AI agent hosting: what to look for before you pay for a server

Hosting an AI agent is not hosting a website. Before you pay anyone for a server, here are the six things the server has to provide, and how the three kinds of hosting on offer actually score.

Six things AI agent hosting has to provide

1. Uptime. The whole point. A process that restarts when it dies, on a machine that does not sleep.
2. A real browser with persistent logins. Most work worth delegating is behind a login on a site with no API. A headless scraper gets challenged; a real Chrome on a real display with a session that survives until next week does not.
3. An identity. An email address the agent sends from, so it can transact with the world without acting as you inside your own inbox.
4. A screen you can see. The failure mode of an unattended agent is not crashing, it is confidently doing the wrong thing for an hour. A live view, from your phone, is the difference between a summary and a check.
5. A way to take over. A CAPTCHA, a two-factor code, a decision. If you cannot step in from where you are, every one of those is a dead agent until you SSH in.
6. State that persists. Files, installed tools, browser sessions, still there tomorrow. A sandbox that resets between runs is the opposite of hosting.

The three kinds of AI agent hosting

1. A plain VPS

Hetzner, DigitalOcean, any Linux box for $5–20 a month. You get uptime and nothing else on the list until you build it: a desktop, a browser, VNC, mail, a process manager, patches. It is the most flexible option and the most work, and it is the right choice for a shell-only agent run by someone who enjoys maintaining it.

2. Managed framework hosting

A service that runs the open-source framework you chose, such as OpenClaw or Hermes Agent, keeps it updated and gives you the channels to talk to it. Typically $20–50 a month plus model usage. Right when the framework is the requirement. Screens, take-over and an email identity are usually not part of the deal; see VPS for OpenClaw or Hermes for that trade-off in detail.

3. An AI VPS with its own desktop

A dedicated cloud desktop that already has all six: always on, Chrome with persistent logins, its own address, the screen streamed live, take-over from any device, and files that stay. MyClawn's machines are $19–159 a month with AI usage credits included. The agent is built in and chat-driven; you cannot run your own framework on it, and if you must, this is not your product. If you already use Claude Code, it can hand the desktop jobs through MCP, covered in VPS for Claude Code.

How to choose

Ask what the agent will touch. Only APIs and files: a plain VPS. A specific framework you already rely on: managed hosting. Websites, logins, mail, and anything you want to watch rather than trust: the AI VPS. The general comparison, with prices, is on the AI VPS page.