Figment vs OakHost: Mac Mini Hosting Compared

Verdict: pick by stock, location, and what you need managed

If you need a dedicated Mac mini in an EU datacenter this week, OakHost is a natural first stop, but on 2026-11-10 its Mac mini hosting page lists every tier from the €70/month M1.S to the €260 M4 Pro.L as out of stock. The only plan marked in stock at check time was the top M5 Pro.L at €340/month excluding VAT. Figment's physical i3 and M-series plans also collect requests until supply is confirmed, so neither side is promising an instant dedicated machine today.

What Figment can place quickly is a software environment, not a specific physical box. The published Figment options are a $29/month virtual Intel macOS VM (2 vCPU, 8 GiB RAM, 80 GiB disk, Intel on Linux/KVM, no GPU or audio), an M-series Mac from $95/month whose exact chip, RAM and disk are returned with the quote, a Managed Build Mac at $249/month (one M-series Mac with CI setup, backups, monitoring, and 30 minutes of monthly support), and a Managed Mac Team at $999/month (two M-series Macs, two CI runners, team setup, backups, monitoring, and one hour of monthly support). VM access is through a browser console; inbound public SSH to the $29 VM is not currently implemented. If you need Apple silicon in Germany on dedicated hardware with KVM and a static IP, wait for an OakHost restock or ask Figment for an M-series or Managed Build quote. If you need a working macOS build lane this week without waiting, start with the $29 Figment VM and add M-series later.

Published prices in each native currency

OakHost prices are in EUR and exclude VAT; EU buyers add their local VAT, and the page states a 14-day money-back guarantee on your first monthly order. Figment prices are in USD. No annual prepay, discount or setup fee is published for either provider in the pages we read. The figures below are the published monthly rates, read directly from each vendor's own page on 2026-11-10.

Compare equivalent hardware classes, not raw sticker numbers. The $29 Intel VM is a lower entry cost than any OakHost dedicated tier, but it is not Apple silicon and it is not a dedicated machine. The $95 Figment M-series entry is cheaper than the in-stock OakHost M5 Pro.L at €340, but the Figment M-series chip at $95 is unspecified until the quote, so it is not a like-for-like swap for an M5 Pro with 64 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD. Match the chip generation, RAM and disk when you negotiate.

Hardware, location, and toolchain fit

OakHost states that its Mac minis are hosted in German datacenters with KVM remote management, an external firewall, a static IP, and bandwidth from 1 Gbit/s to 10 Gbit/s depending on tier, and that support responses target within two hours with 24/7 on-call for emergencies. No explicit uptime SLA figure is published on the pages we read; absence from a public page is not proof none exists under a contract, so ask if a formal SLA matters to you. For EU data residency, European latency, or a specific M4/M5/M6-class chip on dedicated hardware, OakHost is a reasonable fit once a tier returns to stock.

Figment does not publish datacenter geography on the Mac hosting page, so confirm the region in the quote if location matters for latency, residency or tax. The $29 Figment VM is a usable macOS build target that runs compatible Intel Mac toolchains and supports Xcode 26 or earlier on Intel; it is not Apple silicon and cannot run Xcode 27 or visionOS SDK work. Per Apple's Xcode system requirements, Xcode 27 requires macOS Tahoe 26.6, and visionOS development requires a Mac with Apple silicon. For ARM execution, Metal or visionOS, pick Figment M-series (or wait for an OakHost M-series restock) and keep the Intel VM for a cheaper parallel build lane. Keep Apple's license and developer-program requirements separate from the technical capability of the host.

OakHost switch worksheet with a dated ECB conversion

Treat this as a template. Plug in your own OakHost tier, your own VAT rate, and your own CI engineering cost. The native-currency comparison is the primary one; the conversion is for context only and does not include card or bank FX fees.

• Published monthly, OakHost M4.S: €115 ex. VAT. With 19% German VAT: €115 × 1.19 = €136.85/month VAT-inclusive.
• Published monthly, Figment Managed Build Mac: $249/month USD.
• ECB reference rate on 2026-11-10: 1 EUR = 1.1214 USD, from the ECB EUR/USD reference rate. This is an approximate reference, dated, and before any bank or card FX margin.
• For context only, $249 at 1.1214 ≈ €222.07/month. €136.85 at 1.1214 ≈ $153.46/month. In pre-fee ECB terms, Managed Build is on the order of $95/month more than an all-in VAT-inclusive OakHost M4.S equivalent. Do not use that gap as a line-item quote.
• Break-even on paying Figment to run managed CI: at a loaded CI engineer rate of $80/hour, roughly $95 ÷ $80 ≈ 1.2 hours/month of avoided CI stand-up, maintenance, backup and monitoring. Below that, self-manage on the OakHost box. Above it, Managed Build is paying for itself before you count missed-release risk.
• Cheap parallel Intel lane: the $29 Figment VM is ≈ €25.86/month at 1.1214, pre-fee. It does not replace Apple silicon; it gives you an Intel toolchain lane while an M-series quote is agreed.

If your target is simply dedicated Apple silicon at the cheapest sticker and you are happy to self-manage, request an M-series quote at Figment and keep the OakHost restock alert on. At the M-series entry, the per-month numbers (OakHost €70-€115 bands, Figment from $95) land in a similar band once VAT and FX are applied, and the real deciders become stock, location, exact chip, and the support terms.

OakHost to Figment migration checklist

• Export Homebrew state on the OakHost box: brew list --formula > brew-formulas.txt and brew list --cask > brew-casks.txt. Copy both files off before you cancel.
• Export signing identities with their private keys via Keychain Access → My Certificates → Export as an encrypted .p12. Store the export passphrase in your own secret manager and never beside the file.
• Copy provisioning profiles as files from ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/. They are plain files, not Keychain items; do not try to import them into a Keychain.
• List the names of required CI secrets (App Store Connect tokens, Firebase service accounts, API keys) and re-inject their values from your own secret manager on the Figment host. Do not dump the shell environment to a plaintext file; it can contain unrelated keys.
• Save CI runner registration tokens for GitHub Actions, Buildkite or CircleCI. Register the Figment runner, verify a green build, then deregister the OakHost runner.
• Update your own firewall, artifact store and CI platform allowlists to the new egress IP. There is no generic App Store Connect or TestFlight IP allowlist to edit on Apple's side.
• Note the OakHost billing cycle end so you do not pay for an overlap month. If you are inside the first 14 days of a new monthly order, OakHost's page states a 14-day money-back guarantee on first orders; read the current terms before you rely on it.
• Run one real xcodebuild clean build on the OakHost box using your own project's exact scheme, record wall-clock time, then run the same scheme on the new Figment machine. Treat a failed build as a failure, not a benchmark result.

Ready to request a configuration quote? Start at /mac-hosting/start. More comparisons: Figment vs Agent.Space, Figment vs AI Kizai, and US or Europe Mac hosting.