Live preview · coordinator running at crabbox.openclaw.ai

Per-second VM leases, paid for by the agent.

Compute Lease rents short-term Linux VMs on Hetzner to AI agents and developers. Agents pay programmatically over the Machine Payments Protocol on Tempo — no checkout, no API keys handed around, no human in the loop.

See how it works → View source on GitHub

Settlement pathUSD / USDC on Tempo, settled on-chain per session.

Provisioning Hetzner Cloud VMs, region-selectable, ready in <30s.

Coordinator Open source — openclaw/crabbox.

How it works

A lease is a payment session, not a checkout.

The agent asks for compute; the server quotes a price over HTTP 402; the agent's MPP sidecar opens a session and the VM runs until the funds drain or the agent releases it. Anything unspent reverts to the payer.

01 / REQUEST

Agent requests a lease

POST a lease spec (image, region, size, max duration) to the coordinator.

02 / 402 CHALLENGE

Server returns HTTP 402

Response carries a quote: per-second rate, recipient, accepted assets on Tempo.

03 / PAYMENT SESSION

MPP sidecar opens a session

Funds are escrowed on-chain; the coordinator boots the VM and returns SSH details.

04 / RELEASE

Run, hibernate, or release

Lease runs until released or funds exhaust. Optional snapshot & resume. Unused balance reverts.

Example — first request returns a 402 challenge HTTP/1.1

$ curl -sX POST https://crabbox.openclaw.ai/leases \
    -d '{"image":"ubuntu-24.04","size":"cpx21","region":"hel1"}'

HTTP/1.1 402 Payment Required
WWW-Authenticate: MPP realm="crabbox.openclaw.ai"
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "quote_id": "q_8f2a1b",
  "asset": "pathUSD",
  "chain": "tempo",
  "rate_per_second": "0.0000056",   // ~$0.02 / hr CPU
  "recipient": "0xC0FFEE…7A2",
  "max_duration_s": 3600
}

Pricing

Pay per second. No minimums, no monthly fee.

Rates below are indicative and reflect typical pass-through Hetzner pricing plus a thin coordinator margin. The exact, signed rate for any given lease is surfaced in the 402 challenge before the agent commits funds.

CPU lease

$0.02 / hour

2–8 vCPU shared, 4–16 GB RAM (Hetzner CPX line)
Billed per second; typical session: cents
Ubuntu 24.04, Debian 12, or custom image
Regions: Helsinki, Nuremberg, Ashburn

GPU lease

$0.45 / hour

Single L4 / RTX 4000 Ada class, 16–24 GB VRAM
Billed per second; preempt-safe via snapshot
CUDA 12 image preinstalled
Region: Helsinki (others on request)

Indicative pricing. Exact, per-lease rates — including any regional surcharge or burst-class premium — are returned in the HTTP 402 challenge and signed by the coordinator before the agent authorises payment.

Specs & specifics

What you can rely on.

Provider: Hetzner Cloud (CPX shared, dedicated GPU)
Boot time: Typically 15–30 seconds from paid quote to SSH
Billing granularity: Per second, settled continuously against the escrowed balance
Payment rail: Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) on Tempo, pathUSD or USDC
Hibernation: Optional snapshot when balance falls below threshold; resumable later
Refunds: Unused escrow reverts to the payer when the lease ends
Source: github.com/openclaw/crabbox — coordinator is open source (MIT)
Live coordinator: crabbox.openclaw.ai
Acceptable use: No abuse of upstream networks; no sanctioned-jurisdiction workloads
Status: Public preview; production hardening in progress

Who we are

A one-person infrastructure shop.

Compute Lease is operated as a sole proprietorship by Joshua Levine, an infrastructure engineer based in the United States. The product began as a reference implementation for paying for compute the way agents naturally want to: programmatically, in stablecoins, with no account to set up.

For partnership questions, integration help, or anything related to the open-source coordinator, email is the fastest path.