# Mac in the cloud pricing 2026: price per hour

Canonical URL: https://macswarm.com/compare/cloud-mac-pricing/
Last reviewed: 2026-10-26

> Cloud Mac prices by billing unit, checked 26 Oct 2026: per minute, per hour with a 24-hour minimum, per month and per Pod-hour, with a 60-hour cost example.

A whole cloud Mac costs from $85 a month for an M4 Mac mini at My Remote Mac, or €5.28 for Scaleway's 24-hour minimum; per-minute Macs start at $0.80 an hour on NoMac. Every price below is from the vendor's own page, checked 26 October 2026, and grouped by how you are billed.

## How much does a Mac in the cloud cost per hour?

A cloud Mac you can run a coding agent on costs $0.80 an hour on NoMac and $3.60 for a Namespace macOS devbox, billed by the minute with no commitment. Hourly hosts carry a 24-hour minimum: $1.23 an hour for an AWS EC2 M4 Mac host in US East, €0.22 for a Scaleway M4 Mac mini in Paris. A dedicated M4 Mac mini by the month costs $85 at My Remote Mac, $149 at MacStadium and €115 at OakHost. Macswarm Pro is $99 a month for 300 Pod-hours. Prices are from the vendors' own pages, checked 26 Oct 2026.

Three kinds of product answer the search for a cloud Mac, and their prices measure different things. A session host is a Mac, or a macOS VM, that you or an agent work on for minutes, hours or a month: rented Mac minis, EC2 Mac, per-minute agent Macs and Macswarm Pods. A CI job runs one workflow on a fresh runner and is gone when it ends; [macOS CI runner alternatives and prices compared](https://macswarm.com/compare/macos-ci-runners-pricing/) covers those. A Simulator rental gives you iOS Simulators but no Mac to build on. This page prices session hosts and lists the other two only so you can tell them apart. Prices are in US dollars, or in euros before VAT where the vendor lists euros; no currency is converted, and tax, storage and model usage are excluded.

## Which cloud Macs bill by the minute?

| Provider | Price, checked 26 Oct 2026 | Minimum commitment | What you get | Region |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| NoMac | $0.80 an hour, billed by the minute while the Mac is ready ([nomac.app](https://nomac.app/)) | Prepaid credit from $10 that does not expire; no subscription | A fresh macOS session on Apple M6 or M5 Pro with root, Xcode and the Simulator; a 20 GB encrypted drive carries over between sessions; agents connect over MCP, CLI, API or SSH | Not stated |
| macbox | $0.05 per Mac minute, billed only while builds, tests or a live run go ([macbox.build](https://macbox.build/)) | Prepaid credit from $10; whole minutes, jobs under a minute free | Your own macOS VM that runs builds and tests for an agent working elsewhere; cache kept until 14 days unused. No React Native, Flutter, signing or TestFlight yet | Not stated |
| Namespace | macOS devbox M (6 vCPU, 14 GB) $0.06 a minute, $3.60 an hour; L (12 vCPU, 28 GB) $0.12; storage $0.20 per GB-month ([namespace.so](https://namespace.so/pricing)) | None on the Developer plan | A devbox on Apple silicon, mostly M5 Max, that stops after 15 idle minutes by default | Not stated |

Namespace's runner prices, plans and limits are on [Macswarm vs Namespace macOS](https://macswarm.com/compare/namespace/).

## What does a 24-hour minimum cost?

At least a day of the hourly rate, however short the session. AWS bills EC2 Mac hosts per second with a 24-hour minimum allocation to comply with the Apple macOS Software License Agreement, and Scaleway sets a 24-hour minimum lease for licensing reasons, then bills until you delete the Mac ([aws.amazon.com](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/mac/), [scaleway.com](https://www.scaleway.com/en/docs/apple-silicon/faq/), checked 26 Oct 2026). A three-hour session on a newly allocated Mac therefore costs $29.52 on an EC2 mac-m4 host and €5.28 on a Scaleway M4-S. The minimum costs little when a Mac stays allocated for days, and a lot for short daily sessions.

| Provider | Price, checked 26 Oct 2026 | Minimum commitment | What you get | Region |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| AWS EC2 Mac | On-demand Dedicated Host: mac-m4 (M4, 24 GB) $1.23 an hour, mac-m4pro (M4 Pro, 48 GB) $1.97 ([Dedicated Hosts pricing](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/dedicated-hosts/pricing/)) | 24 hours, then per second; Savings Plans up to 44% off with a 3-year commitment | A whole Mac mini as a Dedicated Host in your AWS account | US East and US West rates; mac-m4 is $1.353 in Ireland and $1.476 in Frankfurt |
| Scaleway Apple silicon | M4-S (M4, 16 GB) €0.22 an hour, or €149 a month on a monthly commitment ([scaleway.com](https://www.scaleway.com/en/pricing/apple-silicon/)) | Hourly: 24 hours. Monthly: one month, renewed each month until you delete the Mac, which takes effect on the renewal date ([commitment plan](https://www.scaleway.com/en/docs/apple-silicon/concepts/)) | A dedicated Mac mini | Paris |

## Which cloud Macs rent by the day or month?

A flat fee for a whole Mac, or for an account on one. The more hours you use it, the less each hour costs.

| Provider | Price, checked 26 Oct 2026 | Minimum commitment | What you get | Region |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| My Remote Mac | Mac mini M4 (16 GB, 256 GB) $85 a month or from $14 a day; M6 from $149 a month ([myremotemac.com](https://www.myremotemac.com/pricing)) | 24 hours on a daily plan, which stops unless auto-renew is on; monthly plans cancel at the end of a paid month | A physical Mac allocated to you alone, with root access and a dedicated IP | Not stated |
| MacRent | Mac mini M4 (16 GB, 256 GB) $15 a day, $89 a week, $159 a month, before VAT ([macrent.cloud](https://macrent.cloud/)) | A day, week or month; weekly and monthly plans renew until you cancel | A dedicated bare-metal Mac mini with full admin, SSH and remote desktop. The monthly plan and the US location showed sold out on 26 Oct 2026 | US West Coast; France and the Netherlands |
| MacRun | Agent Mac (M6) $169 a month, $127 the first month; CI runner $139 ([macrun.dev](https://macrun.dev/)) | Monthly, cancel anytime | A dedicated Mac mini with admin access; the agent plan has Claude Code and Codex installed and a desktop in the browser | Not stated |
| MacStadium | Mac mini M2 (8 GB) $109 a month, M4 (16 GB) $149, M4 Pro (48 GB) $349 ([macstadium.com](https://macstadium.com/pricing)) | Monthly or annual | A dedicated bare-metal Mac with root access and a dedicated IPv4 address | Not stated |
| OakHost | Mac mini M4 (16 GB) €115 a month, M4 Pro (64 GB) €260, before VAT ([oakhost.com](https://www.oakhost.com/mac-mini-hosting)) | Monthly; 14-day money-back on the first order | A dedicated Mac mini with root and KVM access. Every model showed out of stock or coming soon on 26 Oct 2026 | Germany |
| MacinCloud | Pay-As-You-Go from $4 a day and Managed Server from $25 a month, both without admin or root; Dedicated Server from $49 a month ([checkout.macincloud.com](https://checkout.macincloud.com/select)) | A day, or a weekly to yearly cycle | MacinCloud advertises a Dedicated Server plan from $49 a month; the plan card does not identify the hardware or establish exclusive physical-Mac allocation at that price | Eight cities in the US, Europe, Australia and Asia |

Hetzner's dedicated server range lists no Mac ([hetzner.com](https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/), checked 26 Oct 2026). For buying a Mac mini instead of renting one, see [Mac mini vs cloud Mac](https://macswarm.com/compare/mac-mini-vs-cloud-mac/).

## What about CI runners and Simulator rentals?

They show up in the same searches but sell something else.

| Service | What it sells | Price, checked 26 Oct 2026 | Compare on |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| GitHub-hosted macOS runner | One CI job on a fresh VM, at most 6 hours ([limits](https://docs.github.com/en/actions/reference/limits)) | $0.062 a minute on the standard runner ([docs.github.com](https://docs.github.com/en/billing/reference/actions-runner-pricing)) | [Macswarm vs GitHub-hosted macOS runners](https://macswarm.com/compare/github-actions-macos/) |
| Cirrus Runners | A flat-rate GitHub Actions macOS runner | $150 a month per runner ([cirrus-runners.app](https://cirrus-runners.app/pricing/)); no new customers since 7 April 2026 ([cirruslabs.org](https://cirruslabs.org/)) | [Cirrus Runners alternatives](https://macswarm.com/compare/cirrus-runners/) |
| Argent Cloud | Up to 6 iOS Simulators on a reserved Mac; you build the app elsewhere | $299 a month per Runner ([argent.swmansion.com](https://argent.swmansion.com/cloud/pricing/)) | [Argent Cloud vs Macswarm](https://macswarm.com/compare/argent-cloud/) |

## How does Macswarm bill?

Macswarm is serverless Mac infrastructure for Claude Code and Codex. Free, Pro and Team run Pods on shared Apple silicon; Enterprise reserves Macs. A Pod is a macOS VM with the Latest Xcode, iOS runtimes, pre-booted Simulators and XcodeBuildMCP. It starts when one developer's session needs it, hosts two to three of that developer's agents, and is destroyed ten minutes after the last session.

| Plan | Price | Pods at a time | Metering |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Free | 3 Pod-hours once, no card | 1 | Per second while a Pod runs, including the ten minutes after its last session |
| Pro | $99 a month for 300 Pod-hours, then $0.40 a Pod-hour | 4 | Same, with a monthly spend cap in the dashboard |
| Team | $399 a month for 1,500 Pod-hours, then $0.30 a Pod-hour | 10 | Same, with a monthly spend cap |
| Enterprise | Contact us; reserved Macs, EU or US | By contract | By contract |

Sessions beyond the plan's Pods queue ([Limits and queues](https://macswarm.com/docs/limits-and-queues/)). A Pod is not a CI runner, has no SSH and does not stay on. Pod-local data is destroyed with the Pod; logs and screenshots stay 30 days in the EU or US region you chose ([Security](https://macswarm.com/docs/security/)). Setup: [Claude Code quickstart](https://macswarm.com/docs/quickstart-claude-code/), [Codex quickstart](https://macswarm.com/docs/quickstart-codex/), [pricing](https://macswarm.com/pricing/).

## What do 60 hours of agent work a month cost?

Scenario: one developer, one Claude Code or Codex session at a time, three active hours a day on 20 working days: 60 active hours. Billed time differs by vendor. Excluded: tax, model usage, storage and the developer's own machine. The following are infrastructure subtotals under different execution models; they do not buy equivalent completed work.

**Session hosts, in US dollars.**

| Option | Billed time | Arithmetic | Month | Per active hour |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| NoMac, stopped after each session | 60 h | 60 h × $0.80 | $48 | $0.80 |
| My Remote Mac, M4 monthly | Whole month | Monthly fee | $85 | $1.42 |
| Macswarm Pro | 63.3 Pod-hours: 60 h plus 20 ten-minute tails, inside the 300 included; two to three agents could share them | Monthly fee | $99 | $1.65 |
| MacStadium, M4 Mac mini | Whole month | Monthly fee | $149 | $2.48 |
| MacRent, M4 monthly (sold out on 26 Oct) | Whole month | Monthly fee | $159 | $2.65 |
| MacRun, agent Mac after the first month | Whole month | Monthly fee | $169 | $2.82 |
| Namespace devbox M, default 15-minute idle stop | 65 h | 20 × 3.25 h × 60 × $0.06 | $234 | $3.90 |
| AWS mac-m4, released after each day's 24 hours | 480 h | 20 × 24 h × $1.23 | $590.40 | $9.84 |
| AWS mac-m4, kept allocated | 730 h, an average month | 730 h × $1.23 | $897.90 | $14.97 |

**Session hosts priced in euros, not converted.**

| Option | Billed time | Arithmetic | Month | Per active hour |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Scaleway M4-S, deleted after each day's 24 hours | 480 h | 20 × 24 h × €0.22 | €105.60 | €1.76 |
| OakHost M4 (out of stock on 26 Oct) | Whole month | Monthly fee | €115 | €1.92 |
| Scaleway M4-S on a monthly commitment | Whole month | Monthly fee | €149 | €2.48 |

**Partial services that need another machine.**

| Option | What is billed | What else you need |
| --- | --- | --- |
| macbox | $0.05 per minute of build, test or live-run time; the agent's writing time is not billed | Somewhere for the agent to run, such as a cloud session or your laptop |
| Argent Cloud | $299 a month per Runner, Simulators only | A Mac to build the app and a machine for the agent |

How to read these:

- A $149-a-month Mac costs about $0.50 per used hour at 300 hours; Pro fully used is $0.33 a Pod-hour. Neither figure proves equal throughput.
- A rented Mac keeps its state and is yours to administer, and NoMac keeps a 20 GB drive. Pod-local data is destroyed with the Pod.
- Deleting a Scaleway or AWS Mac every day means setting it up again every morning.

## Which option fits which job?

- **A Mac that builds or runs an agent around the clock.** A dedicated Mac by the month: My Remote Mac, MacRun, MacStadium, OakHost once in stock, or Scaleway on a monthly commitment. At 300 used hours a month, these flat fees work out below most metered rates on this page.
- **You are already all-in on AWS.** EC2 Mac keeps the host in your VPC with your IAM roles, AMIs and Savings Plans.
- **Occasional short sessions, signing and TestFlight included.** NoMac, billed by the minute from prepaid credit.
- **A Linux or cloud agent that needs a Mac only to build and test.** macbox, if its not-yet list does not block you.
- **An EU data center for a whole Mac.** Scaleway in Paris, OakHost in Germany, or MacRent in France and the Netherlands.
- **Claude Code or Codex sessions that build and test an iOS app, several agents for one developer, no Mac to administer.** Macswarm. [Running Claude Code on a cloud Mac](https://macswarm.com/docs/run-claude-code-on-a-cloud-mac/) shows how a session reaches a Pod.

## Is a Pod-hour the same as an hour on a rented Mac?

No. An hour on a rented Mac is an hour of one machine you administer. A Pod-hour is one Macswarm Pod running for an hour, metered per second: a macOS VM on shared Apple silicon with the Latest Xcode and pre-booted Simulators, shared by two to three of one developer's Claude Code and Codex agents. Metering continues for ten minutes after the last session ends and stops when the Pod is destroyed; the monthly plan fee remains. Pod-local data is destroyed with the Pod, and dashboard logs and screenshots are kept for 30 days in the region you chose, as the [privacy policy](https://macswarm.com/legal/privacy/) states. A Pod is not a machine that stays on.

## What should you read next?

- [NoMac vs Macswarm](https://macswarm.com/compare/nomac/): per-minute Mac sessions, or Pod-hour plans.
- [Macswarm vs MacRun](https://macswarm.com/compare/macrun/): one dedicated Mac mini by the month, or Pod-hours.
- [iOS Simulator for coding agents](https://macswarm.com/ios-simulator-for-coding-agents/): how an agent tests on a Pod.

## Where do these numbers come from?

- Per-minute hosts: [nomac.app](https://nomac.app/); [macbox.build](https://macbox.build/); [namespace.so/pricing](https://namespace.so/pricing), where devbox rates are our arithmetic from 15 or 30 Devbox Minutes a minute at $0.004. Checked 26 October 2026.
- AWS: [EC2 Mac](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/mac/) for billing and Savings Plans; on-demand Dedicated Host rates from [Dedicated Hosts pricing](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/dedicated-hosts/pricing/) and its [published rate file](https://b0.p.awsstatic.com/pricing/2.0/meteredUnitMaps/ec2/USD/current/dedicatedhost-ondemand.json), dated 23 October 2026. Scaleway: [pricing](https://www.scaleway.com/en/pricing/apple-silicon/), [FAQ](https://www.scaleway.com/en/docs/apple-silicon/faq/) and [commitment plan](https://www.scaleway.com/en/docs/apple-silicon/concepts/). Checked 26 October 2026.
- Monthly hosts: [myremotemac.com/pricing](https://www.myremotemac.com/pricing), [macrent.cloud](https://macrent.cloud/), [macrun.dev](https://macrun.dev/), [macstadium.com/pricing](https://macstadium.com/pricing), [oakhost.com](https://www.oakhost.com/mac-mini-hosting), [checkout.macincloud.com/select](https://checkout.macincloud.com/select), [hetzner.com](https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/). Checked 26 October 2026.
- CI and Simulator services: [GitHub runner pricing](https://docs.github.com/en/billing/reference/actions-runner-pricing) and [limits](https://docs.github.com/en/actions/reference/limits), [Cirrus Runners](https://cirrus-runners.app/pricing/), [cirruslabs.org](https://cirruslabs.org/), [Argent Cloud](https://argent.swmansion.com/cloud/pricing/). Checked 26 October 2026.
- Macswarm: [pricing](https://macswarm.com/pricing/), [Limits and queues](https://macswarm.com/docs/limits-and-queues/), [Security](https://macswarm.com/docs/security/) and the [privacy policy](https://macswarm.com/legal/privacy/). The 60-hour figures are our arithmetic from list prices and the stated scenario.