Disclosure: we may earn a commission or referral reward from CloudCone, Contabo, DigitalOcean (account credit, not cash), Hostwinds, InterServer, RackNerd, VPSDime and Vultr if you sign up through our links. It does not change the price you pay. Every other provider pays us nothing.
Cloudways vs UpCloud
This is not a like-for-like contest. UpCloud sells raw compute and hands you the operating system; Cloudways sells a managed service and charges for the work you no longer do. Compare them only if you genuinely have not decided whether to run the server yourself.
Cloudways
$14.00/mo entry
Freelancers and small agencies hosting several client sites on one managed server.
UpCloud
$3.50/mo entry
Workloads that need consistent IOPS or heavy egress without a bandwidth-priced surprise at month end.
Specification differences
Entry plans compared line by line. Rows marked with a dash are preferences rather than measurable wins, so we do not pick a side on them.
| Attribute | Cloudways | UpCloud | Better |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry plan price / month | $14.00 | $3.50 | UpCloud |
| Entry plan vCPU | 1 | 1 | |
| Entry plan RAM | 1 GB | 1 GB | |
| Entry plan storage | 25 GB | 10 GB | Cloudways |
| Listed regions | 25 | 15 | Cloudways |
| Management model | Managed | Unmanaged (you run the OS) | |
| Support | 24/7 live chat and tickets; premium support tiers cost extra. | Ticket support included on all plans; the same team backs the paid Managed Databases product. | |
| Billing | Hourly metering billed monthly, pay-as-you-go. | Hourly, capped at 28 days (672 hours) per calendar month. Prices are published in euros and US dollars. | |
| Free tier | Free trial available for new accounts; no permanent free tier. | 30-day free trial available for new accounts; no permanent free tier. |
Same size, side by side
The cheapest plan from each provider that meets each size, so the comparison is between equal servers rather than two entry plans. Prices include a separately-billed IPv4 address where the provider charges for one.
| Size | Cloudways | UpCloud | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 vCPU / 1 GB | no plan this size | $3.50Starter 1GB · 1 vCPU · 1 GB · 10 GBEntry Starter plan, with a per-customer purchase limit. Zero-cost egress under the Fair Transfer Policy. | — |
| 2 vCPU / 4 GB | no plan this size | $14.00Starter 4GB / 2 vCPU · 2 vCPU · 4 GB · 30 GBThe tier that reads as a direct swap for the DigitalOcean 4GB Droplet. | — |
| 4 vCPU / 8 GB | no plan this size | $24.00Starter 8GB / 4 vCPU · 4 vCPU · 8 GB · 40 GBFour cores at 8 GB. | — |
Every provider at these sizes, ranked: 1 GB RAM · 4 GB RAM · 8 GB RAM
Where each one wins and loses
Cloudways
Cloudways does not own datacentres. It provisions servers on underlying clouds such as DigitalOcean and Vultr and adds the managed layer on top: stack configuration, caching, staging, automated backups and one-click server maintenance. You pay a premium over the raw instance for not having to be a sysadmin, while keeping the ability to move up in size.
Strengths
- Managed stack, caching and staging without full agency pricing
- Choice of underlying cloud provider and region
- Unlimited sites per server within the resources you buy
- Vertical scaling without rebuilding the server
Weaknesses
- Clear markup over provisioning the same instance yourself
- You are dependent on two vendors rather than one
- Email hosting is a paid add-on, not included
Support: 24/7 live chat and tickets; premium support tiers cost extra.
Billing: Hourly metering billed monthly, pay-as-you-go.
Free tier: Free trial available for new accounts; no permanent free tier.
UpCloud
UpCloud is a Finnish independent cloud that competes on storage performance and transfer terms rather than headline price. Its MaxIOPS storage tier and zero-cost egress policy make it a natural upgrade from a budget host if you have hit an IOPS ceiling or a fair-use letter about egress. It publishes a global US dollar price for every plan as well as a euro price; we list the dollar price, read daily from UpCloud’s own price calculator.
Strengths
- Zero-cost egress across every product, subject to a Fair Transfer Policy
- MaxIOPS storage tier reaches up to 100k IOPS, unusual at this price band
- Fixed-price Starter plans as an on-ramp; billed by the hour, up to a 28-day monthly cap
- 99.99% SLA on Starter and 99.999% on Cloud Native and above
Weaknesses
- Helsinki costs more than the other zones for the older General Purpose, High CPU and High Memory plans
- The 1GB Starter is limited to five concurrent deployments per customer
- Region map is smaller than DigitalOcean’s despite the premium positioning
- Ecosystem is smaller: fewer marketplace images and community tutorials than the big names
Support: Ticket support included on all plans; the same team backs the paid Managed Databases product.
Billing: Hourly, capped at 28 days (672 hours) per calendar month. Prices are published in euros and US dollars.
Free tier: 30-day free trial available for new accounts; no permanent free tier.
The full cost stack
What a server costs beyond its sticker price. Only figures read from each provider's own documentation appear; a gap says “not captured yet”.
| Item | Cloudways | UpCloud |
|---|---|---|
| Plan | n/a | n/a |
| Automatic backups | not captured yet | not captured yet |
| Outbound traffic beyond the allowance | not captured yet | not captured yet |
| Smallest managed load balancer | not captured yet | not captured yet |
Sources: none captured yet for this pair.
Price changes we have logged
No tracked price change for either provider yet.
Full record at the change log.
Every plan
The complete plan ladders, with the date and source of every price, are on each provider's page: Cloudways and UpCloud.
All figures are the providers' own published list prices in USD, on-demand monthly. The index was last refreshed 2026-10-14, and every row shows the date its own price was read. Nothing here is live or negotiated pricing. Where a provider bills a public IPv4 address on top, it is added to the monthly price, the ranking and every cost per vCPU or per GB, and the row shows the parts: the server, any disk priced apart, and the IPv4 charge. Some prices exclude VAT or need a commitment; the plan notes say which. Check the provider's pricing page before you commit.
Related comparisons
Cloudways vs UpCloud — frequently asked
Every answer is computed from this pair's own prices and costs.
- How many datacentre locations do Cloudways and UpCloud have?
- Cloudways lists 25 and UpCloud lists 15.