The best cloud phone for an AI agent depends on the job. Limrun gives an agent a working Android screen fastest, about 20 times faster to a first screenshot than Mobilebox in our test (0.98 s against 19.4 s), and adds iOS simulators and remote Xcode. Phone Harness and Mobilerun rent real iPhones; Mobilerun also gives agents phone numbers and SMS. Clousd lists the lowest price per minute. Mobilebox fits when every task or pull request gets its own phone that is started, checked, screenshotted and stopped for a few cents.
A cloud phone for an agent is a phone in a data center that your agent drives over an API or MCP; see what a cloud phone for AI agents is. We make Mobilebox, so it is one row below, judged like the rest. Facts come from each vendor’s own pages, reviewed on November 10, 2026; speed numbers are ours, from the November 8 benchmark.
The shortlist
| Service | Good for | The phone | Price, as published | A stopped phone keeps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Limrun | Coding agents that build and check iOS and Android apps | "remote Xcode, iOS & Android Simulators" | Android $0.04 a minute on Entry ($20 a month) | Not stated; instances end when idle |
| Phone Harness | A real iPhone for your agent, or your own phone | Cloud emulators; real cloud iPhones, $80 a month | 5¢ a minute, boot free | "apps and logins" |
| Mobilerun | Phone numbers, SMS and residential IPs | "on-demand Android phones"; physical iPhone add-on | $20 for 600 min; then $0.03 a minute | "apps and data" |
| phonebox.dev | Signed-in Android phones, API key only | "Cloud Android devices" | $0.06 a minute; Starter $20 a month | "apps, files and signed-in accounts" |
| Mobilebox | A phone per task or PR, from CI or a cloud agent | Cloud Android 14; iPhone and iPad $0.05 a minute | $0.01 a ready minute, per second, boot free | Apps, data and logins, free |
| Clousd | The cheapest minute, phones in many countries | "a full Android phone in the cloud" | $0.004 a minute, at most $0.80 a day | "apps and data" |
| Ramus | Coding agents checking their own APK | "Cloud Android emulators for coding agents" | 30 min a month free; $2 and $10 plans | Nothing: "A fresh device every session" |
Measured: start, tap and a 10-minute session
Three of these let us measure on a free tier, with the same steps and the same APK, 10 sessions each, from one client in Nuremberg, Germany.
| Service | Start to first screenshot | Tap to screenshot | Install a 4 MB APK | 10 minutes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Limrun | 0.98 s | 0.38 s | 0.85 s | $0.40 |
| Mobilebox | 19.4 s | 1.45 s | 1.17 s | $0.10 |
| Phone Harness | 23.0 s | 1.91 s | 3.57 s over ADB | $0.50 |
Medians; the benchmark has p90s, the CSV and the scripts. Limrun was fastest on every speed metric, very likely because its phones are booted before you ask. Mobilebox was the cheapest for 10 minutes and the only one where we measured park and resume: 11.5 seconds back to a screenshot, the installed app still there in 10 of 10 runs. For a one-minute task a 20-second start is a third of the wall clock; for a 30-minute session it hardly matters.
We didn’t measure Mobilerun (sign-up is Google, GitHub or Discord only), phonebox.dev (the free week needs a card), Clousd or Ramus. Their rows are as published.
Device farms: real devices for test suites
Device farms rent real phones to run test suites across many models. They are built for QA teams more than for an agent that acts step by step.
| Farm | Price, as published | Agent access |
|---|---|---|
| BrowserStack | App Live from $39 a month, App Automate from $199 a month, billed yearly | Remote MCP server with OAuth |
| AWS Device Farm | $0.17 a device-minute, or $250 a month per unmetered slot | Its API; no Device Farm MCP server found |
| Firebase Test Lab | $5 an hour per physical device, $1 per emulated one | Test matrices; Google says it shuts down on September 30, 2027 |
BrowserStack’s terms forbid publishing performance results, so we didn’t time it. If your app checks for real hardware, use a physical phone; see real devices or cloud phones.
Or run the phone yourself
A local emulator with mobile-mcp costs nothing on a laptop with hardware acceleration and a screen. In CI it is slower: on a GitHub-hosted runner the emulator took 50 seconds to a first screenshot with KVM and 13.5 minutes without. See cloud phone or local emulator.
Pick by situation
- The agent can’t wait for a boot: Limrun.
- A real iPhone: Phone Harness or Mobilerun by the month; Mobilebox iPhones by the minute.
- Numbers, SMS and residential IPs for the agent: Mobilerun.
- A fresh phone for every pull request, logins kept when you want them: Mobilebox. Budget about 20 seconds per start and about 10 cents per 10 minutes.
- The cheapest minute: Clousd.
- A clean device every time, no state: Ramus.
How we picked
A service is on the list if an agent can create and drive a phone in the cloud through it today, over MCP or an API, with public prices. Each row quotes the vendor’s own page as of November 10, 2026; prices are list prices that day, as published. Speed numbers are only the ones we measured. If a row is wrong or out of date, write to hello@mobilebox.dev and we will fix it. Six of these side by side on sign-in and endpoints: cloud Android phones for AI agents, compared. The MCP side, including local servers: the best Android MCP servers.