Provider · checked 2026-10-28
KVM machines in the EU that boot in milliseconds, snapshot with memory, fork live, and hibernate when idle.
boxd sells persistent Linux virtual machines: each one a KVM guest with its own kernel, root, systemd and a fixed 100 GB copy-on-write disk. They boot in milliseconds, can be copied while running, and park themselves when idle.
The pattern it is built for is: compose one machine by hand (install tools, sign into agents, leave a service running), save it as a snapshot, then stamp out identical machines from it.
It is one product sold three ways: pay-as-you-go credits, a Custom contract with SSO and audit logs, and a self-hosted version you run on your own hardware.
| Who it is for | Developers and teams who want a normal Linux server that happens to be a VM, with fast copies: dev workspaces, preview environments, coding agents, one machine per customer. |
|---|---|
| Isolation | KVM microVM with its own kernel, network stack and disk, on boxd's open-source Ignition orchestrator. Docker, systemd, kernel modules and breaking the OS are all allowed and stay inside that one machine. Firecracker use is not documented. |
| Sizes | Four sizes named by either dimension: 1 vCPU / 4 GiB, 2 / 8 (the default), 4 / 16, 8 / 32. Disk is fixed at 100 GB and is not a size choice. |
| Model | Prepaid credits, no plan and no per-seat fee. |
|---|---|
| Meter | Per second, settled every 15 minutes, on three meters: vCPU on the machine's size while running, RAM on resident memory while running or in standby, disk on bytes written in every state. |
| While stopped | Disk only. Hibernated and stopped machines pay for written disk; a machine in standby keeps paying for RAM. |
| Plan fee | None. Custom and self-hosted are contracts with unpublished prices. |
| Minimum | No minimum charge per machine. There is no free plan: $30 of credit requires a card, and an account without one is capped at two machines. |
How boxd lets you try before paying is on Trials and free tiers.
| Dashboard | Yes, at boxd.sh/app, with Machines, Backups, Domains, Integrations, Organizations and Billing pages plus a desktop viewer. It is secondary: every guide's first instruction is a CLI command, and the sign-in page leads with Download the CLI. |
|---|---|
| Without code | Partly, and less than the marketing suggests. A non-coder can watch and drive a machine someone else set up (desktop, browser, files), and can copy a prompt for an AI agent to do the setup. There is no template gallery and no one-click agent. |
| Signup | GitHub or Google, then a card for the $30 credit and for more than two machines. There is no waitlist in the EU; the US region has one. Every account starts with a 25-minute onboarding call. |
| Docs and support | Mintlify docs with a full CLI reference, gRPC proto, SDK references and machine-readable bundles. Support is a founder by email. There is no status page. |
Shown as the research found them. A contradiction means the provider's own pages disagree; an open question means the answer is not published.
A 4 vCPU machine is 16 GiB, but boxd bills the memory it actually holds: $222.50 a month at 8 GiB resident and $304.26 at 16 GiB. boxd's own calculator assumes 2 GiB on an 8 GiB machine, which is a best case rather than a typical one.
There is no authentication in front of name.boxd.sh. Bot protection is on by default, but it only asks a browser check when a request would wake a sleeping machine, and it applies to the main address, never to subdomain proxies or custom domains. A webhook, API client or uptime monitor that hits a sleeping machine gets a 503 check page and the machine does not wake.
Docs and FAQ say 50 machines per organisation; the pricing page says 100 included, raiseable on request.
The docs say every machine's domain points at the proxy's shared public IP, and SSH runs on a dedicated port on that shared proxy IP. The FAQ says machines come with a public IPv4. No price for an inbound IPv4 is published. Both statements are current, so the answer is unresolved.
No boxd page mentions a dedicated or static outbound address, and none prices one. battleships.dev lists it as a feature. We could not confirm it, so it is neither offered nor ruled out here.
The 9 October capture showed €0.049/vCPU-hour, €0.015/GiB-hour and 50 machines; the 28 October page shows €0.039, €0.012 and 100 machines. Any cost figure needs a date.
Snapshots, checkpoints, backups and extra disks all exist, and none has a published price. Egress has no price or allowance either.
status.boxd.sh does not resolve and boxd.sh/status is a 404. The only wire API is gRPC; there is no HTTP/JSON endpoint for machines.
List-price illustrations, not quotes
A · 1,000 short tasks
≈ $25.03 or $34.37 a month
2 vCPU / 8 GiB (the nearest size), 4 GiB resident, 2 GiB written, deleted after each task
B · One always-on box
≈ $222.50 or $304.26 a month
4 vCPU / 16 GiB (the only 4 vCPU size), 8 GiB or 16 GiB resident, 50 GiB written
C · Three hours a day
≈ $14.88 or $19.92 a month
2 vCPU / 8 GiB, 4 GiB or 8 GiB resident, 20 GiB written, 90 running hours in a 720-hour month