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Lowest cost per GB of RAM across 10 hosting providers 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Some prices quoted in this guide are out of date.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.
Memory is the resource that most small applications actually run out of first. Every database's working set, every language runtime's heap, every cache lives in RAM. Optimising a hosting purchase for cost per gigabyte of RAM is often the single most useful comparison you can do — it strips the noise of vCPU marketing and lets you see the raw resource pricing.
Every plan on our tracked list, sorted by cost per gigabyte of RAM. Prices as of 2026-09-22.
The full ranking
| # | Provider | Plan | Price | RAM | $/GB RAM |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Contabo | Cloud VPS 8 | $19.82 | 24 GB | $0.826 |
| 2 | Contabo | Cloud VPS 6 | $10.62 | 12 GB | $0.885 |
| 3 | Contabo | Cloud VPS 4 | $7.79 | 8 GB | $0.974 |
| 4 | Hetzner | CX32 | $7.60 | 8 GB | $0.950 |
| 5 | OVHcloud | VPS-2 | $8.50 | 8 GB | $1.063 |
| 6 | OVHcloud | VPS-3 | $12.32 | 12 GB | $1.027 |
| 7 | OVHcloud | VPS-1 | $4.54 | 4 GB | $1.135 |
| 8 | Hetzner | CX22 | $4.60 | 4 GB | $1.150 |
| 9 | Contabo | Cloud VPS 12 | $35.40 | 48 GB | $0.738 |
| 10 | Hetzner | CPX31 | $15.60 | 8 GB | $1.950 |
| 11 | Hetzner | CPX11 | $5.20 | 2 GB | $2.600 |
| 12 | UpCloud | Starter 4 GB / 2 vCPU | $12.96 | 4 GB | $3.240 |
| 13 | UpCloud | Starter 2 GB | $6.48 | 2 GB | $3.240 |
| 14 | UpCloud | Starter 1 GB | $3.24 | 1 GB | $3.240 |
| 15 | Vultr | Regular 4 GB | $20.00 | 4 GB | $5.000 |
| 16 | Vultr | Regular 8 GB | $40.00 | 8 GB | $5.000 |
| 17 | Vultr | Regular 2 GB | $10.00 | 2 GB | $5.000 |
| 18 | Vultr | Regular 1 GB | $5.00 | 1 GB | $5.000 |
| 19 | DigitalOcean | Basic 4 GB | $24.00 | 4 GB | $6.000 |
| 20 | DigitalOcean | Basic 8 GB | $48.00 | 8 GB | $6.000 |
| 21 | Akamai/Linode | Linode 4 GB | $24.00 | 4 GB | $6.000 |
| 22 | Akamai/Linode | Linode 8 GB | $48.00 | 8 GB | $6.000 |
| 23 | AWS Lightsail | General 4 GB | $24.00 | 4 GB | $6.000 |
| 24 | Cloudways | DO 4 GB (managed) | $54.00 | 4 GB | $13.500 |
Kinsta doesn't publish RAM per plan, so it's not directly comparable on this metric.
What the numbers say
Contabo Cloud VPS 12 at $35.40 is the cheapest RAM you can buy anywhere: $0.738 per gigabyte for 48 GB. That is a real number. If you have a workload that just needs a lot of RAM (large in-memory cache, big Postgres shared_buffers, ML model serving), Contabo's biggest tier is unbeatable value.
Hetzner and Contabo dominate the top of the list. Every plan under $1.20 per GB of RAM is one of these two providers. Everything else is 2-6x more expensive per unit.
DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr and AWS Lightsail have converged on $5-6 per GB. They price RAM identically because they compete for the same buyer segment (US developers who value ecosystem over cost). Nothing in the pricing table suggests one is a better RAM deal than another.
Cloudways at $13.50/GB is not a bad deal — it's a managed premium. You are paying the managed layer, not just the RAM.
Where cost per GB of RAM breaks
Kinsta. Kinsta prices by monthly visits, not RAM. A high-visit site with a small database and a low-visit site with a large database can pay the same. If your workload is RAM-heavy but low-traffic, Kinsta is expensive per functional unit. If your workload is high-traffic but RAM-light, Kinsta is competitive.
Managed database. A DigitalOcean Managed Postgres at 1 vCPU / 1 GB is $15/mo, or $15/GB RAM. Substantially more than the $6/GB you pay for a raw DO Droplet — because you're also paying for automatic failover, backups, point-in-time recovery, and monitoring. The right frame here isn't cost per GB — it's whether you'd otherwise have to build those features yourself.
Bare metal (not on this list). Hetzner Auction dedicated servers can hit $0.30/GB of RAM for 64+ GB configurations. If you have committed workload at scale, bare metal beats VPS on this metric decisively. Trade-off: no cloud provisioning, single-tenant hardware, harder to resize.
Which one you should actually pick
- RAM-first workload (large in-memory cache, Postgres shared_buffers, Elasticsearch), cost-first → Contabo Cloud VPS 12 at $35.40/mo for 48 GB.
- RAM-first at 8-16 GB, still cost-first → Hetzner CX32 at $7.60/mo or Contabo Cloud VPS 4 at $7.79/mo.
- Small workload, cheap sticker, RAM the resource that matters → Hetzner CX22 at $4.60/mo for 4 GB.
- You need Vultr HF's clock speed for a CPU-bound workload → you're not optimising for RAM; pick from the CPU-focused guides.
- Managed WordPress → cost per RAM doesn't apply; use best managed WordPress hosting.
Related guides
- Lowest cost per vCPU across 10 providers
- Cheapest 4 vCPU / 8 GB VPS
- Hetzner vs Contabo 2026
- Cheapest high-RAM VPS — the 16 GB+ analysis.
Prices as of 2026-09-22.