Application hosting / PaaS: read the guide

Porter

HostedPaaS

Effortless app infrastructure, your own cloud.

Homepage Docs Pricing

Scanned 15 Oct 2026 · Schema v5 · features v21

From: —
usage-metered management fee plus separate cloud-provider bill
Free tier: No
Card requirement unconfirmed.
Isolation: Container
shares the host kernel
Regions: 3
AWS · Google Cloud · Microsoft Azure
Capabilities: 32 / 61
6 partial · 23 fail · 0 not assessed
Agent readiness: 11/11 · 10/11
read · drive, pre-login surface

Advertised for

Web services · Background workers · Scheduled jobs · Pre deploy jobs · GPU workloads · Temporal workers · Untrusted code execution · Agent tools · Parallel batch work

Built for

Technical, then mixed

· BYOC AWS/GCP/Azure cloud account and Kubernetes clusters prerequisite.
· GitHub/CLI/porter.yaml for app deployment; SDK and container image lifecycle for sandbox agents.
· MCP deploy/debug tools target Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and OpenCode users.

01 Pricing usage-metered management fee plus separate cloud-provider bill

Tier	EntryStandard	Enterprise
Price	$6/GB RAM/month and $13/vCPU/month	Contact sales
vCPU hours overage	$0.019/h	—
Memory gb hours overage	$0.009/h	—

requested GB RAM and vCPU; prorated to minute·Card required: unconfirmed·porter.run

Overages: Usage is metered rather than an allowance plus overage. Separate cloud bill; no distinct sandbox rates disclosed.

02 Website design Desktop public website · assessed 15 Oct 2026

Complete assessment.

Porter’s public marketing pages combine expansive black sans-serif headings, monospaced labels, yellow highlights and recurring pixel-like geometric ornaments. Pricing continues the same vocabulary with turquoise and blue plan panels; documentation switches to a dark, restrained three-column reading interface.

Retro-computing
Playful

Landing page: captured
Pricing: captured
Docs: captured

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

Isolation & lifecycle

Isolation primitive

Containershares the host kernel

Persistence

Yes

Snapshots / forks

Yes

Resources & limits

Storage

EFS application disks; persistent sandbox disk volumes; Porter-created or registered AWS S3 object volumes; AWS Postgres/Redis datastores

Limits & quotas

Application resources capped by underlying VM size. Sandbox Max CPU defaults to 20 cores; warm pods 0.1–16 CPU and 64–32768 MiB; single sandbox maximum 256 cores / 1 TB memory. Warm pool reserves resources; queued requests wait for capacity.

GPU

Yes

Access

Deploy interface

git-pushdockerfilecontainer-imagebuildpackclisdkapimcpdashboard

SDK languages

PythonTypeScript

Network & secrets

Egress controls

sandbox allowlists and static egress IPs

Secrets

Yes

Bring your own cloud

yes

Placement & use

Jurisdiction

customer-controlled

Advertised workloads

Web servicesBackground workersScheduled jobsPre deploy jobsGPU workloadsTemporal workersUntrusted code executionAgent toolsParallel batch work

04 Capabilities 32 pass · 6 partial · 23 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 6/11

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.

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.

Not 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.

Supported

Multi-regionCompute placeable in more than one geographic region.

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.

Not 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 6/9

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.

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.

Partially supported

CLIOfficial command-line tool.

Supported

SDKOfficial client library/libraries.

Supported

SSH accessDirect SSH into workloads.

Not 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.

Supported

Private container registryHosted private image registry.

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.

Partially supported

MCP serverExposes a Model Context Protocol server for agents.

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).

Not supported

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

Not supported

BYOK for LLMsBring-your-own LLM provider keys.

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).

Not 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 2/4

First-party databasePlatform-provided managed database.

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.

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 3/6

Scheduled tasksCron / scheduled job primitive.

Supported

Durable workflowsDurable execution / long-running workflow primitive.

Partially 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).

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 6/9

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

Partially supported

SSO / SAMLEnterprise single sign-on.

Partially supported

Secrets managementFirst-class secrets storage / injection.

Supported

TeamsMulti-user team accounts.

Supported

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

Supported

BYOCRuns inside the customer's own cloud account.

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).

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).

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.

One-click infrastructure compliance controlsone-click-compliance
“Configure customer AWS infrastructure controls to pass Oneleet/Thoropass SOC2/HIPAA checks.” docs.porter.run
Cost optimizationcost-optimization
“Cost optimization selects cost-effective instances; Karpenter resource limits and spot instances configurable.” docs.porter.run
Managed Kubernetes upgradesauto-k8s-upgrades
“Porter performs managed Kubernetes upgrades twice yearly with blue-green node replacement; customer health checks/3 replicas/graceful shutdown required.” docs.porter.run
Read-only DevOps assistantread-only-devops-agent
“Alpha assistant deployed in your cluster with read-only access, Anthropic/Bedrock BYOK.” docs.porter.run
QM multiplayer agent harness add-onmultiplayer-agent-harness-addon
“Run the open source multiplayer QM harness on your Porter AWS cluster with agents in Porter Sandboxes.” docs.porter.run

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

Can an agent read it?

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

11/11

8 full · 3 partial · 100% of applicable checks

llms.txt
Supported
“Substantive docs index https://docs.porter.run/llms.txt; apex llms redirects readers there.”
llms-full.txt
Supported
“https://docs.porter.run/llms-full.txt 200; 657403 bytes of complete modular docs retained as bounded pointer plus individual scored pages.”
robots.txt AI policy
Partially supported
“https://www.porter.run/robots.txt allows * except /draft/; no named AI UA policy.”
JSON-LD
Supported
“Homepage SoftwareApplication structured data with description and offers. Offer expiry 2025-12-31 is stale, not current free-tier evidence.”
Sitemap
Supported
“Non-trivial apex and docs XML sitemap fetched successfully.”
Meta tags
Supported
“Homepage title, descriptive description and OpenGraph title/description available in server HTML.”
Markdown negotiation
Partially supported
“Homepage Accept: text/markdown stays text/html; all indexed docs .md variants fetch clean markdown.”
Content efficiency
Partially supported
“Homepage readable-text 3564 bytes / 229440 HTML bytes; script/style excluded and whitespace normalized; between 1% and 5%. See homepage-evidence.json.”
Docs discoverable
Supported
“Homepage primary Resources navigation links docs.porter.run/getting-started/introduction.”
Machine-readable pricing
Supported
“Standard per-resource and Enterprise tiers present in parseable server-rendered pricing HTML.”
No anti-bot wall
Supported
“All scored homepage/pricing/docs sources fetched without public-content challenge. Dashboard login redirect is auth, not public-content anti-bot.”

Can an agent drive it?

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

10/11

6 full · 4 partial · 91% of applicable checks

Public API
Supported
“Sandbox API lifecycle fully documented via SDK references, with external token/cluster and base URL configuration. App operations additionally via MCP/CLI.”
OpenAPI spec
Partially supported
“Official Python/TypeScript README states generated from Porter Sandbox OpenAPI spec. No downloadable spec URL found; common apex/docs paths 404 and dashboard spec routes render login.”
MCP server
Supported
“Documented operational https://mcp.porter.run endpoint with OAuth and tools reference; docs .well-known/mcp also returns anonymous Mintlify docs endpoint.”
SDK packages
Supported
“Official Python pip porter-sandbox and TypeScript npm porter-sandbox documented; rollout labeled pre-release.”
Auth documented
Supported
“Sandbox API token from Settings > API tokens; issuance requires admin and token developer permission. MCP browser OAuth and CLI token login separately documented.”
Self-serve credentials
Partially supported
“Dashboard-issued API token and browser-OAuth MCP require human sign-in; no unauthenticated programmatic credential issuance documented.”
Webhooks
Not supported
“No publicly documented outbound webhook/signing workflow in current docs index. API-contracts webhook protobuf is not public webhook setup documentation.”
CLI tool
Supported
“Official CLI installation/reference and Sandbox CLI lifecycle documented.”
Error model
Partially supported
“SDK error classes document message/status_code/parsed body, authentication/not-found/rate/server errors; no common JSON wire-error schema published.”
Rate limits documented
Partially supported
“RateLimitError documented when API returns rate-limit response; no numeric limits or response headers disclosed.”
Agent config files
Supported
“Apex agents.md plus docs agent instructions, installable porter-deploy/porter-qm skills and installer https://agents.porter.run; installer fetched but never executed.”

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

Advertised integrations 4

Claude Code Anthropic
Supported
“claude mcp add --transport http porter https://mcp.porter.run”
Source docs.porter.run
Documented external client of Porter remote MCP, not preinstalled inside a workload.
Codex CLI OpenAI
Supported
“codex mcp add porter --url https://mcp.porter.run”
Source docs.porter.run
Documented external client of Porter remote MCP, not preinstalled inside a workload.
OpenCode opencode
Supported
“opencode mcp add”
Source docs.porter.run
Documented external client of Porter remote MCP, not preinstalled inside a workload.
Cursor Anysphere
Supported
“Create or edit .cursor/mcp.json and connect Porter in Tools & MCP.”
Source docs.porter.run
Documented external client of Porter remote MCP, not preinstalled inside a workload.

Plausible compatibility 0

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.

No general shell access documented, so nothing is derived. Absence is not unsupported.

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

Certifications held 0

No attestations found on the public surface. Empty means nothing is advertised, after checking, not that nothing was checked.

Regions 3

AWS
Google Cloud
Microsoft Azure

Supported clouds, not Porter-operated workload regions. Customer chooses region when provisioning its cloud cluster; no exhaustive supported-region list. Sandboxes/datastores presently AWS-only; no public control-plane region disclosed.

Legal

Privacy notice Terms of service

08 Company & presence Facts only, not scored

Company

Headquarters: New York City, NY
Founded: —
Team size: Not disclosed
Hiring: hiring

Funding

2026-01-27Series A · $20000000

Notable people

Justin Rhee (founder)

Activity

Last release: 2026-06-12 porter.run
Last blog post: 2026-01-27 porter.run

Presence 4

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 porter.run'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

Something wrong on this page?

Nearby in the atlas

All PaaS products →