Code & AI agent sandboxes: read the guide

InstaVM

HostedSandbox

Instant computers for AI agents

Homepage Docs Pricing

Scanned 15 Oct 2026 · Schema v5 · features v21

From: $100/mo
Plan base (Free $0 / Pro $100/mo) + pay-as-you-go per-second compute
Free tier: Yes
No card required.
Isolation: Firecracker microVM
shares only the hypervisor
Regions: —
No hosted compute placement list established from current landing/pricing/privacy; legal incorporation and hiring locations are not hosting regions.
Capabilities: 23 / 61
3 partial · 35 fail · 0 not assessed
Agent readiness: 7.5/11 · 8.5/11
read · drive, pre-login surface

Advertised for

Untrusted code execution · Persistent agents · Browser computer use · Parallel evaluations · Reinforcement learning · Apps and MCP server hosting

Built for

Developers, then technical

· Official Python SDK/CLI and REST APIs; SSH access.
· Per-second vCPU/RAM pricing and OCI image snapshots.
· Persistent VM/session lifetime and egress policy configuration.

01 Pricing Plan base (Free $0 / Pro $100/mo) + pay-as-you-go per-second compute

Tier	EntryFree	Pro	TopEnterprise
Price	$0 base + usage ($50 one-time signup credit)	$100/month base + usage	Custom
Includes	10 GB allocated volumes; 5 concurrent VMs; egress restricted to known package managers and common AI APIs; Python/JS/Bash; no credit card required.	10 GB allocated volumes; 100 concurrent VMs; unrestricted or granular domain/CIDR egress; higher rate limits; priority support (24h); advanced analytics; 99.9% SLA.	Dedicated infrastructure; SOC 2 Type II compliance; 24/7 priority support; custom SLA/contracts; dedicated account manager; table advertises unlimited concurrent VMs while FAQ says custom capacity.
Storage	10 GB	10 GB	—
Storage overage	$0.146/GB	$0.146/GB	—
vCPU hours overage	$0.0504/h	$0.0504/h	—
Memory gb hours overage	$0.0162/h	$0.0162/h	—

per-second vCPU + per-second GB-RAM; volume GB-hour (allocated size)·Card required: No·instavm.io

Overages: per-second vCPU $0.000014/s (≈$0.05/vCPU-hr); RAM $0.0000045/GB/s (≈$0.0162/GB-hr); volume $0.0002/GB-hour (allocated, 10 GB included)

02 Website design Desktop public website · assessed 15 Oct 2026

Partial assessment — some pages could not be captured.

Monochrome desktop site with a centered oversized hero, terminal/grid product demo and aligned pricing cards. Coverage partial: docs return 404; pricing cookie banner partly occludes the lower viewport.

Retro-computing
Swiss-inspired

Landing page: captured
Pricing: captured
Docs: unavailable

03 Runtime Each fact carries its source; dots show confidence. Open a row for the evidence.

Isolation & lifecycle

Isolation primitive

Firecracker microVMshares only the hypervisor

Persistence

Ephemeral sessions and long-running stateful VMs; persistent volumes outlive runs; explicit VM lifetime and suspend/resume available.

Snapshots / forks

Yes

Resources & limits

Storage

Persistent volumes; 10 GB allocated storage included; $0.0002 per GB-hour overage; file APIs, checkpoints and volume mounts.

Limits & quotas

Free 5 / Pro 100 concurrent VMs; Enterprise table says Unlimited, FAQ says custom capacity. Browser-session monthly caps and 99.99% SLA from prior scan not found in current pricing.

GPU

Access

Deploy interface

container-imageclisdkapi

SDK languages

PythonTypeScript

Network & secrets

Egress controls

Yes

Secrets

Server-side Secrets Vault and TLS-time proxy injection

Bring your own cloud

Placement & use

Jurisdiction

Hosted compute/data location not disclosed

Advertised workloads

Untrusted code executionPersistent agentsBrowser computer useParallel evaluationsReinforcement learningApps and MCP server hosting

04 Capabilities 23 pass · 3 partial · 35 fail · 61 of 61 assessed

Supported — Documented on the public surface and verified.
Partially supported — Exists with caveats: gated, thin, or enterprise-only.
Not supported — Checked and not offered.
Not assessed — Scanned before this capability was tracked. Not a lack.

Compute & storage 5/11

Persistent diskStorage that survives restart/stop (not ephemeral-only).

Supported

Object storageManaged S3-compatible / blob object store the platform PROVIDES to a user's workloads (buckets, presigned URLs). DISTINCT from persistent-disk (block/volume attached to an instance) and from a self-host dependency (source.self_host.deps[]=["object-storage"] is an infra dep to RUN an OSS tool — the opposite direction). SCOPE varies and matters: native first-class (Railway Buckets, Cloudflare R2) vs a sibling SKU / extension (Fly Tigris, Bunny Storage, DigitalOcean Spaces) — record which in the evidence quote / note. Admitted v15.

Not supported

Snapshots / forkingSnapshot or copy-on-write fork of a running instance (filesystem-only counts). Whether the snapshot also restores memory + running processes is recorded separately by memory-snapshot (v19).

Supported

Live-state (memory) snapshotsA snapshot / checkpoint / pause captures a running instance's MEMORY and PROCESS state and restores it, so running processes continue where they left off instead of a freshly booted instance with the same files. Counts whether user-triggered (snapshot, checkpoint, pause-to-storage) or used to restore pre-initialised state (memory snapshots for fast cold starts). Distinct from snapshots-forks (any snapshot or fork, including filesystem-only; a product passing that key may still fail this one) and from scale-to-zero (an idle-cost property; suspension may or may not keep memory). Actor multiplexing (see scale-to-zero) records its live-state half here — only when the suspended actor's MEMORY/process state is what comes back, not a freshly booted worker with the actor's files.

Supported

Scale to zeroIdle instances suspend at no / negligible cost. ACTOR MULTIPLEXING (many suspended stateful actors sharing a small pool of pre-warmed workers, woken on request — Agent Substrate, AX, kagent; Rivet's hibernating actors) has NO key of its own (proposal REJECTED v20) — score the idle-cost half HERE and the live-state half under memory-snapshot; the oversubscription ratio / density is a performance characteristic the registry does not key.

Partially supported

GPU computeGPU-backed instances available.

Not supported

Multi-regionCompute placeable in more than one geographic region.

Not supported

Sandbox templates / custom imagesBuild reusable sandbox/VM images from an OCI image or Dockerfile (a base you fork instances from).

Supported

Cloud-init / ignition configCustomise a VM / microVM / instance at boot via cloud-init (or ignition) user-data — the same boot-metadata interface as AWS/Azure/GCP. Inject packages, users, SSH keys, files, and run-commands declaratively at launch. Distinct from sandbox-templates (a PREBUILT image you fork instances from) — this is PER-LAUNCH declarative customisation, not a baked image.

Not supported

Desktop / computer-use sandboxA virtual desktop (GUI) for LLM computer-use — browser + desktop automation, often via noVNC/VNC.

Supported

Selectable isolation runtimeThe user chooses the isolation runtime per workload / environment / sandbox from more than one option (e.g. microVM vs gVisor vs plain container, native namespaces vs gVisor, gVisor vs VM). Records the CHOICE; the isolation_primitive facet still records the best-evidenced primary. A platform that switches runtime automatically without a user choice (e.g. gVisor forced for GPU) does not pass on that alone.

Not supported

Networking & delivery 5/9

Automatic HTTPSTLS endpoints provisioned automatically per workload.

Supported

Built-in reverse proxyPlatform routes external traffic to workload services.

Supported

Custom domainsBring-your-own domain via CNAME/DNS.

Supported

Public preview URLsShareable per-deploy / per-branch URLs.

Supported

Direct public IPv6Per-instance stable public IPv6 for raw TCP/UDP (beyond a managed HTTPS proxy) — e.g. mosh / raw sockets.

Not supported

Egress controlsConfigurable OUTBOUND network policy — egress firewall / allowlist / egress proxy on traffic LEAVING a workload. Scoped to OUTBOUND only (v15): private-network REACHABILITY between a user's own services is private-networking, not this. Static-egress-IP belongs here (an outbound concept).

Supported

Private networkingA platform-internal private network between a user's OWN services — service-to-service connectivity, VPC, service mesh, and/or service discovery, not exposed to the public internet. DISTINCT from egress-controls (OUTBOUND firewall/allowlist), reverse-proxy (PUBLIC inbound ingress), and direct-ipv6 (per-instance PUBLIC addressing). Admitted v15.

Not supported

Email send / receiveSend and/or receive email from the workload.

Not supported

Edge KV storeA globally-replicated key-value store read from WITHIN an edge runtime at the PoP (low-latency, eventually-consistent) — Cloudflare Workers KV, Deno KV, Fastly KV Store, Akamai EdgeKV, Vercel Edge Config. Distinct from first-party-db (a managed DATABASE service you provision and connect to) and from http-query-api (HTTP access to an external store) — edge-kv is colocated with the edge compute and read at the edge.

Not supported

Developer access 6/10

Public APIDocumented programmatic API.

Supported

OpenAPI specMachine-readable OpenAPI / Swagger spec published.

Supported

CLIOfficial command-line tool.

Supported

SDKOfficial client library/libraries.

Supported

SSH accessDirect SSH into workloads.

Supported

Filesystem APIRemote file operations over the API (list/read/write/watch/copy/upload) without SSH.

Supported

Git deployDeploy from a Git repo / push-to-deploy.

Not supported

Private container registryHosted private image registry.

Not supported

E2B-compatible APIDrop-in compatibility with the E2B sandbox API/SDKs — existing E2B client code runs against this product by changing the endpoint/domain + key, with no business-code changes. E2B itself passes as the reference implementation. Distinct from public-api / sdk (the product has its own API — this key says it also speaks another vendor's) and from self-host-oss (a self-hosted E2B-compatible server is scored on both).

Not supported

HTTP data APIQuery / read / write the stored DATA over plain HTTP/REST (or GraphQL) WITHOUT the native protocol driver (Postgres wire / Redis RESP) — agent- and edge-friendly data access via fetch(). The DATA plane; distinct from public-api (a control-plane / management API). Auto-generated-from-schema REST/GraphQL (PostgREST, pg_graphql) is a flavour of this.

Not supported

AI & agents 3/12

Built-in coding agentShips a first-party AI coding agent in the product.

Not supported

Agent skillsInstallable / declarable agent skills or tools.

Supported

AI app builderPrompt-to-app / vibe-coding generation surface.

Not supported

MCP serverExposes a Model Context Protocol server for agents.

Not supported

MCP clientActs as an MCP client / consumes MCP tools.

Not supported

MCP-server hostingRun/host MCP servers as a workload on the platform (distinct from exposing a first-party MCP control server — that is mcp-server).

Supported

LLM gatewayRoutes LLM API calls through the platform (multi-provider).

Not supported

BYOK for LLMsBring-your-own LLM provider keys.

Partially supported

Model inference API (first-party)A FIRST-PARTY hosted LLM/model inference API — the provider serves its OWN catalogue of (usually open-weight) models behind a (typically OpenAI-compatible) endpoint, billed per token. Distinct from llm-gateway (a multi-PROVIDER proxy/router for YOUR calls to external providers like OpenAI/Anthropic) and from byok-llm (bring your own provider keys) — here the platform IS the inference provider, serving its own models.

Not supported

Autonomous QA agentA first-party AUTONOMOUS AI agent that QA-TESTS a running app / implementation — exercising it like a real user (clicking through flows, checking behaviour) and reporting bugs/defects (often back to a coding agent, or before a human review). Distinct from built-in-agent (a code-AUTHORING agent — this one VERIFIES the result, it does not write the feature; a product can ship both), from ai-guided-code-review (organises a diff for a HUMAN to review — not an autonomous tester), and from observability (runtime metrics/logs, not active testing).

Not supported

Credential-injection proxyThe platform holds real secrets OUTSIDE the workload and injects them on the wire (an egress / broker proxy swaps a placeholder or phantom token for the real credential on matching outbound requests), so code running in the sandbox — e.g. an untrusted agent — never sees or can exfiltrate the real key. Distinct from secrets-management (storage + injection INTO the workload as env vars/files — the workload holds the secret) and from egress-controls (outbound allow/deny POLICY; a product can have an allowlist without injecting credentials, and vice versa).

Supported

Preinstalled coding agentThe platform installs and launches a THIRD-PARTY coding agent (a harnesses.yml entry — Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Pi ...) inside a workspace/sandbox it provisions, with the agent's auth wired in (your own account or API key), so you start an agent session rather than an empty box. Distinct from built-in-agent (a FIRST-PARTY agent the vendor ships) and from harnesses[] (which records that a harness CAN target the product, not that the product runs it for you).

Not supported

Data 0/4

First-party databasePlatform-provided managed database.

Not supported

Database branchingCopy-on-write branch of a DATABASE (schema + data) as a dev-lifecycle primitive — branch your data like code, usually instant via a metadata operation. Distinct from snapshots-forks (forks a running compute INSTANCE / VM state) and from preview-environments (a full per-PR environment that may USE a DB branch). For a data product a CoW branch maps HERE, not to snapshots-forks.

Not supported

Vector searchFirst-class storage, indexing, and similarity search of vector embeddings — a native vector type/index or a managed vector DB. The data-layer primitive for RAG / semantic retrieval.

Not supported

Ephemeral instant DB (no-signup)Provision a working, usable instance via a single command / HTTP call with NO account, signup, or card — typically time-boxed (expires unless claimed). A zero-onboarding path an agent can hit directly.

Not supported

Platform & operations 2/6

Scheduled tasksCron / scheduled job primitive.

Supported

Durable workflowsDurable execution / long-running workflow primitive.

Not supported

Preview environmentsA full EPHEMERAL environment spun up per PR / branch — compute + addons + (often) a DB branch — torn down on merge. More than preview-urls (which is just a shareable URL for one deploy).

Not supported

Built-in observabilityFirst-party metrics / logs / tracing / APM / profiling included in the platform (no third-party stack required to see what a workload is doing).

Supported

Managed CI/CD runnersPlatform-hosted, drop-in CI/CD runner VMs (GitHub Actions / GitLab), typically faster and cheaper than the CI vendor's own hosted runners, billed per runner-minute; isolated + ephemeral per job. Distinct from git-deploy (push-to-deploy of an APP) and scheduled-tasks (cron) — this is managed CI COMPUTE you point your existing pipelines at.

Not supported

Project template marketplaceA marketplace / gallery of prebuilt PROJECT STARTER templates (apps or websites) a user clones or launches a new project from and then customises — the "start from a template" surface of a builder / PaaS. Distinct from sandbox-templates (a COMPUTE base IMAGE you fork runtime INSTANCES from — Dockerfile / OCI), from app-builder (the prompt-to-app GENERATION surface — a product can have both), and from one-click OSS-app catalogues / helm-addon-marketplace (deploy a FINISHED app as-is, not a starter you build on).

Not supported

Organisation & security 2/9

Built-in authPlatform-provided authentication / IAM for workloads.

Partially supported

SSO / SAMLEnterprise single sign-on.

Not supported

Secrets managementFirst-class secrets storage / injection.

Supported

TeamsMulti-user team accounts.

Not supported

SharingShare a running workload/resource via link (optionally gated).

Supported

BYOCRuns inside the customer's own cloud account.

Not supported

Deploy into customers' VPCsA SaaS vendor uses the platform to deploy and operate ITS software inside ITS CUSTOMERS' cloud accounts / VPCs (nested or "customer BYOC"), managed from the vendor's control plane. Distinct from byoc (your own workloads in your own cloud account).

Not supported

Workload identityThe platform gives each workload its own verifiable identity (OIDC token, SPIFFE SVID, cloud IAM federation) that it exchanges for short-lived credentials, so no long-lived static secret is stored or injected. Distinct from secrets-management (stores / injects static secrets) and credential-injection-proxy (swaps real secrets in on the wire).

Not supported

Self-host / OSS coreOpen-source core that can be self-hosted.

Not supported

Proposed, not verified

Capabilities the scan saw but the registry does not track yet. A key is admitted only once two distinct products exhibit it. These are not scored.

Agent session tape recording and offline replayagent-session-tape-replay
“Tapes record agent sessions across tool calls, filesystem changes, egress, and LLM calls, and replay them without a network round trip.” instavm.io

05 Agent readiness Pre-login surface · counts, not a grade

Can an agent read it?

parse-ability · docs, metadata, machine-readable surfaces

7.5/11

6 full · 3 partial · 68% of applicable checks

llms.txt
Supported
“https://instavm.io/llms.txt HTTP 200, substantive product and documentation/pricing/SDK links; docs destinations currently 404 (current-llms.json).”
llms-full.txt
Not supported
“https://instavm.io/llms-full.txt HTTP 404 (current-llms-full.json).”
robots.txt AI policy
Partially supported
“User-agent: * / Allow: /; no explicit AI-UA policy (current-robots.json).”
JSON-LD
Partially supported
“Homepage JSON-LD Organization + WebSite only (current-public-signals.json); no Product/SoftwareApplication offers.”
Sitemap
Supported
“robots.txt points to https://instavm.io/sitemap.xml; HTTP 200 non-trivial URL list (current-sitemap.json).”
Meta tags
Supported
“Descriptive title, description and OG/twitter metadata in homepage head (current-public-signals.json).”
Markdown negotiation
Not supported
“Accept: text/markdown still returned text/html; charset=utf-8 HTTP 200; docs .md returned 404 (current-markdown-negotiation.json, current-docs-markdown.json).”
Content efficiency
Supported
“12515 readable UTF-8 bytes / 231491 raw HTML bytes = 5.406%, above 5% rubric threshold; scripts/styles excluded (current-public-signals.json).”
Docs discoverable
Partially supported
“Docs is first-class header link, but https://instavm.io/docs and linked API/quickstart/SDK pages 404; discovery exists but not usable docs. Official skills supply alternate docs. See scan_issues.”
Machine-readable pricing
Supported
“Current /pricing has parseable Free/Pro/Enterprise cards, native unit rates and comparison table (current-pricing.json).”
No anti-bot wall
Supported
“Public landing/pricing/legal/solutions/spec fetched without bot challenge. Docs 404 is an availability failure, not a bot challenge. Cookie overlay affects screenshot only.”

Can an agent drive it?

act-ability · APIs, SDKs, MCP, credentials, webhooks

8.5/11

7 full · 3 partial · 77% of applicable checks

Public API
Supported
“Official skill platform.md documents raw REST https://api.instavm.io/v1/vms and SDK APIs (current-skill-platform.json).”
OpenAPI spec
Supported
“https://api.instavm.io/openapi.json HTTP 200 OpenAPI 3.1.0, 161 paths (current-openapi.POINTER.md).”
MCP server
Not supported
“/.well-known/mcp 404; no hosted control MCP or installable control server in current llms/skills evidence. Workload MCP hosting and CodeRunner MCP are distinct.”
SDK packages
Supported
“llms.txt links Python and JS SDKs; official skills document Python package. Linked SDK web docs 404, so documentation is incomplete but multiple SDKs still explicitly advertised.”
Auth documented
Supported
“Official setup/platform docs: instavm_sk_... uses X-API-Key; other tokens Bearer; CLI stores key in ~/.instavm/config.json. Public API schema corroborates security schemes.”
Self-serve credentials
Supported
“Official platform.md documents client.api_keys.create(description="ci key"), list/get/update/delete. This is authenticated programmatic key issuance, not proof of unauthenticated signup bootstrap or behavioral Phase 2 success.”
Webhooks
Supported
“Official manifest reference includes callbacks with signing_secret: WEBHOOK_SIGNING_SECRET; official platform has endpoint creation and deliveries, changelog documents offline signature verification.”
CLI tool
Supported
“Official setup.md: instavm package ships Python SDK and CLI; browser PKCE login described in current changelog.”
Error model
Partially supported
“Public OpenAPI describes HTTPValidationError {detail:[ValidationError]} and 422 schemas; comprehensive prose error/retry model not established because linked API docs 404.”
Rate limits documented
Partially supported
“Pricing publishes 5/100 concurrent-VM caps and "Higher rate limits"; no response-header/backoff contract established. Historical browser-session caps no longer appear.”
Agent config files
Partially supported
“Official installable skills and Claude Code plugin are same skill surface; /agents.md and /.well-known/agent 404. No second independent agent-config discovery surface established.”

06 Coding harnesses Which agents and IDEs are documented to run here

Advertised integrations 4

Claude Code Anthropic
Supported
“Supports Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, OpenCode, and other agents supported by `skills`.”
Source raw.githubusercontent.com
Advertised installable skill compatibility, not a logged-in or execution test.
Codex CLI OpenAI
Supported
“Supports Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, OpenCode, and other agents supported by `skills`.”
Source raw.githubusercontent.com
Advertised installable skill compatibility, not a logged-in or execution test.
Cursor Anysphere
Supported
“Supports Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, OpenCode, and other agents supported by `skills`.”
Source raw.githubusercontent.com
Advertised installable skill compatibility, not a logged-in or execution test.
OpenCode opencode
Supported
“Supports Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, OpenCode, and other agents supported by `skills`.”
Source raw.githubusercontent.com
Advertised installable skill compatibility, not a logged-in or execution test.

Plausible compatibility 12

Derived, not stored: the product passes SSH access, so any CLI coding agent is installable inside it. This is plausible compatibility, not a supported integration.

Aider
Amp
Antigravity
Devin
Droid
Gemini CLI
Goose
Hermes Agent
Kilo Code
Kiro CLI
Pi
Qwen Code

07 Compliance & regions Standards held, with ordinal rigor; never a score

Certifications held 1

SOC 2 Type II
enterprise-onlyhosted
“SOC 2 Type II compliance”
Source instavm.io

Regions —

Regions are not disclosed on the public surface.

No hosted compute placement list established from current landing/pricing/privacy; legal incorporation and hiring locations are not hosting regions.

Legal

Privacy notice Terms of service

08 Company & presence Facts only, not scored

Company

Headquarters: Not disclosed
Founded: —
Team size: Not disclosed
Hiring: Developer Relations & Experience Engineer Internship; Solutions Engineer Internship; Remote India / Bengaluru

Activity

Last release: 2026-07-11 — latest indexed hosted changelog issue: devboxes, suspend/resume and Secrets Vault; SDK 0.19–0.26 roundup instavm.io
Last blog post: 2026-08-19 — How Claude's watermark works (latest indexed post) instavm.io

Presence 6

Links found on the public surface scanned; not an exhaustive search.

09 Sources & method How this entry was produced

Public surface only

Everything here was read from instavm.io's unauthenticated pages, docs, pricing and repository on 15 Oct 2026. Nothing behind a login was used.

Statuses, not scores

Capabilities are pass, partial or fail against a written rubric (features v21). “Not assessed” means the scan predates the key.

Confidence is separate

Each fact carries its own confidence. Low-confidence facts are shown, never hidden, so you can weigh them.

Schema: scan v5
Features registry: v21
Keys tracked today: 61
Assessed on this entry: 61

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