Introduction
Phonebox gives AI agents cloud Android phones they can see and control.
Phonebox gives your agent an Android phone in the cloud: its screen, its installed apps, touch input and the keyboard. Your agent reads the screen as a short numbered list of elements, taps them by their label, types, swipes, installs and opens apps, and moves files.
Phonebox is not a phone number or an SMS inbox, and it doesn't make or receive calls. Your agent controls the device itself.
Who it's for
- Coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex and Cursor use it to test the Android builds they produce:
phonebox apps "$PHONEBOX_PHONE" install app-debug.apkinstalls the APK an agent just built, and the agent then walks the screens it changed. Test your Android build with a coding agent shows how. - Agents use it to operate apps that have no API, where the screen is the only way in.
- Teams use it to build agent products on phones for their own customers, with one phone for each customer.
How it works
You create a phone with one call. Your agent then works in a loop: it reads the screen, acts on it, and reads it again to see what changed. When your agent is done, it parks the phone, and a phone that no request addresses parks itself after about 5 minutes. A parked phone keeps its apps, files and signed-in accounts, and it costs nothing until it starts again.
How the pieces fit
Every interface calls the same service, so keys, limits and billing work the same way whichever you use.
| Interface | Use it for |
|---|---|
| REST API | Any language. The API lives at https://phonebox.dev/v1 and takes an API key as a bearer token. |
| CLI | Agents that work in a terminal, and quick checks by hand. |
| TypeScript SDK | Node.js code. It ships in the same npm package as the CLI. |
| MCP | MCP clients, through the hosted server at https://phonebox.dev/mcp. |
| Agent skill | Teaching a coding agent the whole workflow from one file. |
Agents can read these docs as Markdown too: every page has a Markdown version, /llms.txt lists them all, and the API schema is at /openapi.json.
Pricing
A phone costs $0.06 a minute while it runs, billed per second with a 60-second minimum per session, and a parked phone costs nothing. Every new account gets $2 starter credit without a card. Paid top-ups start at $10.
Start here
- The Quickstart takes you from a new key to your first phone in the terminal.
- Set up with your coding agent shows the one prompt that lets your agent do the setup for you.