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.
UpCloud vs Vultr
Entry prices are within a dollar of each other (UpCloud $3.50, Vultr $3.50), so price alone does not decide it. Vultr lists more regions, which matters if latency to a specific city is your constraint. Vultr is the better pick for latency-sensitive projects that need a specific city, and price-driven builders comfortable alone.
UpCloud
$3.50/mo entry
Workloads that need consistent IOPS or heavy egress without a bandwidth-priced surprise at month end.
Vultr
$3.50/mo entry
Latency-sensitive projects that need a specific city, and price-driven builders comfortable alone.
New Vultr accounts opened through our link get $300 of credit to use within 30 days. A card or PayPal is required; duplicate accounts are not eligible. Vultr pays us a referral fee if you stay a paying customer.
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 | UpCloud | Vultr | Better |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry plan price / month | $3.50 | $3.50 | |
| Entry plan vCPU | 1 | 1 | |
| Entry plan RAM | 1 GB | 0.5 GB | UpCloud |
| Entry plan storage | 10 GB | 10 GB | |
| Listed regions | 15 | 32 | Vultr |
| Management model | Unmanaged (you run the OS) | Unmanaged (you run the OS) | |
| Support | Ticket support included on all plans; the same team backs the paid Managed Databases product. | Ticket support; documentation is sparse relative to competitors. | |
| Billing | Hourly, capped at 28 days (672 hours) per calendar month. Prices are published in euros and US dollars. | Hourly metering, capped at the listed monthly price. | |
| Free tier | 30-day free trial available for new accounts; no permanent 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 | UpCloud | Vultr | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 vCPU / 1 GB | $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. | $5.00Regular 1GB · 1 vCPU · 1 GB · 25 GBEntry plan with a public IPv4 address and 1GB of RAM. | UpCloud cheaper by $1.50 |
| 2 vCPU / 4 GB | $14.00Starter 4GB / 2 vCPU · 2 vCPU · 4 GB · 30 GBThe tier that reads as a direct swap for the DigitalOcean 4GB Droplet. | $20.00Regular 4GB · 2 vCPU · 4 GB · 80 GBDirect competitor to the DigitalOcean 4GB Droplet, priced below it. | UpCloud cheaper by $6.00 |
| 4 vCPU / 8 GB | $24.00Starter 8GB / 4 vCPU · 4 vCPU · 8 GB · 40 GBFour cores at 8 GB. | $40.00Regular 8GB · 4 vCPU · 8 GB · 160 GBFour cores at a lower list price than most rivals here. | UpCloud cheaper by $16.00 |
| 8 vCPU / 16 GB | no plan this size | $160.00Regular 32GB · 8 vCPU · 32 GB · 640 GBEight shared cores and 32GB on the Regular Performance line. | — |
Every provider at these sizes, ranked: 1 GB RAM · 4 GB RAM · 8 GB RAM · 16 GB RAM
Where each one wins and loses
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.
Vultr
Vultr competes on footprint and price rather than on hand-holding. It lists more data-centre locations than any other cloud server provider we track, which matters if latency to a specific city is your binding constraint. The trade-off is a thinner documentation library and a support experience aimed at people who already know what a kernel panic is.
Strengths
- Largest region list here, including several markets rivals do not cover
- High Frequency instances put NVMe and faster clocks at a low price point
- Hourly billing with no minimum commitment
Weaknesses
- Unmanaged, with noticeably less tutorial content than DigitalOcean
- Support is functional rather than educational
- Cheapest plans are IPv6-only in some regions - check before you commit
Support: Ticket support; documentation is sparse relative to competitors.
Billing: Hourly metering, capped at the listed monthly price.
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 | UpCloud | Vultr |
|---|---|---|
| Plan (2 vCPU / 4 GB) | $14.00 | $20.00 |
| Automatic backups | not captured yet | 20% = +$4.00 ($24.00 total) |
| Outbound traffic beyond the allowance | not captured yet | $0.01/GB over allowance |
| Smallest managed load balancer | not captured yet | $10.00/mo |
Sources: docs.vultr.com · docs.vultr.com · www.vultr.com
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: UpCloud and Vultr.
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
UpCloud and Vultr both have data centres in these places. Each page ranks every provider there at the price charged in that location.
- Cheapest VPS in the US
- Cheapest VPS in the UK
- Cheapest VPS in Germany
- Cheapest VPS in the Netherlands
- Cheapest VPS in Sweden
- Cheapest VPS in Spain
- Cheapest VPS in Poland
- Cheapest VPS in Singapore
- Cheapest VPS in Australia
- Cheapest VPS in Chicago
- Cheapest VPS in the New York area
- Cheapest VPS in Silicon Valley
- Cheapest VPS in Frankfurt
- Cheapest VPS in London
- Cheapest VPS in Amsterdam
- Cheapest VPS in Stockholm
- Cheapest VPS in Sydney
- Cheapest VPS in Europe
- Cheapest VPS in Asia
- Cheapest VPS in North America
UpCloud vs Vultr — frequently asked
Every answer is computed from this pair's own prices and costs.
- Which is cheaper for 1 vCPU / 1 GB, UpCloud or Vultr?
- UpCloud Starter 1GB at $3.50/mo, which is $1.50 (30%) less than Vultr Regular 1GB at $5.00/mo.
- How many datacentre locations do UpCloud and Vultr have?
- UpCloud lists 15 and Vultr lists 32.
- What do backups add at UpCloud and Vultr?
- UpCloud: not captured yet; Vultr: 20% of the plan price.