VPS hosting, compared
Five providers, each profiled from its own pricing page. No overall score here — see the methodology page for why — just what each one actually charges and where it runs, so you can weigh it yourself.
None of the five publish a free tier for VPS specifically — every entry price below is the cheapest paid plan.
| Provider | Entry price | Regions |
|---|---|---|
| DigitalOcean | $4.00 | NYC1, NYC2, NYC3 (New York City, United States); AMS3 (Amsterdam, the Netherlands); SFO2, SFO3 (San Francisco, United States); SGP1 (Singapore); LON1 (London, United Kingdom); FRA1 (Frankfurt, Germany); TOR1 (Toronto, Canada); BLR1 (Bangalore, India); SYD1 (Sydney, Australia); ATL1 (Atlanta, United States); RIC1 (Richmond, United States); MKC1 (Kansas City, United States); MEM1 (Memphis, United States) |
| Hetzner | €5.99/month for the CX23 (2 vCPU, 4 GB, 40 GB NVMe), including a primary IPv4 address, or €0.0096/hour. The ARM CAX11 with identical specs is €6.49. Converted for comparison at the ECB reference rate of 1 EUR = 1.1622 USD (2026-09-04, api.frankfurter.dev), which puts the CX23 at about $6.96/month. Hetzner publishes no USD price; the conversion is ours and moves with the rate. | DE Falkenstein (fsn1); DE Nuremberg (nbg1); FI Helsinki (hel1); US Ashburn, VA (ash); US Hillsboro, OR (hil); SG Singapore (sin) |
| Hostinger VPS | $11.99/month on renewal for KVM 1, on a two-year term. The advertised $6.49 is an introductory rate for the first term only. | Data centers in North America, Europe, Asia and South America. Hostinger names the continents on the VPS page rather than listing the locations. |
| Linode (Akamai Cloud) | $5.00/month (Nanode 1 GB shared CPU plan, North America pricing) | — |
| Vultr | $2.50/mo (Regular Performance Cloud Compute, IPv6-only plan) | — |
Which to consider
Teams that want plain Linux virtual machines with predictable per-second billing from $4 a month, and the option of managed databases beside them. App Platform adds Git and Docker deploys on top.
Self-managed Linux servers in European and US locations, billed hourly with a monthly cap so a deleted server is only charged for the hours it ran.
Running Docker applications on a cheap KVM server with root access, where 4 GB of RAM at the entry plan matters more than a managed control plane. The one-click catalog covers the usual self-hosted stack.
Akamai Cloud virtual machines from $5 a month in North America, with 1 TB of transfer included and egress at half a cent per gigabyte in core data centres.
Teams that want cheap virtual machines with generous included transfer — 2 TB a month per account — and overage at a cent per gigabyte. Block storage and managed databases sit alongside.