InstaBox 一週實測：AI 智能體雲端沙盒的功能與限制

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.