Mobilebox gives your AI agent a phone it can use. Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or your own agent loop creates a cloud Android 14 phone, reads the screen as numbered elements, taps, types, installs your APK, then parks or deletes the phone. One phone per task or pull request costs a few cents: $0.01 per phone-minute, billed per second.
- Measured, 2026-11-08 (method, scripts and CSV): a Mobilebox phone was ready for its first screenshot in 19.4 s (median of 10) and a 10-minute session cost $0.10. On a GitHub Actions runner, the same start took 20.3 s, against 50 s for the Android emulator with KVM and 813 s without it (one run).
- Fair comparison: in the same benchmark Limrun started in 0.98 s ($0.04 a minute on its $20 plan), and Clousd lists a lower price ($0.004 a minute, as published on 2026-11-10). All cloud phones for AI agents, compared.
- Listed in the official MCP registry as
dev.mobilebox/mobilebox, tool definitions rated A on Glama.
- Checked on every deploy: an end-to-end run on production that uses only the public docs (create, install, tap, type, park, resume, delete over REST and MCP).
Quickstart
1. Get a key. Sign up with GitHub ($2 of credit, 200 phone-minutes) and create an agent key in the dashboard.
export MOBILESANDBOX_API_KEY=... # keep it in your shell or secret manager, never in a prompt
2. Add Mobilebox to your agent.
claude mcp add --transport http mobilebox https://mobilebox.dev/mcp \
--header "Authorization: Bearer $MOBILESANDBOX_API_KEY"
Codex, ~/.codex/config.toml:
[mcp_servers.mobilebox]
url = "https://mobilebox.dev/mcp"
bearer_token_env_var = "MOBILESANDBOX_API_KEY"
Cursor: the Add to Cursor button above installs the URL alone and Cursor signs you in over OAuth, no key. Or .cursor/mcp.json with the key:
{ "mcpServers": { "mobilebox": { "url": "https://mobilebox.dev/mcp", "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer ${env:MOBILESANDBOX_API_KEY}" } } } }
Claude Code, shared through a committed .mcp.json without the key in it. Keep "type": "http", or Claude Code treats the entry as a stdio server:
{ "mcpServers": { "mobilebox": { "type": "http", "url": "https://mobilebox.dev/mcp", "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer ${MOBILESANDBOX_API_KEY}" } } } }
Other clients: any MCP client with Streamable HTTP and a custom header. Hand-written clients also send Accept: application/json, text/event-stream. The registry entry is server.json.
3. Give it a task.
Use Mobilebox. Create a phone, open Settings and tell me which Android version it runs. Delete the phone at the end, even if a step fails.
Next: let your agent test the APK you just built, or run the same check in CI. No MCP client? curl/walkthrough.sh does the whole loop over REST (OpenAPI, reference).
Watch your agent
Open a live view of any running phone and see every step as it happens: a cursor that moves to each target, a ripple for every tap, a trail for every swipe, the text as it is typed (dots in password fields), and a caption with its time for each step. Nothing depends on sound, and screen readers announce each caption.
npx mobilebox watch <phone_id> # with MOBILESANDBOX_API_KEY set: opens the view in its own window
Over MCP, ask your agent to show you the phone: watch_phone returns the link (REST: POST /v1/phones/{id}/view). The dashboard has a Watch button on every running phone. The view is read-only and watching is free. Try it with watch/watch.sh; details in the API reference.
Tools
Phones, apps and the screen over MCP; REST adds binary APK upload, account balance and billed sessions. Sign in once with OAuth from any MCP client that supports it (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code): add https://mobilebox.dev/mcp and approve. Or send your key as Authorization: Bearer.
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
