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Guides · MIGRATE

AWS Lightsail to Vultr migration in 2026: cut bandwidth risk in half

Some prices quoted in this guide are out of date.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.

The single biggest reason to move from AWS Lightsail to Vultr is bandwidth overage risk. Lightsail's overage rate at $0.09/GB in US regions and $0.14/GB in Asia means a viral or misconfigured site can rack up four-figure monthly bills. Vultr charges $0.01/GB — a 9-14x smaller overage rate. Same base plan price at every tier.

Prices as of 2026-09-22.

Cost comparison

Spec AWS Lightsail Vultr Regular Delta
512 MB / 2 vCPU $5/mo Regular 1 GB $5/mo (1 vCPU, more RAM) tied
1 GB / 2 vCPU $7/mo Regular 2 GB $10/mo (1 vCPU, more RAM) +$3 Vultr
2 GB / 2 vCPU $12/mo Regular 4 GB $20/mo (2 vCPU, more RAM) +$8 Vultr
4 GB / 2 vCPU $24/mo Regular 4 GB $20/mo -$4 Vultr
8 GB / 2 vCPU $44/mo Regular 8 GB $40/mo (4 vCPU) -$4 Vultr

Vultr is competitive on base price and dominant on bandwidth overage.

When migrating to Vultr is the right call

  • Your workload has variable bandwidth. Media, video, file sharing, large asset serving.
  • You don't need AWS ecosystem services (S3, CloudFront, RDS integration).
  • You want more region choice. Vultr has ~30 regions to Lightsail's ~10.
  • You want SSH and API access without the AWS-console overhead.

When to NOT migrate

  • You use S3, CloudFront, SES, or Cognito and want them running alongside your VPS.
  • You have AWS enterprise credits you're burning through.
  • You need AWS-specific compliance certifications (FedRAMP, HIPAA-BAA, etc.).

Step-by-step

Lightsail and Vultr are both plain Linux VPS products. The migration is direct.

1. Provision the Vultr instance

Pick a region (Vultr has more choice than Lightsail). Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

2. Install stack

Same as your Lightsail setup. If you used a Lightsail "WordPress" or "LAMP" pre-configured image, install the same stack on Vultr manually (Nginx + PHP-FPM + MariaDB + Certbot).

3. Copy application and data

```bash

From Lightsail:

sudo tar czf /tmp/site.tgz /var/www /etc/nginx

scp /tmp/site.tgz root@vultr-ip:/tmp/

On Vultr:

tar xzf /tmp/site.tgz -C /

Database:

mysqldump --all-databases > /tmp/db.sql

scp /tmp/db.sql root@vultr-ip:/tmp/

Restore on Vultr:

mysql < /tmp/db.sql

```

4. Set up bandwidth alerts

Vultr's control panel shows bandwidth usage. Set an email alert at 75% of your plan's included TB. You now have a safety net you didn't have on Lightsail.

5. DNS cutover

Standard. TTL to 300s, change A records, re-issue Let's Encrypt.

6. Cancel Lightsail

Snapshot for insurance, delete the Lightsail instance and any Lightsail-attached storage/load balancers.

What you gain

  • 9-14x safer bandwidth overage rate. The main reason to do this migration.
  • More datacenter regions. ~30 vs Lightsail's ~10.
  • Better single-thread performance on Vultr High Frequency instances if you switch to HF.
  • No AWS console UX to navigate for basic tasks.
  • API for provisioning that doesn't require an AWS IAM setup.

What you lose

  • AWS ecosystem integration. S3, CloudFront, RDS, SES all still work but you're calling them from outside AWS with associated egress costs.
  • Consolidated billing if you were running everything on AWS.
  • AWS Marketplace one-click images. Vultr has some marketplace apps but the list is different.

Related guides

Prices as of 2026-09-22.