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.
Contabo vs RackNerd
Contabo starts $11.39 per month cheaper at the entry tier. RackNerd lists more regions, which matters if latency to a specific city is your constraint. RackNerd is the better pick for buyers who want a US location close to their users and plan to take an annual or promotional offer.
Contabo
$6.60/mo entry
Home labs, dev boxes and low-traffic apps where memory and disk matter more than sub-millisecond IOPS.
RackNerd
$17.99/mo entry
Buyers who want a US location close to their users and plan to take an annual or promotional offer.
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 | Contabo | RackNerd | Better |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry plan price / month | $6.60 | $17.99 | Contabo |
| Entry plan vCPU | 4 | 2 | Contabo |
| Entry plan RAM | 8 GB | 1 GB | Contabo |
| Entry plan storage | 100 GB | 50 GB | Contabo |
| Listed regions | 9 | 12 | RackNerd |
| Management model | Unmanaged (you run the OS) | Unmanaged (you run the OS) | |
| Support | Ticket support included; response times are slower than DigitalOcean or Vultr under peak load. | Support is staffed 24x7, according to its VPS page. | |
| Billing | Monthly subscription (1, 3, 6, 12 or 24 months); price displayed excludes VAT. | Monthly on the listed plans; the smallest plan is sold per year. | |
| Free tier | No free tier. | No 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 | Contabo | RackNerd | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 vCPU / 1 GB | $6.60Cloud VPS 4 · 4 vCPU · 8 GB · 100 GBFour cores and 8 GB RAM on a rolling monthly contract. Unlimited traffic under a fair-use policy, 200 Mbps port. | $17.99KVM 1GB · 2 vCPU · 1 GB · 50 GBRegular monthly price. Includes one IPv4 address and a 1 Gbps port. | Contabo cheaper by $11.39 |
| 2 vCPU / 4 GB | $6.60Cloud VPS 4 · 4 vCPU · 8 GB · 100 GBFour cores and 8 GB RAM on a rolling monthly contract. Unlimited traffic under a fair-use policy, 200 Mbps port. | $24.59KVM 4GB · 4 vCPU · 4 GB · 130 GBRegular monthly price. Includes one IPv4 address and a 1 Gbps port. | Contabo cheaper by $17.99 |
| 4 vCPU / 8 GB | $6.60Cloud VPS 4 · 4 vCPU · 8 GB · 100 GBFour cores and 8 GB RAM on a rolling monthly contract. Unlimited traffic under a fair-use policy, 200 Mbps port. | $36.59KVM 8GB · 6 vCPU · 8 GB · 220 GBRegular monthly price. Includes one IPv4 address and a 1 Gbps port. | Contabo cheaper by $29.99 |
| 8 vCPU / 16 GB | $16.80Cloud VPS 8 · 8 vCPU · 24 GB · 300 GBEight cores, 24 GB RAM and 300 GB SSD. Unlimited traffic under a fair-use policy at 600 Mbps. | no plan this size | — |
Every provider at these sizes, ranked: 1 GB RAM · 4 GB RAM · 8 GB RAM · 16 GB RAM
Where each one wins and loses
Contabo
Contabo prices its Cloud VPS range on a plan-per-month basis rather than by-the-hour, and the resulting month-to-month prices are the lowest we track at most memory sizes from 8 GB up. The trade-off is upfront: the storage is SSD rather than NVMe, minimum contract is one month, and the effective monthly price falls further only if you pre-pay 24 months.
Strengths
- Cheapest RAM-per-dollar in this list at every tier from 8 GB up
- Unlimited traffic on every plan, subject to a fair-use policy that allows throttling
- One-month minimum contract; longer terms cut the effective monthly cost further
- Adequate US, EU and APAC datacentre coverage for a budget provider
Weaknesses
- SSD storage on Core VPS, not NVMe — cheaper providers now match the spec, this one does not
- Reputation for setup queues on new accounts, especially outside the EU
- Public bandwidth is capped at 200–800 Mbps depending on the plan
- Historically underinvested control panel; API surface is thinner than DigitalOcean’s
Support: Ticket support included; response times are slower than DigitalOcean or Vultr under peak load.
Billing: Monthly subscription (1, 3, 6, 12 or 24 months); price displayed excludes VAT.
Free tier: No free tier.
RackNerd
RackNerd sells KVM virtual servers from twelve listed locations, most of them in the United States, on RAID-10 SSD storage with a 1 Gbps port and one IPv4 address included on every plan. The regular monthly prices listed here are the like-for-like figure; the company also runs time-limited promotions, which belong on the deals page, not in a price index.
Strengths
- Twelve listed locations, including Amsterdam, Dublin, France and Toronto
- A free IPv4 address and a 1 Gbps port come with every plan
- Storage is RAID-10 SSD, so a single disk failure does not take the server down
Weaknesses
- The regular monthly list price is higher than the same-size plans at DigitalOcean, Vultr and Akamai Cloud
- Unmanaged: you run the operating system, security updates and backups yourself
- Cheapest plans are sold per year, so a monthly comparison needs the 1 GB plan and up
Support: Support is staffed 24x7, according to its VPS page.
Billing: Monthly on the listed plans; the smallest plan is sold per year.
Free tier: No free tier.
The full cost stack
What a server costs beyond its sticker price, shown for 2 vCPU / 4 GB. Only figures read from each provider's own documentation appear; a gap says “not captured yet”.
| Item | Contabo | RackNerd |
|---|---|---|
| Plan (2 vCPU / 4 GB) | $6.60 | $24.59 |
| 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: Contabo and RackNerd.
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
Where both sell
Contabo and RackNerd both have data centres in these places. Each page ranks every provider there at the price charged in that location.
Contabo vs RackNerd — frequently asked
Every answer is computed from this pair's own prices and costs.
- Which is cheaper for 1 vCPU / 1 GB, Contabo or RackNerd?
- Contabo Cloud VPS 4 at $6.60/mo, which is $11.39 (63%) less than RackNerd KVM 1GB at $17.99/mo.
- How many datacentre locations do Contabo and RackNerd have?
- Contabo lists 9 and RackNerd lists 12.