Is Atlas Labs really free?

Yes. Atlas Labs is free of charge, with no paid tier, no adverts and no account. The limits (thirty minutes per sandbox, extendable to ninety; two sandboxes at once and ten a day per network address) exist to share capacity fairly between everyone who turns up, not to sell an upgrade.

Do I need to sign up?

No. There is no account, no email and no payment. Press Start, or call POST /labs/api/v1/sandboxes, and the response holds your two keys, shown once.

Why would you give this away?

Because Automation Atlas reviews automation tools, and a review is worth more when readers can check it themselves. A vendor's demo is built to show one product at its best; Atlas Labs is curated by automation engineers who build and fix these integrations for real businesses, so it has the retries, the rate limits, the signed webhooks and the supplier who misses a date. We would rather you form your own view than take ours on trust. It does cost us real money and real time, and the bills for it are the only invoices around here that are not fictional.

Is Atlas Print Works a real company?

No. Atlas Print Works & Co. is a fictional company invented for Atlas Labs. Nothing about its orders, staff, suppliers or finances describes a real business, every response carries meta.simulation: true, and every figure a sandbox returns is simulation data generated for that session.

What do you do with my data?

Almost nothing, because we hold almost none. Your sandbox is deleted ten minutes after it expires; we keep a one-way scrambled tag of your network address to enforce the limits, and your continent for the map. The key that scrambles the tag is deleted after a short time, and each record that carries the tag is deleted, or has the tag removed, once it has done its job. The records kept for good are anonymous totals and, if the sandbox joined a Major Order, its hourly contribution records, which keep the sandbox's id, the continent and the amount but not the tag. The sandbox never asks for your name or email (the contact form asks for an email only so we can reply, and it goes to Formspree, not into Labs), Labs pages set no cookies, and nothing that identifies you or your sandbox is shown anywhere public. The world map, the standings and the events feed show continent totals, which your sandbox's activity can add to. The full list is above.

Can I use it for a course, workshop or training?

Yes. Atlas Labs is free for teaching, each person gets a private copy of the fictional company, and there is nothing to install or sign up for. The limits are counted per network address, two sandboxes at once and ten a day, so a class on one connection can run into them. Tell us the date, the group size and roughly how long through the contact form, choosing Teaching or training, and we can arrange adjusted limits for your session. The history pack, a spreadsheet of the fictional company's past, can be downloaded without a sandbox.

I make an automation tool. Can I test it here?

Yes, the same as anyone else: point it at the base URL with one of your keys, or import one of the OpenAPI files. If you think a recipe is missing, or you teach a course and need the sandbox set up a little differently, the contact form reaches us.

What happens when my sandbox expires?

It goes read-only for ten minutes, so you can still read what happened, and is then deleted together with its keys. During the last ten minutes of a session you can extend it twice from the console, by thirty minutes each time.

About Atlas Labs

Atlas Labs is a free, anonymous API sandbox run by Automation Atlas, the independent site that reviews automation tools. It gives you a private copy of a fictional printing company, Atlas Print Works & Co., with two real REST APIs, a Factory and a Head Office, so you can test automation tools, integrations and AI agents against systems that behave like production and belong to no vendor. There is no sign-up, no account and no payment: you press one button and get a sandbox for thirty minutes.

Start a sandbox Read the quickstart

At a glance

Reference table — Atlas Labs itself, not part of the fictional simulation. Limits are taken from the source code and were checked on `15 Oct 2026`.
Question	Answer
What is it?	A disposable sandbox of a fictional company with two REST systems: a Factory behind a `lab_fac_` key and a Head Office behind a `lab_off_` key. Signed webhooks, `Idempotency-Key` on money and stock writes, OpenAPI files and an MCP server.
What does it cost?	Nothing. No paid tier, no adverts, no account.
Sign-up?	None. No email, no password, no card. Both keys are shown once when the sandbox is created.
How long do I get?	`30 min`, extendable twice by `30 min` during the last `10 min`, so `90 min` at most. Then `10 min` read-only, then the sandbox is deleted.
Per visitor	`2` sandboxes at once and `10` a day per network address, counted through a one-way scrambled tag of the address, never the address itself.
Rate limits	`120` requests a minute per key, a separate ceiling per network address, and a lower one for requests without a key. A `429` carries `Retry-After`: back off and retry.
Capacity	There is a ceiling on how many sandboxes run at once and a queue behind it. If you are queued, the page tells you.
Who runs it?	Atlas Labs is part of Automation Atlas (automationatlas.io), the independent site that reviews automation tools, and is developed and funded by ShadowGen. It runs on infrastructure we pay for and look after.
Is the company real?	No. Every response says `meta.simulation: true`.

What is Atlas Labs?

Atlas Labs is a sandbox: a private, disposable copy of a fictional company that you can read from and write to over HTTP, from code, from a no-code tool or from an AI agent. Each sandbox has two systems that do not talk to each other, and each sits behind its own key.

The Factory

Press runs, plate changes and scrap rates. Stock, pallets and despatch notes. Machines that break down when you least want them to.

lab_fac_…

The Head Office

Orders, quotes and customer credit. Supplier invoices and payments. Staff, payroll and leave, if you switch HR on.

lab_off_…

Anything that has to cross between the two, such as turning an accepted sales order into a work order, is your automation's job, and that is the point. Every write that moves money or stock needs an Idempotency-Key, every state change fires a signed webhook, and the API answers 429 when you go too fast. What you build here meets the same behaviour it will meet in production, against a company that cannot be harmed.

You can use it from curl, from Zapier, Make, n8n, Power Automate or Pipedream, from Postman, or from any AI agent that speaks MCP. The quickstart gets you from nothing to a first authenticated write in four commands, and the tools page has a recipe for each of them, and for Moxo and Frends.

Why does Atlas Labs exist, and why is it free?

Atlas Labs exists because testing an automation tool before you connect it to production usually means using a vendor's demo, and a vendor's demo or sandbox is built to show that vendor's product at its best. The data is tidy, the failures are missing, and the tool you wanted to compare it with is not in the room.

Atlas Labs is the other kind of sandbox. It is curated by us, the automation engineers behind Automation Atlas, who build and fix these integrations for real businesses, and it is made of what we actually meet there: messy data, retries, rate limits, signed webhooks, a supplier that misses a date, two systems that disagree about the same order. Nothing in it exists to make one product look good.

Automation Atlas reviews automation tools, and the review we trust most is the one you run yourself. So instead of telling you how a tool copes with a retry, a rate limit or a signed webhook, we let you find out: in a sandbox we run ourselves, against a fictional company, free of charge. A sandbox that no vendor owns is the fairest test we know how to offer.

It is free because charging for it would defeat the purpose. It is not free for us: the bills and the hours arrive every month, and neither of them says meta.simulation: true. In return, Automation Atlas gets readers who have checked its claims for themselves, which is worth more to a review site than a paywall.

Can I use it for a course, a workshop or training?

Yes, and it works well for it. Each person gets a private copy of the fictional company with two real APIs, there is nothing to install and nothing to sign up for, and nothing one student does can reach anyone else's sandbox. Exercises that need data before anyone touches the API can use the history pack, a spreadsheet of the fictional company's past that downloads without a sandbox.

Plan for the limits. Every visitor shares the same allowance per network address: two sandboxes at once and ten a day. A class on one connection shares that allowance too, so a room that starts sandboxes together will run into it. Tell us the date, the group size and roughly how long the session runs, through the contact form with Teaching or training as the topic, and we can arrange adjusted limits for your session. Ask before the day rather than on it.

What we keep about you (and that is all)

We do not want your data. The sandbox was built to need almost none, and this is the whole list: what we keep, why, and for how long. It was checked against the source code on 16 Oct 2026, and if it changes, this page changes with it.

Your sandbox and everything in it: The fictional company, your two API keys (stored only as one-way fingerprints, never the keys themselves; a fingerprint cannot be turned back into a key), the Idempotency-Keys you choose for retries, and your webhook subscriptions (the URL stored encrypted, the hostname in plain text, and for each delivery the status code and timing your endpoint answered with, but never the response body). Why: so the sandbox works. How long: until ten minutes after it expires, or the moment you delete it; then everything in the sandbox is deleted.
A scrambled tag made from your network address: Your network address is scrambled one-way into a tag, using a random key that only the service holds. The key is deleted after a short time, once the daily limit no longer needs it, and without it the tag cannot be turned back into an address or tested against one. Until then the tag is a pseudonym rather than anonymous, so we keep it only where a limit needs it. Why: to enforce two sandboxes at a time and ten a day fairly, without knowing who you are. How long: with your sandbox, and the counters for the daily limit are cleared after about a day. If you waited in the queue, your queue ticket (the tag plus the options you chose) is deleted a short time after you claim your sandbox or the ticket lapses. If your sandbox joined a Major Order, its hourly contribution records carry the tag for a short time too (item six).
Your continent, never your country: One of seven continents, read from the connection or chosen by you when you start. Why: each sandbox joins a continent team on the public world map. How long: with your sandbox; the anonymous totals per continent are kept, and so is the continent on any Major Order contribution records (item six).
Enough to enforce a block, only if you abuse the service: Sustained abuse can get the connection blocked for a while. To enforce a block we keep what we need to recognise that connection, and nothing more. Why: to keep the service up for everyone else. How long: the block itself is deleted after a day. The alerts we write about abuse, such as when a block is applied, carry the scrambled tag (not the address) and are deleted automatically after a limited time. This is the only place anything about your real address is written.
Anonymous totals: Sandboxes created per day, atlases shipped, the world map and the standings. Why: the public map, and our own count of how much the service is used. How long: permanently; they contain no address and no key.
Major Order contribution records, if your sandbox joined one: A Major Order is a shared, fictional goal that every active sandbox can work towards on the world map. For each hour a sandbox contributes, one record is written holding the sandbox's id, the hour, the continent and the amount, and for a short time the same scrambled network tag as item two. Why: to cap what one network can add per hour, so that a crowd of real people is not outdone by one person farming sandboxes, and so that progress does not fall when a contributing sandbox is deleted. The tag is there only because the cap needs it. How long: the record is kept permanently, with the other world records. The tag is removed from it a short time after the hour's total is settled, and the sandbox id points at nothing once the sandbox is gone.
Short-lived server logs: The method, path and status code of each request, with keys, addresses, Idempotency-Keys and webhook URLs removed before anything is written (the webhook host is kept). Why: debugging and abuse handling. How long: a limited time, after which they are deleted automatically, and sooner when heavy traffic fills the logs' size cap.

Never stored, never done.

Cookies: none, on any page.
Analytics or third-party scripts on Labs pages: none; the fonts are served from our own domain.
Your country, and your real address anywhere outside a block (item four).
Your API keys in plain text, and the response bodies your webhook endpoint returns (only the status code and timing are kept, with the sandbox).
Your name or email in the sandbox: it never asks for them.
Anything you type into the contact form, which asks for an email only so we can reply: it goes to Formspree and our inbox, not into Labs.

This page says what is kept and for how long. It deliberately does not say how the scrambling and the encryption are done, or when the keys change: a page that helps you trust us should not also help someone get around the limits.

In the browser console your keys stay in the tab's memory unless you tick the box to keep them for the tab's lifetime; they are never written to local storage, and a key that appears in a URL is revoked. The site is served through Cloudflare, which terminates the connection and sees ordinary request metadata such as your IP address, as any content delivery network does; Cloudflare's own privacy policy covers that. The sandbox receives your country code from Cloudflare only to derive your continent, and never stores or logs it.

Who runs Atlas Labs?

Atlas Labs is part of Automation Atlas, the independent site that reviews automation tools, and is developed and funded by ShadowGen. It is curated by us: automation engineers who build and fix these integrations for real businesses, and who write the reviews. No tool vendor owns or operates the sandbox, and the recipes on the tools page are written and labelled the same way whichever vendor they describe. Atlas Print Works & Co. is a fictional company invented for Atlas Labs; every company, order and figure a sandbox returns is simulation data generated for that session.

How do I get in touch?

Use the contact form for feedback, a bug, a recipe suggestion or a course set-up. A person reads every message. To report a security problem, email cybersecurity@shadow-gen.com; the disclosure policy says what is in scope.

Open the contact form →

Questions people ask

Is Atlas Labs really free?: Yes. Atlas Labs is free of charge, with no paid tier, no adverts and no account. The limits (thirty minutes per sandbox, extendable to ninety; two sandboxes at once and ten a day per network address) exist to share capacity fairly between everyone who turns up, not to sell an upgrade.
Do I need to sign up?: No. There is no account, no email and no payment. Press Start, or call POST /labs/api/v1/sandboxes, and the response holds your two keys, shown once.
Why would you give this away?: Because Automation Atlas reviews automation tools, and a review is worth more when readers can check it themselves. A vendor's demo is built to show one product at its best; Atlas Labs is curated by automation engineers who build and fix these integrations for real businesses, so it has the retries, the rate limits, the signed webhooks and the supplier who misses a date. We would rather you form your own view than take ours on trust. It does cost us real money and real time, and the bills for it are the only invoices around here that are not fictional.
Is Atlas Print Works a real company?: No. Atlas Print Works & Co. is a fictional company invented for Atlas Labs. Nothing about its orders, staff, suppliers or finances describes a real business, every response carries meta.simulation: true, and every figure a sandbox returns is simulation data generated for that session.
What do you do with my data?: Almost nothing, because we hold almost none. Your sandbox is deleted ten minutes after it expires; we keep a one-way scrambled tag of your network address to enforce the limits, and your continent for the map. The key that scrambles the tag is deleted after a short time, and each record that carries the tag is deleted, or has the tag removed, once it has done its job. The records kept for good are anonymous totals and, if the sandbox joined a Major Order, its hourly contribution records, which keep the sandbox's id, the continent and the amount but not the tag. The sandbox never asks for your name or email (the contact form asks for an email only so we can reply, and it goes to Formspree, not into Labs), Labs pages set no cookies, and nothing that identifies you or your sandbox is shown anywhere public. The world map, the standings and the events feed show continent totals, which your sandbox's activity can add to. The full list is above.
Can I use it for a course, workshop or training?: Yes. Atlas Labs is free for teaching, each person gets a private copy of the fictional company, and there is nothing to install or sign up for. The limits are counted per network address, two sandboxes at once and ten a day, so a class on one connection can run into them. Tell us the date, the group size and roughly how long through the contact form, choosing Teaching or training, and we can arrange adjusted limits for your session. The history pack, a spreadsheet of the fictional company's past, can be downloaded without a sandbox.
I make an automation tool. Can I test it here?: Yes, the same as anyone else: point it at the base URL with one of your keys, or import one of the OpenAPI files. If you think a recipe is missing, or you teach a course and need the sandbox set up a little differently, the contact form reaches us.
What happens when my sandbox expires?: It goes read-only for ten minutes, so you can still read what happened, and is then deleted together with its keys. During the last ten minutes of a session you can extend it twice from the console, by thirty minutes each time.