Frequently asked questions.

A dedicated, physical Apple Mac mini that only you use for the duration of your subscription. It stays in our facility, powered on and connected, and you access it remotely. The entire machine is yours: its CPU, GPU, memory, and storage are not shared with any other customer.

No. Your machine is a real Mac mini, not a virtual machine or a slice of a shared host. We do not run a hypervisor or other customers’ workloads on your hardware. Nothing runs on it except what you put there and the management tooling needed to operate the service.

Yes. One customer per computer. The Mac mini assigned to you is yours alone until your rental ends. When it ends, its storage is securely erased before the hardware is ever assigned to anyone else.

Machines are prepared by our team rather than provisioned instantly. After you subscribe, we assign a dedicated Mac mini to you, install a clean copy of macOS, configure secure remote access, and notify you by email when it is ready. Your dashboard shows the status throughout. If no hardware is currently available you will see an option to join the waitlist instead of ordering.

Rent when the need is temporary, remote, or operational: a CI runner, an always-on agent host, or a Mac for one project. Buy when you will use the same machine daily for years and are happy to host it yourself, because over a long horizon buying usually costs less in cash. Our renting-vs-buying guide walks through the numbers.

Remotely, over secure supported connection methods: SSH for terminal access and remote desktop for the full macOS interface. Once your machine is ready, the connection details and step-by-step instructions appear in your dashboard. You can connect from a Mac, a Windows PC, a Linux machine, or a tablet.

Yes, you receive administrator access to your Mac mini, subject to security and licensing requirements. In practice you can install software and change most settings, but you may not disable the management and security controls we rely on to operate the service, and you may not do anything that would breach Apple’s software license terms.

Yes. Install the tools you need for software development: language runtimes, package managers, editors, containers, databases, and command-line tools. Your use must stay within the Acceptable Use Policy and comply with the license terms of the software you install.

No. The rental fee covers the Mac mini, macOS, power, connectivity, and our support. Third-party AI tools such as Claude Code or OpenAI Codex require your own subscription or API key, which you bring and pay for separately. MacMiniNode is not affiliated with Anthropic or OpenAI.

Yes. Xcode runs natively on the Mac mini’s Apple silicon, so you can build, run, and test iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and visionOS apps in the simulators. An Apple Developer Program membership for code signing, TestFlight, and App Store distribution is your responsibility and is not included.

Yes. Install Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, or a similar agent on your machine and sign in with your own subscription or API key. Because the Mac mini is always on, agents can run for hours or on a schedule after you disconnect. MacMiniNode provides the hardware and macOS; it does not operate the agents or resell AI subscriptions.

Cancelling stops future renewals. Your machine stays yours through the end of the billing period you have already paid for, and nothing further is charged. Partial periods are not refunded unless required by law or our Refund Policy.

No setup fee and no annual commitment. The subscription renews monthly and you can cancel the next renewal at any time from your dashboard. Apple’s license terms for leased hardware may impose a minimum lease duration; any such requirement will be stated clearly before you subscribe.

Payments are processed by Helcim, a PCI-compliant payment processor. Your card details are entered directly into Helcim’s secure form and never touch MacMiniNode’s servers. We store only a tokenized reference, the card brand, and the last four digits so you can recognize your payment method in the dashboard.

The current plan is $129 per month for a dedicated 2026 Mac mini M6 with 16GB unified memory and a 256GB SSD. The price covers the hardware, macOS, power, connectivity, remote access, and support. There is no setup fee and no annual commitment; billing starts at activation. Third-party subscriptions and the Apple Developer Program are not included.

When your rental ends and the hardware is released, the machine’s storage is securely erased before it is prepared for anyone else. We do not keep copies of your data, so back up anything you want to keep before your paid period ends. You are responsible for your own backups for the duration of the rental.

Each Mac mini is rented and licensed for a single customer’s use. Sharing one machine among multiple end users, reselling access, or sublicensing the machine is prohibited under the Acceptable Use Policy and Apple’s software license terms.

No. MacMiniNode is an independent service and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Apple Inc. Apple, Mac, Mac mini, and macOS are trademarks of Apple Inc. We purchase genuine Apple hardware and operate it in line with Apple’s published software license terms for leased hardware.