Comparison
MacDuty vs OakHost
MacDuty and OakHost, the two closest dedicated Mac mini hosts in Europe: the price of every configuration both sell, where each is better, what carries across.
Updated 2026-10-16
OakHost is the closest competitor we have. Same idea, same continent, same kind of customer: a whole Mac mini in a European data centre, billed by the month, no virtual machine in between. If you are comparing the two, this page gives you the numbers rather than the adjectives.
OakHost is OakHost OÜ, registered in Estonia, with its data centre in Germany; MacDuty is AITEST S.R.L., registered and racked in Romania.
The price for the same Mac
OakHost's prices read from its site on 13 October 2026; ours are the catalog's as it stands today. Monthly, in euro, excluding VAT.
Every configuration OakHost sells, matched to ours as closely as the two catalogues allow. The difference column is their monthly price minus ours: a positive figure is what you keep with us, a negative one what you keep with them.
| Mac mini | MacDuty, monthly | OakHost, monthly | Difference, monthly | MacDuty, paid yearly |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| M1, 8 GB, 256 GB | €65 | 70 EUR | +€5 | €52 |
| M1, 16 GB, 256 GB | €75 | 80 EUR | +€5 | €60 |
| M2, 8 GB, 256 GB | €75 | 85 EUR | +€10 | €60 |
| M2, 16 GB, 512 GB | €94 | 95 EUR | +€1 | €75 |
| M4, 16 GB, 512 GB | €114 | 115 EUR | +€1 | €91 |
| M6, 16 GB, 256 GB | €128 | 120 EUR | -€8 | €102 |
| M2 Pro, 16 GB, 512 GB | €119 | 130 EUR | +€11 | €95 |
| M4, 32 GB, 1 TB | €134 | 135 EUR | +€1 | €107 |
| M6, 32 GB, 1 TB | €174 | 200 EUR | +€26 | €139 |
| M2 Pro, 32 GB, 1 TB | €179 | 180 EUR | +€1 | €143 |
| M4 Pro, 64 GB, 1 TB | €244 | 245 EUR | +€1 | €195 |
| M5 Pro, 64 GB, 1 TB | €280 | 340 EUR | +€60 | €224 |
Neither host charges a setup fee.
Three things the table shows that are worth naming plainly.
The gap is narrow on the small machines and wide on the large ones. On most of the matching configurations we are the cheaper of the two, by a few euros at the bottom of the table and by a good deal more on the M5 Pro line; the difference column has the figure for each row.
On the entry M6, by the month, OakHost is cheaper than we are. That is the row where they win on price, and we are not going to bury it. Paid yearly we come in under their monthly figure, because they do not offer a yearly rate; but if you want the cheapest M6 by the month, it is theirs.
Paying yearly takes another 20% off with us. OakHost does not offer a yearly rate on these plans, so their monthly price is their price.
We also bill by the day and by the week. If you need a Mac for a few days, a demo, a release freeze or a certificate renewal, a month is the wrong unit, and OakHost does not sell a smaller one. Past about a week the month is cheaper, and each build's card says so.
| Mac mini | MacDuty, one day | OakHost, one day |
|---|---|---|
| M1, 8 GB, 256 GB | €7.99 | not offered |
| M6, 16 GB, 256 GB | €14.99 | not offered |
In short
| MacDuty | OakHost | |
|---|---|---|
| Hardware | Dedicated Mac mini | Dedicated Mac mini |
| Generations | M1, M2, M2 Pro, M4, M4 Pro, M5 Pro, M6 | M1, M2, M2 Pro, M4, M4 Pro, M5 Pro, M6 |
| Billing | Day, month, year | Month |
| Setup fee | None | None |
| Uplink | 1 Gbit/s on every Mac | 1 Gbit/s, 2.5 and 10 Gbit/s on some plans |
| Remote management | Restart, password reset and SSH keys from your account; a reinstall of macOS on request | KVM console on every plan |
| A Mac that will not respond | Power-cycled on request, at any hour, nobody at the rack | Rescued over the KVM console |
| Power on and off | Restart from your account; shut down and power-cycle on request | From your account |
| Out-of-band console | No, by choice | Yes |
| FileVault | Kept off on every Mac, enforced by MDM | Supported, password entered at boot over KVM |
| Firewall | Not per customer yet; the same edge filtering for every Mac | Per customer, from their panel |
| Backup storage | Arriving with the 2026 Macs, as a separate service: 500 GB 6 EUR, 1 TB 10 EUR, 2 TB 18 EUR a month | Network storage from 6 EUR a month |
| API | No, management is through your account | Yes |
| Money back | No | 14 days on a first monthly order |
| Company | AITEST S.R.L., Romania | OakHost OÜ, Estonia |
| Data centre | Romania | Germany |
| Uptime commitment | 99.9% with a credit if we miss it | See their terms |
Where OakHost is genuinely better
We would rather you buy the right thing than buy from us, so here is the honest list.
- The KVM console. OakHost includes an out-of-band console on every plan: the screen before boot, Recovery, and a FileVault password typed at startup even when macOS will not start. We do not have one, and we have decided not to add one.
That decision deserves the reasoning rather than a shrug. A Mac that will not boot is rare, and we handle it a different way: every Mac sits on a remotely controlled socket, so a frozen machine is powered off and on again on request, at any hour, without anybody walking to the rack, and it comes back by itself after a power cut. What a power cycle does not fix, a person in our data centre does. The console is the piece we are missing, and if you want to watch a machine boot yourself at three in the morning, OakHost is the right answer.
- FileVault, which follows from the same place. FileVault asks for its password at every startup, before macOS loads, and on a Mac in a rack there is nobody to type it. FileVault is kept off on every Mac, so it always comes back from a restart or a power-cycle: not left to convention, but blocked by the management profile. Your data sits on a dedicated Mac in our rack and is wiped when you leave. On colocation the Mac is yours: FileVault off, or unlocked by you. If an encrypted boot volume is a requirement you cannot move, OakHost can do it and we cannot.
- The API. They give you an API to set firewall rules and power state from your own pipeline. We have no API: a restart is sent from your account, the rest on request. If you are automating fleet management across many machines, that is a real difference.
- Monitoring. Their agent sends email alerts on performance and disk thresholds.
- The 14-day money back guarantee on a first monthly order. We do not offer one.
- Ten gigabit on their M2 Pro plans, 2.5 on some others. Ours is 1 Gbit/s on every Mac.
Pick OakHost if out-of-band access matters more than price, or if you need a port faster than 1 Gbit/s.
Where MacDuty is better
- Price, on most configurations we both sell, and the gap widens as the machine gets bigger. The difference column in the table above has the figure for each row, and shows which way it runs; over a year paid yearly, the gap on a large M6 or an M5 Pro adds up to real money.
- Daily and yearly billing. Theirs is monthly only.
- No minimum beyond Apple's 24 hours, and no setup fee. You take a Mac for a day if a day is what you need.
- The Mac is the whole product. We do not sell a browser-based Mac office or a trial tier alongside it; the catalogue is Mac minis and colocation, and that is the whole business.
A word about stock, from both sides
This is the part most comparison pages leave out.
Our catalogue shows availability live. A configuration marked ready is racked, charged at checkout and goes out on order. A box Apple has not shipped yet can be pre-ordered, with the card kept and nothing charged until it is racked. For the rest, the way in is the notify list, and we write to you when the machine you asked for is in the rack.
OakHost's inventory was thin on the same day. One configuration was orderable, the M6 with 16 GB and 256 GB. M1, M2, M2 Pro, M4 and M4 Pro all read Out of Stock; the larger M6 and the M5 Pro read Coming Soon, at prices their own page describes as preliminary.
If you need a Mac this week, check both catalogues yourself before you decide anything on this page. Availability in this market changes faster than comparison tables do.
Moving from OakHost
There is no lock-in to unpick. A dedicated Mac mini is a dedicated Mac mini: you have root, you have SSH, and nothing of yours lives in a proprietary control plane.
- 1What to carry over.Your Xcode and command line tools installation, your keychain and signing certificates, your SPM and CocoaPods caches, and your runner registration if the machine is a CI worker. If you are coming from a GitHub Actions setup, the steps are the same ones in our Actions guide.
- 2What to check before you move.Whether you were relying on the KVM console, whether anything in your automation calls their API, and whether you had FileVault enabled. Those three do not come across. Their network storage will have an equivalent here, billed separately, when backup storage arrives with the 2026 Macs; until then bring your own backup target.
- Self-hosted GitHub Actions runner on a Mac mini, the same steps, if your OakHost Mac was a runner
In stock today
These are in the rack now. Pick one, see what it comes with, and make your account only when you order.
Checking the racks
A Mac mini of your own
Pick a build. When one is not on the shelf, leave your email and we write the day it is racked.
Questions
- Is MacDuty cheaper than OakHost?
- On most configurations both of us sell, yes, by the month; the entry M6 is the exception, where OakHost is cheaper by the month and we are cheaper paid yearly. The table above has the figure for each row, from a few euros on the small machines to a wide gap on the M5 Pro. Paying yearly takes another 20% off our price. Prices exclude VAT on both sides.
- Does MacDuty have a KVM console like OakHost?
- No, and we have chosen not to add one. From your account you can restart the Mac, reset its password and manage its SSH keys. A reinstall of macOS from scratch, or a power-cycle for a Mac that stops responding, is done by us on request, at any hour. The one thing we cannot give you is the screen before boot, and that is OakHost's clearest advantage.
- What happens if the Mac freezes, or the power goes out?
- Write to us and we power it off and on again from here, at any hour; every Mac sits on a socket we control, and it starts again by itself when power returns. A restart you can send yourself from your account.
- Do you offer backups?
- Not yet. Backup storage arrives with the 2026 Macs, as a separate service: 500 GB at 6 EUR a month, 1 TB at 10, 2 TB at 18, excluding VAT. Until then, back up to your own storage.
- Can I use FileVault on a MacDuty Mac?
- FileVault is kept off on every Mac, so it always comes back from a restart or a power-cycle; the management profile blocks it being turned on. It asks for its password at every startup, before macOS loads, and in a rack there is nobody to type it: with it on, the Mac would wait at that prompt instead of coming back. Your data is on a dedicated Mac in our rack and is wiped when you leave. On colocation the Mac is yours: FileVault off, or unlocked by you.
- Where are the machines?
- Ours are racked in Romania, theirs in Germany. Both inside the EU, both under the GDPR.
- Can I rent a Mac mini for a week?
- With us, yes: we bill by the day, and the day price of every build is on its card, two of them in the table above. OakHost sells monthly plans only.
- Are these virtual machines?
- No, on either side. Both of us hand you a whole physical Mac mini with nothing shared.
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