Koyeb vs Instabox
Both run each sandbox in its own microVM. Koyeb is a serverless cloud whose sandboxes sleep when idle, wake on a request and can run on GPUs, while Instabox is a new invite-only beta that gives each agent a free 4 vCPU / 8 GiB Linux machine with SSH and a desktop.
The companies and products
Koyeb
Koyeb is a serverless cloud for apps, inference and sandboxes, and in February 2026 it agreed to join Mistral AI.
A Koyeb sandbox is a Koyeb service: a microVM started from any Docker image and driven from Python or JavaScript SDKs that run commands, read files and expose a port. It can scale to zero when idle and wake on the next request, and it can run on CPU or GPU instance types. It is built for teams that run AI agents or untrusted code next to apps they already host on Koyeb.
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. “4th cheapest of 345” means 3 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 | Koyeb: 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 needs a disk that lasts and room to build: Koyeb's local disk is lost on redeploy, Instabox has one 4 vCPU / 8 GiB size, and boat keeps the disk and goes up to 16 vCPU / 32 GB. | 54th of 367, with limits $366 a month | No published price | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB | 135th of 366, with limits $923 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 Koyeb fits short code runs well, with small instances that scale to zero and wake on the next request; Instabox caps an API exec call at 10 minutes, 4 at once. | 4th cheapest of 345 $66 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 Koyeb can run many sandboxes for your users and wake them on a request, while Instabox allows 5 machines per account, paused and stopped ones included. | 6th cheapest of 361 $495 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 | 237th of 360, with limits $1,631 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 the same time; Koyeb and boat both fit this use case. | 19th cheapest of 364 $429 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 boat exposes and neither Koyeb nor Instabox documents. | 142nd of 377, with limits $88 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 works as a cloud dev box with SSH and mosh, and Koyeb drives sandboxes through its SDKs instead; boat gives SSH and a disk saved every minute. | 217th of 368, with limits $37 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 Koyeb sandboxes have no desktop, Instabox has a Linux desktop with a screenshot and click API, and boat streams a 60fps desktop with Chromium. | 81st of 369, with limits $123 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 | 172nd of 367, with limits $123 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 | 172nd of 346, with limits $89 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 | 65th of 338, with limits $1,683 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 | 233rd of 360, with limits $299 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 Koyeb runs GPU instances up to H100 and H200, while Instabox and boat have no GPUs. | 3rd cheapest of 98 $628 a month | 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 | Koyeb | Instabox | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isolation | MicroVM per instance | Firecracker microVM with its own kernel and root | Full VM with its own kernel on dedicated AMD Ryzen 9 9950X hosts |
| Machine sizes | Instance types up to 40 vCPU / 128 GB, and GPU types far larger | 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 |
| GPUs | RTX 4000 SFF Ada up to H100, H200 and multi-GPU | None offered | No |
| Docker | Starts from any Docker image | Docker and Docker Compose run inside | Docker and Compose run inside, with root and systemd |
| Nested virtualization | Not documented | Not documented | Yes, /dev/kvm for Android emulators and VMs |
| Disk, snapshots and fork | Local disk is lost on redeploy; volumes in preview (1 to 10 GB); experimental SDK snapshots | Snapshots by hand, up to 10; saving stops a running machine first, and fork copies a stopped machine only | Disk kept across stops and saved every minute; fork a running sandbox with its disk |
| Idle and wake | Scales to zero after 5 idle minutes and wakes on the next request; Light Sleep wakes in about 200 ms | Pauses after 30 idle minutes with memory and programs kept; resume usually takes about a second; a visit does not wake it | Stop and start by API; a stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk |
| Public port URLs | One exposed HTTPS port at a time, plus an optional TCP proxy to one port | 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; dedicated IPv4 or IPv6 |
| Outbound rules | Block all outbound traffic, or allow only listed IPs and CIDRs | Not documented | Open internet, no provider-side allowlist |
| SSH and shell | Commands and files through Python or JavaScript SDKs | SSH through a gateway with short-lived certificates, paste-anywhere SSH tokens and mosh | SSH into every sandbox |
| Desktop and computer use | No desktop or browser in the sandbox SDK | Linux desktop with a browser on one template, screenshot and click API, shareable view or control links; you bring the model | 60fps Linux desktop with Chromium and a computer-use agent |
| Coding agents | Tutorials that run agents through the command API; an MCP server lets agents manage Koyeb | Templates and saved agent sign-ins in snapshots; you run the agent yourself | Seven agents preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Keeping API keys out of the sandbox | Secrets are set as environment variables inside the service | 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 | EU, US and Asia | Not published | EU only (Germany, Finland, France) |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Koyeb | Instabox | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | Not published | Yes |
| Root | Not published | Yes | Yes |
| Systemd | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | Yes | Yes |
| Browser | No | Yes | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | 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) | Not published | 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 | Yes | 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 | Yes | 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 | No | Not published | No |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Not published | No |
| BYOC | Yes | Not published | No |
| Open source | No | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Not published | Yes | Yes |
| Spend limits | No | 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 | No | Not published | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
Neither Koyeb nor Instabox has a comparable measurement: neither was part of the hpc-sandbox-benchmarks run, so this page makes no speed claim between them. boat did 26.69 runs per second on that Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. Koyeb guarantees at least 0.25 dedicated vCPU per GB of memory, and 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. Koyeb 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 | Koyeb, 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 | $29 · Pro | No published price | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $57 · Pro | 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 | $475 · Pro | 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 | $329 · Scale | 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 | $485 · Scale · with limits | No published price | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Koyeb: Koyeb bills each instance per second at a fixed price per instance type, and deep sleep costs nothing. Pro costs $29 a month with $10 of usage included and Scale $299 a month with $100 included; the rest of the fee is not credit.
Instabox: Instabox is free during the beta, with 5 machines per user, and has no published price yet (its pricing page says "Free until we figure it out"). No bill can be compared 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
Instabox publishes no per-resource rate, so none of the scenarios can be priced for it, and its cap of 5 machines per account (paused and stopped ones count) rules out the 50-agent and user-sandbox scenarios today. Koyeb's priced shape, eco-xlarge, has a 20 GiB disk with no published price for more, and eco instances guarantee only half of each vCPU. At 1,000 short jobs at once, neither Koyeb nor boat fits as priced: Koyeb's burstable CPU throttles under load, and boat's $2,000 plan caps starts per hour and per day.
| Scenario | Koyeb | Instabox | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays |
|
| None that bite |
| One agent that never stops |
|
| None that bite |
| 50 agents in parallel | None that bite |
| None that bite |
| Sandboxes for your users | None that bite |
| None that bite |
| 1,000 short jobs at once |
|
|
|
Which one should you use?
Use Koyeb when
your sandboxes need GPUs or big machines, sleep most of the time and must wake on a request, or have to run in the US or Asia.
- GPUs and bigger machines. For agents or evals that need a GPU or lots of memory: Koyeb runs up to 40 vCPU / 128 GB and H100 or H200 GPUs.
- Sleeps when idle, wakes on a request. Good for sandboxes that sit idle between requests: Koyeb scales to zero and wakes on the next request, in EU, US and Asia.
- Room for many sandboxes, with egress rules. For teams that need more than five sandboxes or must block outbound traffic: Koyeb plans allow 100 or 1,000 services and IP allowlists.
Use Instabox when
you want to try a few free 4 vCPU / 8 GiB agent machines during its invite-only beta, with memory pause, SSH with mosh and a desktop.
- Free during the beta. For trying things out: during the invite-only beta, every account can run 5 machines of 4 vCPU / 8 GiB for free.
- Pause with memory. A paused machine keeps its memory and running programs and usually resumes in about a second.
- SSH gateway with mosh and a desktop. For working inside the box yourself: SSH with mosh that survives network changes, plus a Linux desktop with a click API.
Where boat fits
If your agents do hours of real work on one machine, look at boat. It keeps the disk, forks running work, runs emulators and VMs, and comes with agents, a desktop and private port URLs built in, on plans published today.
A full machine with /dev/kvm
Neither Koyeb nor Instabox documents nested virtualization, so Android emulators, Firecracker or QEMU VMs and some CI jobs have to run somewhere else. boat exposes /dev/kvm with root, systemd and Docker.
A disk that stays, and forks of running work
Koyeb loses its local disk on redeploy, so lasting files need a preview volume. Instabox forks only stopped machines, and a snapshot stops the machine first. boat saves the disk every minute and forks a running sandbox.
Agents, keys and private hosting built in
Koyeb exposes one port at a time and has no desktop; Instabox port URLs are open to anyone. Both put keys in environment variables the agent can read. boat has seven agents, a credentials proxy and token-protected URLs on 50 ports.
Use boat when your agents do real work for hours on a machine that keeps its disk: builds, Docker, emulators, a desktop browser and private preview URLs, with agents and keys handled for you. Compare it one to one: boat vs Koyeb and boat vs Instabox.
Questions people ask
Is Koyeb 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 Koyeb's. Koyeb bills per second, with plans that include some usage.
Which is faster, Koyeb or Instabox?
Neither has been benchmarked, so there is no measured answer. Instabox says a new machine's shell is ready in under a second, and Koyeb says Light Sleep wakes in about 200 ms; neither was measured here.
Can Koyeb and Instabox run Docker?
Yes. Koyeb starts each sandbox from a Docker image, and Instabox runs Docker and Docker Compose inside its machines. Neither documents /dev/kvm for Android emulators or VMs, which boat exposes.
Do Koyeb or Instabox have GPUs?
Koyeb does, from an RTX 4000 SFF Ada up to H100 and H200, billed per second. Instabox has one CPU machine size, 4 vCPU / 8 GiB, and boat is CPU only too.
Which keeps my files, Koyeb or Instabox?
An Instabox machine keeps its storage when paused or stopped, but forks and snapshots need it stopped. Koyeb's local disk is lost on redeploy, so lasting files need a preview volume or an SDK snapshot. boat saves the disk every minute.
Is Instabox open to everyone?
Not yet. It launched on 2026-10-14 as an invite-only beta, with sign-in through GitHub or Google and 5 free machines per account.
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