InstaBox (instabox.sh), built by InsForge, is a cloud sandbox service made for AI agents — instead of running agent browser/automation work on your own machine, you spin up cloud machines and let the agent work there. It is currently an invite-based beta. I got in, activated the Free plan, and have been running two machines on it for about a week. Here is what is actually true about it.
What you get (Free plan)
- Up to 5 machines; the agent-browser template is 4 vCPU / 8 GiB RAM / 20 GiB disk per machine
- Files live on a persistent volume and survive pause, shutdown and reboot (only deleting the machine wipes them)
- A real Chromium in the cloud your agent can drive, plus published HTTPS links / an SSH gateway to reach your services
- Free plan is "never billed" in my account — the team describes the free tier as "free until we figure it out", so treat it as a generous beta, not a lifetime promise
What I used it for
- A home base for browser automation that needs to stay logged in and reachable
- Network experiments (Tailscale, exit routing) on a throwaway-but-persistent Linux box (Debian 13, systemd, sudo all work)
The honest limits (this is not a VPS replacement)
- Machines auto-pause after ~30 minutes idle, and there is a max continuous run of ~8 hours — it is a workbench, not a 24/7 server
- No public inbound IPv4 of your own; inbound is only via their HTTPS gateway links or SSH gateway
- All machines share one NAT egress IP (a US AWS address, clean reputation but clearly a datacenter IP)
Verdict
As a free workbench for AI-agent experiments, I have not found anything else like it. If you are building agents that need a browser and a persistent Linux box, it is worth getting on the invite list at instabox.sh. Just do not plan your production hosting on a beta's free tier.
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