and saved agent sign-ins in snapshots; you run the agent yourself | Seven agents preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Machines at once | Free 5 and Team 50 running sandboxes per launch coverage; paused ones do not count | 5 per account, in any state: paused and stopped ones count | 100 to 2,000 running sandboxes by plan |
| Regions | US West, or your own cloud account with BYOC | Not published | EU only (Germany, Finland, France), with EU data residency |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Islo | 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 | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | Yes | Yes |
| Browser | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | 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 | 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 | 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 | Yes | Not published | No |
| Open source | No | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Not published | Yes | Yes |
| Spend limits | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | Yes | Not published | No |
| SSO | Yes | No | No |
| SOC 2 | Not published | Not published | No |
| HIPAA | Not published | Not published | No |
| EU data residency | No | Not published | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
Neither Islo nor Instabox has a comparable CPU measurement, so this page makes no speed claim between them. boat did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in StarSling's run of 2026-09-29. 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. Islo 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 | Islo, 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 | $101 · Free | No published price | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $420 · Free | 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 | $4,863 · Team | 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 | $1,382 · Team · 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 | $3,053 · Team · with limits | No published price | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Islo: Islo bills each CPU core and each GB of memory and disk while a sandbox runs, per hour, with no plan fee. Egress has no published price, so Islo totals here leave it out.
Instabox: Instabox is free during the beta, with 5 machines per account, and publishes no price yet. No bill can be compared until it does.
Instabox: Plans start at $20 a month, and the whole fee is usage credit spent 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, and every machine is 4 vCPU / 8 GiB, so none of the scenarios can be priced on it and the fleet ones do not fit. Islo fits the single-agent and 50-agent scenarios, but its Team plan is reported at 50 running sandboxes, so 300 user sandboxes and 1,000 short jobs at once need a custom contract. boat fits every scenario except the 1,000-job burst, where its starts per hour and per day are lower than the burst needs.
| Scenario | Islo | 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 Islo when
you need per-host egress rules with a log of every call, coding agents that run from schedules and webhooks, or up to 50 sandboxes in US West or your own cloud.
- Egress rules and request logs. For teams that must control what agents reach: Islo allows or blocks each host, path and method, and logs every call.
- Coding agents that run on their own. For background agent work: Islo preinstalls Claude Code, Cursor CLI and Codex and starts runs from schedules, webhooks or GitHub events.
- More sandboxes, US or your own cloud. For more than a handful of agents: Islo's Team plan is reported at 50 running sandboxes, in US West or your own cloud.
Use Instabox when
you want to try a few free 4 vCPU / 8 GiB machines during its beta, with a desktop, memory pause and mosh.
- Free during the beta. For trying things out: during the beta, every account runs 5 machines of 4 vCPU / 8 GiB for free.
- A desktop agents can click. For computer-use tests: one template has a Linux desktop with a screenshot and click API and shareable view links.
- SSH gateway with mosh. For working in the box by hand: its SSH gateway relays mosh and gives paste-anywhere SSH tokens.
Where boat fits
Look at boat if your agents need more than a shell in a microVM: a VM that can start its own VMs, ports you can host on privately, and more machines than Islo or Instabox allow. boat also forks a running sandbox, streams a 60fps desktop and publishes its sizes, plans and EU regions today.
/dev/kvm for emulators and VMs
Neither Islo nor Instabox documents /dev/kvm, so Android emulators, Firecracker or a VM inside the sandbox stop at the first boot. boat gives every machine /dev/kvm, systemd and root.
Private ports and raw TCP
Islo share links and Instabox port URLs open for anyone with the URL, Islo's expire after 24 hours by default, and Instabox's go offline while paused. boat tokens its 50 HTTPS ports by default and adds raw TCP.
Room for a fleet
Instabox stops at 5 machines, paused ones included, and Islo's Team plan is reported at 50 running sandboxes. A fleet of agents or a sandbox per user needs a custom deal there; boat runs 100 to 2,000 by plan.
Use boat when your agents need /dev/kvm, private port URLs, raw TCP, a 60fps desktop, forks of running work or more than 50 machines, on terms published today. Compare it one to one: boat vs Islo and boat vs Instabox.
Questions people ask
Is Islo cheaper than Instabox?
It can't be compared yet. Instabox is free during its beta and publishes no price, so there is no Instabox bill to set against Islo's. Islo bills per core and GB while a sandbox runs; one coding agent on workdays comes to $101 a month there.
Which is faster, Islo or Instabox?
Nobody has a comparable measurement for either. 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 Islo and Instabox run Docker?
Yes, both run Docker inside their microVMs, and Instabox also documents Docker Compose. Neither documents /dev/kvm, so emulators and nested VMs are not covered. boat has Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine.
Does Islo or Instabox have a desktop for computer use?
Instabox does: one template has a Linux desktop with a browser and a screenshot and click API. Islo sandboxes are headless with a browser for testing. boat streams a 60fps desktop with a computer-use API.
Is Instabox free?
Yes, for now. Its pricing page says it is free until they figure out pricing, with 5 machines of 4 vCPU and 8 GB per user. No end date or later price is published, and the beta is invite-only.
Are port URLs private on Islo and Instabox?
No. Islo share links open for anyone with the URL and expire after 24 hours by default, and Instabox's docs say a published URL is not a secret. boat's port URLs carry a token by default.
Try boat
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