Figment vs Time's Lab: Mac Hosting Compared

Verdict: rent-to-own in CAD vs month-to-month in USD

Time's Lab rents Apple silicon Macs from a Toronto datacenter and transfers ownership of the machine after 15 continuous paid months. Its base Mac mini M6 (12-core CPU, 12-core GPU, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD) is listed at C$249/month pay-as-you-go or C$199/month on an annual prepay. The listing includes full administrative access, a static dedicated IP, continuously renewed AppleCare+, and a 1:1 backup machine with a 24–36 hour swap window.

Figment's M-series Mac starts at US$95/month. There is no ownership component — you pay for managed access, not the asset. Pick Time's Lab if you want to own the hardware after month 15 and you need a Toronto host. Pick Figment if you want USD billing, a shorter horizon, or you want backups, monitoring and CI configuration handled for you.

Best Figment plan for buyers currently on Time's Lab:

• M-series from US$95/month if you only need Apple silicon CI capacity and your team runs its own tooling. The exact chip, RAM and disk at US$95 are confirmed in the quote.
• Managed Build Mac at US$249/month if you want one M-series Mac with CI setup, backups, monitoring and 30 minutes of monthly support included.
• Managed Mac Team at US$999/month if you need two M-series Macs, two CI runners, team setup, backups, monitoring and one hour of monthly support.

Figment also offers a virtual Intel macOS VM at US$29/month (2 vCPU, 8 GiB, 80 GiB) that runs supported Intel Xcode toolchains (Xcode 26 or earlier) via the browser console. It is not an Apple silicon Mac, so Xcode 27, visionOS and ARM-only execution go on the M-series tier. VM capacity is being verified; physical M-series provisioning collects requests until supply is confirmed, so do not assume instant availability on either side.

Published plan, term and effective cost

Time's Lab bills in Canadian dollars; Figment bills in US dollars. Check the Bank of Canada daily rate on the day you commit and add your card or wire FX margin before comparing totals. Tax and fees apply as stated in each provider's actual offer; we do not quote tax rates here.

Time's Lab also lists Mac Studio M5 Max and M5 Ultra on the same rent-to-own model at higher rates, with memory and storage customisation available on annual plans. The US$95 Figment entry is not a verified M4/16/256 configuration — it is a starting price, with the exact chip and memory confirmed in your quote. This is an entry-price comparison, not a like-for-like hardware comparison.

Rent-to-own worksheet on the M6

The 15-month path on the Time's Lab M6 annual plan is explicitly published as 12 months at the annual rate plus 3 months at the pay-as-you-go rate:

Figment M-series at the US$95 entry price across the same 15 months totals US$1,425. Totals are in different currencies and the hardware specs are not equal, so convert at the rate you will actually pay and treat the gap as entry-cost only. After month 15 Time's Lab stops charging rent on the owned machine but you still carry colocation, power, warranty and operations costs wherever you place it; Figment continues at the monthly managed rate.

There is no Figment trial. Request a configuration quote or agree an evaluation before purchase at /mac-hosting.

Hardware, access and toolchain fit

Both Time's Lab's listed Macs and Figment's M-series tier are Apple silicon, so Xcode 27 (which requires macOS Tahoe 26.6 or later on Apple silicon) and visionOS development work on either side. If your toolchain is pinned to an older Xcode on Intel, Figment's US$29 virtual Intel macOS runs supported Intel Xcode 26 or earlier toolchains for cross-compilation and signing of compatible targets; ARM-only execution still needs an M-series machine. Check the exact Xcode point-release row in Apple's table against your target OS before you migrate.

Time's Lab states full administrator access with sudo from day one. Figment M-series access level is confirmed in the quote; the US$29 VM is reached through a browser console, and outbound CI agents on the VM can connect to your service. Inbound public SSH to the US$29 VM is not currently implemented — ask about access modes on physical M-series in the quote.

Network: Time's Lab lists 1.0–1.5 Gbps on the standard port, 2.5–3.0 Gbps for +C$10/month, and 5.0–8.0 Gbps for +C$20/month on annual only. Toronto latency is close to US East for most build and artifact traffic. Figment's network specifics are confirmed per plan.

Reliability and buyer test

Time's Lab's page describes a 1:1 backup machine with a 24–36 hour hardware-failure swap, a 48-hour IP-failure recovery window, and 8–18 hour on-site technician dispatch. No uptime percentage is published there; ask Time's Lab for formal SLA terms if you need one in writing. Figment's managed tiers include backups and monitoring as listed; uptime numbers are not advertised and should be agreed in your contract.

Before you migrate, time one real build on your current host and repeat it on the target. This is an unexecuted example; adapt the project, scheme and destination to your project and run it yourself:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# Usage: ./time-build.sh /path/to/YourApp.xcodeproj YourSchemeName
set -euo pipefail

PROJECT="${1:?path to .xcodeproj}"
SCHEME="${2:?Xcode scheme name}"

echo "Host: $(hostname)  Started: $(date -u +%FT%TZ)"
START=$(date +%s)

xcodebuild \
  -project "$PROJECT" \
  -scheme "$SCHEME" \
  -configuration Release \
  -destination 'generic/platform=macOS' \
  clean build

END=$(date +%s)
echo "Build succeeded in $((END - START))s on $(hostname)"

set -euo pipefail makes the script fail fast; only a successful xcodebuild reaches the timing line. Collect three clean runs on each host and compare medians. Check xcodebuild -help on each machine for the exact flags installed with that Xcode version.

Migration from Time's Lab to Figment

Time's Lab's full admin access makes the export straightforward. If you are mid-ownership path, check early-termination terms with Time's Lab first.

On the Time's Lab Mac

• Produce a reproducible tool list with brew bundle dump --describe --file Brewfile. Commit the Brewfile; do not dump environment variable values.
• Export each code-signing certificate as an encrypted .p12: Keychain Access → My Certificates → right-click → Export → Personal Information Exchange, set a strong passphrase stored in your password manager. Developer ID Application and Developer ID Installer are separate; export each one you use.
• Copy provisioning profiles from ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/ (these are files on disk, not Keychain items).
• Record the names of CI/CD secrets and environment variables; do not write their values into any file, ticket or shell history.
• Commit CI pipeline YAML and build scripts to version control.
• Note the static IP and the customer-side allowlists that reference it.

On the Figment Mac

• Request your configuration at /mac-hosting/start; physical M-series provisioning is request-based until supply is confirmed.
• Install Homebrew, then restore tools with brew bundle --file Brewfile.
• Import the encrypted .p12 files through Keychain Access and copy provisioning profiles back to ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/.
• Restore secret values through your CI/CD platform's secret manager — not via file transfer.
• Update your own firewall, artifact-store and CI service allowlists to the new outbound IP. There is no generic Apple or App Store Connect allowlist to configure.
• Run the timed-build script and confirm a clean build before cutover.

Cutover

• Run one full release cycle on Figment in parallel with Time's Lab.
• Repoint runner URLs and webhook destinations to the Figment host.
• Confirm Time's Lab cancellation or early-exit terms, especially inside the 15-month ownership window.

Which Figment plan fits

Request a configuration quote or start provisioning at /mac-hosting/start.

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