# Why cloud Macs have a 24-hour minimum

Canonical URL: https://macswarm.com/blog/why-cloud-macs-have-a-24-hour-minimum/
Published: 2026-11-06
Last reviewed: 2026-11-13

> AWS EC2 Mac and Scaleway set a 24‑hour minimum for licensing reasons. What that means, and when per‑minute or Pod‑hour models avoid it.

## Why is there a 24‑hour minimum?

Two large providers of hosted Macs state it plainly on their own pages:

- AWS bills EC2 Mac Dedicated Hosts per second, with a 24‑hour minimum allocation to comply with the Apple macOS Software License Agreement (aws.amazon.com, checked 26 Oct 2026).
- Scaleway sets a 24‑hour minimum lease for licensing reasons, then bills hourly until you delete the Mac (scaleway.com, checked 26 Oct 2026).

The practical effect is that a short session on a newly allocated machine costs a full day: a three‑hour build on an EC2 mac‑m4 host bills 24 hours; the same on a Scaleway M4‑S bills 24 hours. If the Mac stays allocated for several days, the minimum matters less; if you delete and re‑create daily, it matters a lot.

## When can you avoid it?

- Per‑minute macOS sessions (for example, NoMac) bill by the minute from prepaid credit and do not carry a day minimum.
- Macswarm Pod‑hours are metered per second while a Pod runs, including the ten idle minutes after a session, with 3 free Pod‑hours to try and plans at $99 for 300 Pod‑hours (checked 26 Oct 2026). A Pod is not a whole Mac: no SSH, nothing persists between sessions, and two to three of one developer’s agents share one Pod.

See the dated price comparisons and worked examples in:

- [Mac in the cloud pricing](https://macswarm.com/compare/cloud-mac-pricing/): per‑minute, hourly with a 24‑hour minimum, monthly and Pod‑hours, with vendor links.
- [Mac mini hosting vs Pods](https://macswarm.com/docs/mac-mini-hosting-vs-pods/): colocation, rentals, per‑minute Macs and Pods: which fits which job.