InstaBox

instabox.sh · Compute · 1 record · JSON

InstaBox Compute

caveatemailno cardDretention-clamped

instabox.sh/changelog · cloud VM · compute/instabox · JSON · compare

Free tier	'Free gives you one 4 vCPU / 8 GiB machine to run every month at no cost', quoted, with 5 snapshots, the standard agent-browser template, auto-pause after 30 idle minutes, and the 2 vCPU / 4 GiB or 4 vCPU / 8 GiB sizes allowed. Pro is USD 20 a month and Team USD 500, each including usage equal to its fee. Accounts created before 2026-10-20 keep five free machines until 2026-12-01 unit hours; metered on wall-clock; perpetual-monthly
Price	none stated
Per-object cap	not applicable
Retention	The five-machine grant is a legacy state with a printed end date of 2026-12-01, so the 20 vCPU / 40 GiB figure that circulated in October 2026 expires in six weeks and the steady state is 4 vCPU / 8 GiB.
Egress	not stated
Identity	email not published
Limits	retention-clamped auto-pause after 30 idle minutes on the free plan source volume-quota one machine a month on the free plan, in 2 vCPU / 4 GiB or 4 vCPU / 8 GiB sizes source retention-clamped accounts created before 2026-10-20 keep five free machines only until 2026-12-01 source The five-machine grant is a legacy state with a printed end date of 2026-12-01, so the 20 vCPU / 40 GiB figure that circulated in October 2026 expires in six weeks and the steady state is 4 vCPU / 8 GiB.
Binding	retention-clamped auto-pause after 30 idle minutes binds first: a free machine stops on any job that goes quiet for half an hour, and the five-machine legacy grant that circulated in the Chinese forums ends on 2026-12-01
Interface	rest inferred from the tooling the provider documents; not probed
Tooling	not stated
Composes with	One 4 vCPU / 8 GiB machine with persistent files and snapshots is a place to hold a working set between sessions, which a notebook that resets does not give.
Reliability	no reliability event recorded
Notes	Two corrections in one record. The count moved from 5 to 1, and the 8 GiB size is not reliably creatable even on the free plan: the Japanese review reports the 8 GiB option refused at creation time. What is not established is whether the invite waitlist is still the entry route now that the product has paid plans; the changelog describes a dashboard billing page and does not mention the waitlist. The changelog of 2026-10-20 states the plan table directly: one free 4 vCPU / 8 GiB machine a month, never billed, with the five-machine grant retained only for accounts created before that date and only until 2026-12-01.
Evidence rung	documented
Checked	2026-10-22 (live); stale on 2026-11-21
Parsed numbers	`$.limits[1].value` limit:volume-quota 4.0 GiB

Evidence (7)

date	source	what it proved
2026-10-20	instabox.sh/changelog	quoted: 'Free gives you one 4 vCPU / 8 GiB machine to run every month at no cost'; 'Accounts created before October 20 keep five free machines until December 1'; Free sizes are 2 vCPU / 4 GiB and 4 / 8
2026-10-22	instabox.sh/blog/instabox-pricing	the vendor's own free-tier explanation: 'we pause it after 30 minutes of inactivity' and 'Is there a usage limit on the free machine? No. Use it as much as you want'
2026-10-01	www.uupc.cn/instabox-free-beta-five-cloud-vms/	the circulating five-machine figure, translated: 'up to 5 machines free, each 4 vCPU and 8GB', during an invite-only beta [date precision: month precision]
2026-10-01	aijp.jizhiku.net/archives/21208	a user who received an invite after 48 hours found the 8 GiB plan could not be created and took the 4 GiB plan instead, and reports the running limit as 30 minutes [date precision: month precision]
2026-10-22	instabox.sh/pricing	quoted: Free is USD 0 with 1 machine, 4 vCPU / 8 GiB, 5 snapshots
2026-10-22	instabox.sh/	quoted: a real virtual machine with its own kernel and root, Docker and Docker Compose run inside, persistent storage, any port gets an HTTPS URL, pause and resume
2026-10-20	www.nodeseek.com/post-997124-1	reported, translated: 4 vCPU / 8 GB RAM, a full Linux environment with root, Docker support, one machine per account, paused after 30 minutes idle with session state kept, and an invite code from a waitlist of up to about 48 hours

More fields (1)

{
 "wave2": {
  "class": "enforcement",
  "free_tier_kind": "perpetual-monthly",
  "shape": {
   "vcpu": 4,
   "ram_gib": 8
  }
 }
}

Unknown or withheld values (8)

$.egress.metered egress-unknown
$.egress.terms not-stated
$.identity_cost.detail process
$.per_object_cap.notes process
$.per_object_cap.stated not-applicable
$.reliability_note none-observed
$.retention.notes process
$.tooling not-stated