Cube vs GitHub Codespaces

The short version

GitHub Codespaces gives you a development container for a repository, configured by its devcontainer.json, that opens in the browser, VS Code or over gh codespace ssh. It’s built for working on a repository while you’re at the keyboard: it stops after a period of inactivity, and every codespace has a maximum lifetime of 12 hours.

Cube is a Linux computer in the cloud for your coding agents, with an app for your Mac, the browser and your phone. It keeps running when you close your laptop, holds all your repositories with a Git worktree per task, and only stops when you pause it.

Side by side

	GitHub Codespaces	Cube
Built for	A dev environment per repository	A computer for your agents
When it stops	After 30 idle minutes by default (4 hours at most), and always after 12 hours	Only when you pause it, or your credit runs out
Running processes	Stop when the codespace stops	Keep running when you close the app or your laptop
Stopped or paused	Files kept; deleted after up to 30 days, even with unpushed changes	Files kept on its disk until you delete the computer
Repositories	One per codespace	All your repos on one computer, a worktree per task
Sizes	2 cores, 8 GB RAM up to 32 cores, 128 GB RAM	2 to 32 shared vCPUs, 2 GB RAM and 15 GB SSD per vCPU
Price	$0.18 to $2.88 an hour by size, plus $0.07 per GB-month of storage; free core-hours on personal plans	$6 per vCPU a month running, $2 paused; from $12 a month, billed per second
Agents	Install your own in the container	22 agents, including Claude Code, Codex and OpenCode, install in one click
Connect from	Browser, VS Code, GitHub CLI and SSH	Mac app, any browser, phone, and SSH

The difference that matters for agents

A coding agent is most useful on long tasks: a refactor, a test suite to fix, a loop that runs overnight. In a codespace, those tasks race two clocks. The idle timeout counts typing and terminal activity, and GitHub doesn’t say that a quiet background job keeps a codespace awake. And at 12 hours the codespace stops however busy it is, taking running processes with it.

GitHub’s own Copilot coding agent doesn’t run in Codespaces either: it runs in a short-lived GitHub Actions environment.

When to choose Codespaces

• Your team already defines its environment in devcontainer.json and wants a fresh, identical setup per repository.
• You work in VS Code or the browser and stop when you stop.
• Your usage fits the free core-hours on a personal plan.

When to choose Cube

• Your agents run for hours, overnight or on a loop, and need to keep going after you close your laptop.
• You work across several repositories and want them, and your agents’ logins and tools, on one computer.
• You want to check on your agents from your phone, and come back to everything where you left it.