Rent a real Android phone from your terminal.
In plain words. No coding needed.
One line — npx devicerent — opens a guided session that works like Claude Code: pick a phone from a menu, drag your APK onto the window, and say what you want done. Same account, same wallet and the same phones as the website, at €0.10 a minute before your plan's discount.
Three steps, about five minutes.
You need a Windows, Mac or Linux computer and a DeviceRent account. Nothing else to buy or configure.
- 1. Install Node.js
- Download the LTS version from nodejs.org and run the installer with its default options. DeviceRent needs Node.js 22 or newer — the LTS download is — and if yours is older it says so and tells you what to install.
- 2. Open a terminal
- On Windows, press Start and type Terminal. On a Mac, press Command-Space and type Terminal. A window with a blinking cursor is all you need.
- 3. Type npx devicerent and press Enter
- The first time, npx asks whether it may download devicerent — type y and press Enter. Then it offers to sign you in: your browser opens devicerent.net, you press Approve, and the terminal is signed in. Nothing secret is typed into the terminal.
Plain words, not commands.
A welcome card shows your plan, your wallet and anything you have rented. Under it is a prompt. Type what you want:
- rent
- A menu of the phones that are free right now, with the price you pay per minute. Nothing is charged until you confirm.
- Drag your .apk onto the window
- It installs on the rented phone and offers to open it. An .aab or another file a phone cannot install is refused with the reason.
- test my app
- The Quick test: it opens your app, taps around for about a minute and reports any crash, freeze or error it finds.
- take a screenshot
- A picture of the phone's screen, saved to your Downloads folder and opened for you.
- open Settings and turn on dark mode
- Anything else, in plain words, goes to DeviceyAI, which does it on the phone. It asks first whether it may tap and type or only look, and it is paid for in AI credits.
- I'm done
- Stops the rental and the billing. The phone is wiped for the next person afterwards, so it asks before it stops.
It asks before anything costs money.
Renting, stopping, paying and letting DeviceyAI touch the phone each show what will happen, and the price, before they do it. Leaving with a phone still rented asks whether to stop it first. Payments open Stripe in your browser; the terminal never sees a card.
- Signed in like a browser
- The terminal holds an ordinary session for your account: the same rules, wallet and phones as a browser tab. Type logout to sign it out; your browser stays signed in.
- A typo never spends credits
- One word it does not recognise gets a “did you mean”, never DeviceyAI. Only a request of two or more words is handed to the AI.
- A running cost you can see
- Under the prompt, each rented phone shows how long it has run and what it has cost so far.
Every command still works on its own.
devicerent rent, install, test quick, test espresso --junit, logcat -f, appium, connect and the rest run one at a time, with --json output and exit codes, so the same tool drops into a script on your own machine. Piped, with --json or under CI it never stops to ask anything. Type / in the session to see every command.
Where this is the wrong tool, said plainly.
The terminal app does what the website does, with two exceptions worth knowing before you start.
- Watching the phone live. The terminal shows screenshots, not video. For a live mirror you can tap, rent from the website in Chrome, Edge, Brave or Opera.
- A CI runner with nobody there to approve the sign-in. Signing in needs a browser; for CI, use npx devicerent-connect with an automation key from your account page.
- iOS. There is none, and none is planned.
Questions
- Do I need to know how to code?
- No. You type plain words like rent, test my app or I'm done, pick from menus with the arrow keys and Enter, and drag files onto the window. The commands are there for people who want them.
- What does it cost?
- The same as the website: €0.10 a minute at list price, less your plan's discount, for as long as a phone is rented. The rent menu shows your own price before you confirm. DeviceyAI is paid for in AI credits.
- How do I make sure I stop paying?
- Type I'm done. If you leave with a phone still rented, the terminal asks whether to stop it first, and a phone left idle for 30 minutes is stopped for you.
- Is it safe to sign in from a terminal?
- Signing in happens in your browser: the terminal opens devicerent.net, you press Approve, and the page hands that terminal a one-time token that only it can read. If your account uses two-factor authentication, the terminal asks for your authenticator code. Approve only a sign-in you started yourself.
- Does it work on Windows and Mac?
- Yes, and on Linux. On Windows, use the Terminal app that comes with Windows 11. It needs Node.js 22 or newer.