Several services now rent Android phones that an AI agent drives over MCP or an API: Mobilebox, Mobilerun, Limrun, phonebox.dev, Clousd and Ramus. They differ in what the phone is, whether iOS is included, how your agent signs in and how billing works. If you need iOS or physical phones, look at Mobilerun or Limrun. If you need the lowest published per-minute rate, Clousd lists $0.004. Mobilebox fits when your own agent or CI needs cloud Android phones over REST and MCP with an API key and per-second billing.
Each row below uses the vendor’s own pages and its entry in the official MCP registry, reviewed on November 4, 2026. It is not a benchmark. Where a vendor doesn’t say something, the table says "not stated" rather than guessing.
What each one offers
| Service | Phone, in its own words | How agents connect | Published price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mobilebox | Cloud Android 14 phone (arm64) | REST, and hosted MCP at /mcp with an API key | $0.01 per ready phone-minute, per second, one-minute minimum; parked free |
| Mobilerun | "on-demand Android phones"; a "real, physical iPhone"; or your own phone | Hosted MCP (api.mobilerun.ai/v1/mcp), framework and harness | Free 60 min; $20 for 600 min to $299 for 9,000 min; extra minutes $0.03 |
| Limrun | "remote Xcode, iOS & Android Simulators" | MCP at mcp.limrun.com/mcp, API, CLI | No rate on the home page; "split between idle and build time" |
| phonebox.dev | "Cloud Android devices, billed by the second" | MCP at phonebox.dev/mcp with an API key | $0.06 per phone-minute; parked free; $2 credit |
| Clousd | "Cloud Android phones", "Real phone models by the minute"; virtual or physical not stated | Hosted MCP and SDK, API key | $0.004 per minute pay as you go, capped at $0.80 a phone a day; plans from $29 |
| Ramus | "Cloud Android emulators for coding agents" | MCP at api.ramus.dev/api/mcp, browser sign-in ("No API key") | Not stated ("Free to start") |
Several vendors also sell residential IPs, dedicated devices or hosted agents. The table leaves those out and doesn’t treat a missing column as a missing feature.
What a stopped phone keeps
Persistence decides whether an agent can stay logged in between tasks.
- Mobilebox: parking keeps apps, data and logins and costs nothing. Apps restart on resume, as after a reboot.
- Mobilerun: "Stopped phones keep apps and data and bill no minutes."
- phonebox.dev: "Parked phones are free and keep their apps and data."
- Limrun, Clousd and Ramus: not stated on the pages reviewed.
How to choose
- You need iOS: Limrun has iOS simulators and Mobilerun has physical iPhones. Mobilebox has no iOS.
- The app checks for a real device or needs Google Play: test on a physical phone. Mobilebox is virtual and has no Google Play. Ask each vendor what their devices pass.
- Your agent runs in CI or a backend: prefer an API key over browser sign-in. Mobilebox, phonebox.dev and Clousd document API keys, and Ramus documents a RAMUS_API_KEY variable for cloud agents.
- Cost: compare per-second billing, minimums and what idle time costs, not just the headline rate. Mobilebox bills only while the phone is ready, and boot time is free.
Settle it with one APK
Run the same check on each shortlisted service: install your build, open it, read the first screen, stop the phone, resume it and confirm that the data is still there. Record the calls, the errors and the billed time. The Mobilebox version is the no-KVM script, which installs an APK from a URL and deletes the phone afterwards. For agent setup, see Claude Code. For deeper comparisons, see Mobilerun, Genymotion and BrowserStack.