Figment vs Mythic Beasts: Mac Hosting Compared

Verdict: Mythic Beasts Mac mini colocation is closed to new customers

Mythic Beasts' own Mac mini colocation support page states that they are no longer accepting new Mac mini colocation customers (checked 2026-11-10). If you were evaluating them for a new deployment, that route is closed.

Figment is an active alternative and competes directly on Mac hosting. Plans start at $29/month for a virtual Intel macOS environment and reach dedicated Apple silicon from $95/month, with managed options at $249 and $999/month. The virtual tier is available today; i3 and physical M-series plans currently collect requests until supply is confirmed, so contact Figment to lock in configuration and delivery before you commit.

Best Figment match by workload:

• Intel CI builds at the lowest entry cost: Virtual Intel macOS at $29/month
• Dedicated Intel hardware: i3 Mac at $49/month (request-based)
• ARM / Apple silicon / visionOS workloads: M-series from $95/month (exact chip, RAM and disk confirmed in the quote)
• Managed CI setup, backups, monitoring, 30 min support/month: Managed Build Mac at $249/month
• Two Macs, two CI runners, team setup, 1 hr support/month: Managed Mac Team at $999/month

Start a configuration quote at /mac-hosting/start.

What Mythic Beasts Mac mini colocation offered

Mythic Beasts ran a bring-your-own-hardware (BYOH) colocation model: you buy the Mac mini, ship it in, and they rack, power and network it. Hardware ownership and failure response stay with you. Their support docs cover headless operation and automatic restart after power loss, which are the practical items a remote Mac operator cares about.

Pricing for the colocation service is not published on the support page checked for this article, and the generic colocation pricing URL supplied in the brief returned a 404. If you are an existing customer with billing questions, write to sales@mythic-beasts.com.

The colocation model has a different cost structure from rental:

Colocation suits teams that already own hardware and want full physical control. Rental suits teams that want a predictable monthly line item with no capital outlay — and in Mythic Beasts' case, rental is the only remaining option because colocation signups are closed.

Figment plans and pricing

The $95 entry is a lower starting price than many M-series rentals but it is not a guaranteed M4 or any specific RAM/disk; the chip generation, memory and disk are set by the configuration quote. Taxes and fees are stated in the actual offer. No free trial, uptime SLA, provisioning speed or stock guarantee is published; request an evaluation if you need one before purchase.

Hardware, access and toolchain fit

Figment Virtual Intel macOS ($29) is a KVM-virtualized Intel macOS environment, currently being provisioned with macOS Sequoia. It has no GPU acceleration and no audio. Access is via a browser console; direct inbound public SSH to the VM is not offered — outbound CI agents connect from the VM to your CI service as normal. It is a real macOS runtime: compatible Intel toolchains, including supported Xcode 26-or-earlier releases, run on it and can build and sign Intel-compatible targets. Per Apple's Xcode 26.2 release notes, Xcode 26.2 requires macOS Sequoia 15.6 or later, which this VM satisfies. Xcode 27 drops Intel host support, and visionOS development needs Apple silicon, so pick M-series for those.

Figment M-series Mac (from $95) uses physical Apple silicon hardware, with allocation confirmed in the quote, for ARM-native builds, visionOS, Metal with Apple-GPU features, Core ML with the Neural Engine, and any target that requires an Apple-silicon host. Exact chip, RAM and disk are confirmed in the quote.

Mythic Beasts colocation Mac: the chip is whatever you ship in. An M1 or later Mac mini supports current Apple silicon targets. An Intel Mac mini still runs supported Intel Xcode 26.x releases and the iOS Simulator runtimes those versions ship with, but not Xcode 27 and not visionOS. Check the exact version pair against Apple's Xcode system requirements for the release you plan to deploy.

A build-time test to run on any machine you evaluate

No independent benchmark of Figment's hardware is published. Instead of relying on vendor numbers, time a real clean build on your own project. This example is unexecuted; use your own project path and scheme:

#!/bin/bash
# Clean-build timer. Supply your project path and an existing scheme.
set -euo pipefail

PROJECT="${1:?Usage: $0 path/to/MyApp.xcodeproj MyScheme}"
SCHEME="${2:?Usage: $0 path/to/MyApp.xcodeproj MyScheme}"

echo "Build test on $(hostname) at $(date -u +%FT%TZ)"
xcodebuild -project "$PROJECT" -scheme "$SCHEME" clean
time xcodebuild \
  -project "$PROJECT" \
  -scheme "$SCHEME" \
  -destination 'generic/platform=iOS' \
  build

With set -euo pipefail, a failed build exits non-zero and does not count as a successful timing. If you are an existing Mythic Beasts colocation customer, run this on your current Mac first to get a baseline, then on the Figment machine. Compare wall-clock time on the same project and same scheme — not synthetic numbers.

Migration: from BYOH colocation to Figment rental

Before the Figment machine is ready:

• Run the clean-build timer above on your current colocation Mac and save the output as your baseline.
• Export signing certificates from Keychain Access (File → Export Items), selecting the certificate together with its private key, as encrypted .p12 with a strong passphrase held in your secret manager. Do not write the passphrase or the key to a plaintext file or shell history.
• Download provisioning profiles from the Apple Developer portal; they are regular files, not Keychain items.
• List the names (only) of CI environment variables and secrets you rely on. Restore the values on the new host through your secret manager; do not dump the whole shell environment to a file.
• Copy local-only build artifacts (.ipa, .app, .dSYM) to your artifact store.
• Back up any scripts or tools that live only on the colocation box and are not in version control.
• Arrange hardware retrieval or disposal with Mythic Beasts per your colocation agreement.

After the Figment machine is provisioned:

• Import the .p12 into Keychain on the new Mac and place provisioning profiles under ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/.
• Install and register your CI agent (GitHub Actions runner, Buildkite, Jenkins, etc.) using secrets pulled from your secret manager at job time.
• Update allowlists that you control — your firewall, artifact store, or CI service — to accept the Figment machine's egress IP. Do not invent allowlists for App Store Connect or TestFlight that your workflow does not already use.
• Re-run the build-time test against the same project and scheme and compare to your baseline.
• Only after a green build, terminate the Mythic Beasts colocation agreement.

Choose the Figment plan

View Figment Mac hosting · Request a configuration quote

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