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How to read a hosting plan spec sheet (RAM, vCPU, storage, transfer) in 2026

Some prices quoted in this guide are out of date. It is being rebuilt on our price index; for current prices use the comparison pages, which show when each price was checked.

Every VPS provider publishes a table like this: plan name, price, vCPU, RAM, storage, transfer. The numbers look like they mean the same thing across providers. They don't. This guide explains what each field actually means, which values are honest specs, and which are marketing.

The five fields you always see

1. Price

What it says: monthly cost in USD (or the provider's home currency, converted).

What it means: on-demand monthly pricing, no commitment. This is honest at most providers.

Watch for:

  • Introductory rate vs renewal. Common at Bluehost, HostGator, GoDaddy, SiteGround — advertised price is for year 1, renewal is 2-3x. Cloud providers (DO, Vultr, Hetzner, Linode) don't do this.
  • Discounts on annual or 3-year commitments. Real discounts exist (10-20% typical). Ignore them for a first purchase; you don't know if you'll keep the plan that long.
  • Extra taxes. European providers usually quote ex-VAT. Add 19-25% depending on your country.

2. vCPU

What it says: number of virtual CPU cores.

What it means: the number of virtualised hardware threads presented to your guest OS. NOT the number of dedicated physical cores.

Watch for:

  • Oversubscription. Providers put more vCPUs on a host than there are hardware threads. Contabo runs the highest ratio; Hetzner CCX and Vultr Bare Metal run 1:1.
  • Clock speed. A vCPU on Vultr HF (3.7 GHz) does about 1.5-2x the work of a vCPU on DigitalOcean Basic (2.4 GHz).
  • Dedicated vs shared. Dedicated plans (labeled "Premium", "CPU-Optimized", "Bare Metal", "Dedicated") cost more but deliver consistent performance under load.

See our vCPU vs CPU explained for the deep version.

3. RAM

What it says: memory in GB.

What it means: allocated RAM for your guest OS. Usually honest — RAM is hard to fake.

Watch for:

  • Swap. Some providers show "1 GB RAM + 1 GB swap" as "2 GB". Only the 1 GB is real. Swap is disk paging.
  • Managed WordPress plans that don't publish RAM. Kinsta doesn't publish RAM per plan; they price by monthly visits. Not deceptive, but not directly comparable to raw VPS.

4. Storage

What it says: disk space in GB.

What it means: included block storage on the plan.

Watch for:

  • Drive type. NVMe > SSD > SATA SSD > spinning disk. Most modern providers are on NVMe by default. Older shared hosting products still run SATA SSD.
  • Additional block storage as a separate line item (usually $0.05-0.10/GB/month) if the plan's included storage is small.
  • Backup storage. Backups are usually additional; some managed WordPress hosts include backup storage in the plan (Kinsta, Cloudways).

5. Transfer / Bandwidth

What it says: monthly outbound transfer allowance, usually in TB.

What it means: how much data you can send out (egress) per month before overage fees apply.

Watch for:

  • "Unmetered". Almost never actually unmetered — usually port-speed-limited or throttled under sustained load. Contabo and OVHcloud are the main examples. See our best VPS with unmetered bandwidth guide.
  • Overage rate. DO and Vultr at $0.01/GB (friendly). AWS Lightsail at $0.09/GB in US, $0.14/GB in Asia (dangerous).
  • Ingress vs egress. Ingress (data coming in) is almost always free. Egress is what's counted.
  • Inter-datacenter transfer. Cross-region can be billed differently. Read the fine print.

Fields you sometimes see

CPU generation / architecture

  • Intel Xeon Cascade Lake: older, still common at DO, Linode.
  • Intel Xeon Ice Lake: newer, common at Hetzner CX, Vultr HF.
  • AMD EPYC Milan/Genoa: newer, common at Hetzner CPX, Vultr High Performance.

Newer generations = better single-thread performance per dollar. Not a deal-breaker if the price is right.

IPv4 and IPv6

  • Almost every VPS includes 1 IPv4 and a /64 IPv6.
  • Additional IPv4 is billed extra now on many providers ($1-5/mo each) due to IPv4 scarcity.
  • Some providers charge separately for IPv4 at all. Read carefully.

Regions

  • Datacenter locations the plan is available in.
  • Not every plan is available at every region. Larger plans may only be in flagship datacenters.
  • Prices sometimes vary slightly by region.

Included backup

  • Some plans include automated backups; most charge extra (~20% of plan cost).
  • Backup retention (7 days? 14? 30?) varies.

Support tier

  • Ticket support is standard.
  • Chat and phone support are often premium tiers.
  • "24/7" is nearly universal but response times vary from minutes (Kinsta) to hours (Contabo).

Fields that are almost always marketing

  • "Enterprise-grade". Means nothing.
  • "99.99% uptime". Everyone claims this. Actual uptime histories are what matter; check the provider's public status page.
  • "Cloudflare included". Everyone has Cloudflare's free tier available. Cloudflare Enterprise (real value) is only included on higher tiers of managed hosts.
  • "Free SSL". Let's Encrypt is universal. Every provider offers it.
  • "Money-back guarantee". Usually 7-30 days. Not deceptive, but not a differentiator.

Comparing across providers: the 4-column rule

For a real like-for-like comparison, always check:

1. Price

2. Effective vCPU throughput (vCPU count × relative performance factor)

3. RAM

4. Transfer

Everything else is either irrelevant to your use case or subordinate to these four.

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