COMPARISON · BILLING TRAPS

Dedicated Mac vs VM billing

Providers often advertise a low hourly or daily rate. The bill is usually driven by the minimum reservation, prepaid term and whether stopping a VM ends the underlying Mac charge. Latest evidence Sep 21, 2026.

What usually differs

• Dedicated Macs rent hardware access (SSH/desktop). Quotes are often per day or month with multi-day or monthly minimums.
• VMs may look cheaper per hour, but persistence, nested virtualization and reserved-host minimums change the total. Stopping the guest does not always stop the host bill.
• Mac Cloud Index shows the category rate beside Billing & commitment so the minimum leads the shortlist, not a converted unit price alone.

Dedicated examples (720 continuous hours)

1. MacDuty — M1 8GB

   EUR 65 / 720 hours · See listing

   Source · Sep 21, 2026

2. OakHost — Mac M1.S

   EUR 70 / 720 hours · Admin

   Source · Sep 21, 2026

3. Scaleway Apple Silicon — Mac Mini M1 - M — fr-par-1

   EUR 75 / 720 hours · fr-par-1

   Source · Sep 21, 2026

Browse dedicated Macs · markdown mirror

VM examples (same 720 hours)

No complete modeled VM bills for the default month scenario.

Browse VMs · markdown mirror

Checklist before you buy

• Read the minimum allocation or prepaid term on the provider source page.
• Confirm whether idle or stopped time still bills.
• Keep native currency — this site does not convert FX.
• Use maxCost on the directory or MCP search_offers to cap USD modeled bills.

Value methodology · Cheapest Mac CI runners · MCP