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.
Prices refreshed 2026-10-14
How much does a VPS cost?
We track 209 unmanaged VPS plans at 44 providers, each read from the provider's own price list. A server with 1 GB of RAM costs from $2.33 to $17.99 a month (median $5.00); one with 4 GB from $5.00 to $42.00 (median $17.00). The headline price is not the whole bill: some providers charge for the IPv4 address, need you to prepay a year or two, quote prices without VAT, or charge more in some cities.
Price by size
Plans with exactly this much RAM, at their real monthly cost (a separately billed IPv4 address included).
| RAM | Cheapest | Median | Most expensive | Plans |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 GB | $2.33CloudCone SSD VPS 1 (12-month commitment) | $5.00 | $17.99RackNerd KVM 1GB | 2724 providers |
| 2 GB | $2.41Webdock VPS Essential (ex-VAT) | $10.00 | $25.00Kamatera Standard | 3734 providers |
| 4 GB | $5.00VPSDime Linux 4GB | $17.00 | $42.00AWS Lightsail Compute optimized 4GB | 4342 providers |
| 8 GB | $6.60Contabo Cloud VPS 4 (ex-VAT) | $29.50 | $84.00AWS Lightsail Compute optimized 8GB | 4036 providers |
| 16 GB | $12.99Hostinger KVM 4 (24-month commitment, ex-VAT) | $48.50 | $100.00LunaNode s.16 | 2826 providers |
| 32 GB | $25.99Hostinger KVM 8 (24-month commitment, ex-VAT) | $144.00 | $192.00Akamai Cloud (Linode) Linode 32GB | 1312 providers |
What your monthly budget buys
Up to $5.00
Month to month, the most server is VPSDime Linux 4GB: 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM for $5.00.
Up to $10.00
Month to month, the most server is Contabo Cloud VPS 6: 6 vCPU, 12 GB RAM for $9.00 (ex-VAT).
Up to $20.00
Month to month, the most server is Contabo Cloud VPS 8: 8 vCPU, 24 GB RAM for $16.80 (ex-VAT).
Costs the headline price leaves out
- IPv4 address. Scaleway ($4.08 a month), Hetzner ($0.60 a month) and netcup ($0.56 a month) bill the public IPv4 address separately; our rankings add it.
- Prepayment. The listed price needs a commitment at CloudCone (12 months), IONOS (12 months) and Hostinger (24 months). Renewal prices can be higher than the introductory price.
- VAT. Webdock, Aruba Cloud, Cherry Servers, Scaleway, Alwyzon, Virtono, Civo, Hostinger, Contabo, Hetzner, netcup, LiteServer and Exoscale quote prices without VAT, which is added at checkout where it applies.
- Traffic over the allowance. Vultr $0.01 per GB, DigitalOcean $0.01 per GB and AWS Lightsail $0.09 per GB.
- Backups. Vultr 20% of the plan price, DigitalOcean 20% of the plan price and Hetzner 20% of the plan price for automatic backups.
Which plan wins at each size once these are counted: the printed price vs the price you pay.
Where the same plan costs more
- netcup charges 89% to 125% more in Singapore.
- Contabo charges 48% to 59% more in Japan.
- Contabo charges 45% to 55% more in India.
- Vultr charges 50% more in São Paulo.
- Contabo charges 40% to 49% more in Australia (Sydney).
- Akamai Cloud (Linode) charges 40% more in São Paulo.
- Hetzner charges 20% to 38% more in Singapore.
- Contabo charges 29% to 35% more in US East.
- Contabo charges 24% to 30% more in US West.
- Contabo charges 20% to 24% more in the UK and US Central.
- Akamai Cloud (Linode) charges 20% more in Jakarta.
- netcup charges 15% to 16% more in Nuremberg.
- netcup charges 15% to 16% more in Vienna.
- netcup charges 15% to 16% more in Amsterdam.
- netcup charges 15% to 16% more in Manassas.
- Hetzner, AWS Lightsail, OVHcloud, GreenCloudVPS, HostHatch and Kamatera include less traffic in some Asia-Pacific (and, for AWS Lightsail, São Paulo) locations.
The country and city pages use the price charged there:
Countries
Managed hosting costs more for the same server
- Cloudways charges $14.00 a month for its DO 1GB (managed) server; the same 1 GB DigitalOcean server costs $6.00 unmanaged. The difference pays for the server management, updates and support.
- Cloudways charges $28.00 a month for its DO 2GB (managed) server; the same 2 GB DigitalOcean server costs $12.00 unmanaged. The difference pays for the server management, updates and support.
- Cloudways charges $54.00 a month for its DO 4GB (managed) server; the same 4 GB DigitalOcean server costs $24.00 unmanaged. The difference pays for the server management, updates and support.
How these numbers are made
Each price is the provider's list price for a month, read from its own price API or pricing page and dated. Plans that cannot be ordered today, plans without a public IPv4 address and stale readings are left out. The full dataset is open: download it, or read the methodology.
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.