# Contabo

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/hosting/contabo/

German hosting company selling KVM virtual private servers, virtual dedicated servers and dedicated servers from data centers in Europe, the US, the UK, Asia and Australia.

## Who it suits

The most memory per euro in this comparison: Cloud VPS 4 has 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM and 100 GB SSD for €5.50 a month on a one-month term, where the other 8 GB plans listed here cost €14.50 to $48, with traffic sold as unlimited and regions in the EU, US, UK, Asia and Australia.

Consider something else if You need guarantees rather than capacity: the Core VPS line is shared, 'unlimited' traffic is throttled at Contabo's discretion under fair use, the 99.9% commitment covers connectivity with no stated credits, backups cost extra, and support averages 2 hours. Regions outside the EU add a monthly surcharge.

## iScore

57 / 100 (80% interval 49–65), rank 9 of 16 in hosting — interval overlaps the next rank, so this is an ordering, not a finding.

inetGeek's own reading, computed from sourced facts against category peers by disclosed rules. Not a provider claim. Intervals are 80%; a provider with few documented facts is pulled toward the category middle rather than scored on what little is known.
Method: https://inetgeek.com/iscore/. Full output with every criterion's basis: https://inetgeek.com/scores.json. Every hosting peer ranked: https://inetgeek.com/hosting/contabo/alternatives/

- Price: 37 (16–59), weight 29%, 1 of 5 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: egress_overage_price, free_card_required, free_offer_type, free_tier
- Capacity and limits: 59 (47–71), weight 29%, 3 of 6 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: backup_retention, bandwidth_included, file_count_limit
- Capabilities: 76 (69–82), weight 10%, 4 of 11 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: autoscaling, connection_pooling, edge_network, git_deploy, persistent_processes, scale_to_zero, scheduled_jobs
- Trust and compliance: 77 (69–86), weight 14%, 7 of 13 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: customer_managed_keys, hipaa_eligible, iso27001, pci_dss, soc2, support_response_time
- Evidence: 68 (68–68), weight 10%, 4 of 4 criteria scored
- Adoption: 51 (9–94), weight 10%, 0 of 2 criteria scored

## What the documentation says

### Pricing

- Entry paid plan: €5.50/month for Cloud VPS 4 (4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, 100 GB SSD) on a one-month term, with no setup fee, in the European Union region, which the configurator lists as free; the United Kingdom region adds €1.05/month on this plan. The same plan is €4.68/month on a 12-month term and €4.40/month on a 24-month term, the rate Contabo's plan pages headline. Converted for comparison at the ECB reference rate of 1 EUR = 1.1367 USD (2026-09-24, api.frankfurter.dev), which puts the one-month price at about $6.25/month. Contabo shows USD only client-side, with the VAT of the visitor's detected tax country added, so the EUR figure from the order configurator is used; the conversion is ours and moves with the rate. ([source](https://contabo.com/en/vps/cloud-vps-core-4), read 2026-09-25)
- Pricing model: Fixed monthly price on a contract term the customer chooses, from one month; the contract renews for a term of the same length. Plan pages headline the effective monthly rate of a 24-month subscription (Cloud VPS 4: €4.40 against €5.50 undiscounted). Cancellation notice is none on prepaid terms and 4 weeks on post-paid. ([source](https://contabo.com/en/vps/), read 2026-09-25)
- Egress over allowance: No per-GB overage price: outbound traffic is sold as unlimited under a fair-usage policy, and the remedy Contabo states for exceptionally high or disruptive use is throttling at its discretion, not a charge. ([source](https://help.contabo.com/en/support/solutions/articles/103000271195-are-there-any-bandwidth-or-traffic-limits-at-contabo-), read 2026-09-25)
- When you exceed a cap: Throttled, not billed: traffic above what Contabo judges fair use can have its port speed throttled at Contabo's discretion; Contabo says it notifies by email first and works with the customer on a solution. ([source](https://help.contabo.com/en/support/solutions/articles/103000271195-are-there-any-bandwidth-or-traffic-limits-at-contabo-), read 2026-09-25)

### Limits

- Storage (entry plan): 100 GB SSD on Cloud VPS 4, the smallest plan in the Core VPS line; a paid Storage Extension doubles it ([source](https://contabo.com/en/vps/), read 2026-09-25)
- Memory (entry plan): 8 GB RAM on Cloud VPS 4, the smallest plan in the Core VPS line ([source](https://contabo.com/en/vps/), read 2026-09-25)
- Included bandwidth: Unlimited inbound and outbound traffic on every Cloud VPS plan, under a fair-usage policy. The limit is port speed instead: 200 Mbit/s on Cloud VPS 4, up to 1 Gbit/s on the larger plans. ([source](https://contabo.com/en/vps/), read 2026-09-25)

### Deployment

- Docker deployment: Limited ([source](https://contabo.com/en/coolify-vps/), read 2026-09-25)
- Containers: Limited ([source](https://contabo.com/en/coolify-vps/), read 2026-09-25)

### Infrastructure

- Persistent storage: Supported ([source](https://contabo.com/en/vps/), read 2026-09-25)
- Managed databases: Not supported ([source](https://contabo.com/en/database-hosting/), read 2026-09-25)
- Regions: European Union (5 data centers in Germany); US East (New York); US West (Seattle); US Central (St. Louis); United Kingdom (Portsmouth); Asia (Singapore); Asia (Japan, Tokyo); Australia (Sydney); India. Contabo counts 9 regions and 11 locations. ([source](https://contabo.com/en/locations/), read 2026-09-25)
- Uptime SLA: 99.9% annual average availability of physical connectivity for VPS, VDS, dedicated servers and object storage, excluding force majeure and announced maintenance, in the General Terms and Conditions. No service credits are stated. ([source](https://contabo.com/en/legal/terms-and-conditions/), read 2026-09-25)

### Data

- Backup retention: Auto Backup, a paid add-on, takes daily incremental off-server backups and keeps up to 10, deleting the oldest first; snapshots, separately, are kept 30 days. Contabo does not guarantee recoverability. ([source](https://contabo.com/en/auto-backup/), read 2026-09-25)

### Support

- Support on entry paid plan: Technical assistance for the VPS itself - network, hardware and initial setup of 1-click add-ons - is included; software on the server is the customer's responsibility. Support is by chat or ticket from the Customer Panel, in English and German only. ([source](https://contabo.com/en/vps/), read 2026-09-25)
- Response time commitment: 2 hours average response time, as Contabo's support page reports it; a published average rather than a guaranteed target, and the same page says waiting time is currently longer than usual. ([source](https://contabo.com/en/support-experience/), read 2026-09-25)

### Compliance

- GDPR / data residency: The customer picks the server location; choosing a region other than the European Union (served from data centers in Germany) gives the option of EU Standard Contractual Clauses plus a data processing agreement, which can be created in the Customer Panel. ([source](https://contabo.com/en/legal/terms-and-conditions/), read 2026-09-25)
- Encryption at rest: Not offered as a provider feature in the terms: Contabo's GTCs state it has the technical means to inspect data a customer stores on the server unless the customer uses its own encryption. ([source](https://contabo.com/en/legal/terms-and-conditions/), read 2026-09-25)
- Role-based access control: Sub-users in the Customer Panel get one of several roles - Full Access, Billing Administrator, Technician, Abuse & Fraud (read-only), Invoice, and S3 Object Storage read-only or read-write - each scoped to part of the account. ([source](https://help.contabo.com/en/support/solutions/articles/103000408305-how-can-i-add-more-users-under-my-account-), read 2026-09-25)
- Private networking / VPC: Private networks (layer 2, isolated, unmetered traffic) between Cloud VPS and VDS instances, as a paid add-on: €2.73/month per Cloud VPS, €6.89/month per Cloud VDS, charged per instance rather than per network. ([source](https://contabo.com/en/private-networking/), read 2026-09-25)
- Dedicated infrastructure: Max Performance VPS (Cloud VDS) plans have dedicated AMD EPYC cores and guaranteed RAM, not shared with other customers; the Core VPS line is shared. ([source](https://contabo.com/en/vps-dedicated/), read 2026-09-25)