How prices are worked out

Where the data comes from

Where a provider has an official API, we check it every day. Otherwise we read the provider's public pricing page, or the price data behind it, every day. If a provider ever blocks automated checks, we check its prices by hand against its website instead. Those prices show the date of the last check, and they're marked stale like everything else. Every raw response is saved, so any price shown here can be traced back to exactly what the provider published.

True monthly cost

The monthly price is the provider's monthly price, or its monthly cap for hourly billing. We add any extra you can't avoid, such as a paid IPv4 address, then convert to your currency (any of 24) using the European Central Bank reference rate for 2026-10-14. Finally we add VAT for the country you choose. Every provider listed today includes one IPv4 address in its price.

Backups, snapshots, extra IPs and bandwidth overage are optional, so they aren't included.

Intro offers, setup fees and contracts

Some hosts advertise a low price for the first few months, charge a one-off setup fee, or require a minimum contract. By default the table shows the ongoing monthly price, which is what you'll pay once any offer ends. The intro price, setup fee and minimum term appear underneath it.

Choose Average over first year under "Price basis" to compare what the first 12 months actually cost. This counts the intro months at the intro price and the rest at the ongoing price, then adds the setup fee, spread across the year.

VAT, GST and sales tax

Consumers pay tax on cloud services at their own country's rate, even when the provider is based abroad: VAT in the UK and EU, GST in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, India and Canada, and consumption tax in Japan. Choose your country under "Tax" and we add the right rate. Businesses registered for VAT or GST usually don't pay it, so choose "Excluding tax" if that's you.

US sales tax on cloud servers depends on your state, and many states don't charge it, so US prices are shown excluding tax. For Canada we include the 5% federal GST only; provincial tax (PST or HST) varies by province and isn't included. Rates below were last checked 2026-09-26.

Provider details

Facts such as payment methods, ID checks, backups, DDoS protection and IPv6 are researched by hand from each provider's own pages. Every fact links to its source and shows the date it was checked. Where a provider doesn't say, we show "Not stated" rather than guess. The "Must have" filters only include providers we've confirmed. Hourly billing is judged plan by plan: a plan counts only if the provider publishes an hourly rate for it, because several providers bill some ranges hourly and others monthly.

Keeping it fresh

Every plan shows when it was last confirmed. Plans not confirmed for 7 days are marked stale, and plans not confirmed for 30 days are removed.

If a provider's feed suddenly loses many plans or moves a price by more than 25%, the update is held back until a person has checked it against the provider's website. A broken feed never reaches this page.

What's not listed

GPU instances, bare metal, and plans whose storage is billed separately (such as Vultr VX1) aren't listed. Neither are hourly-only plans with no monthly price or cap (such as Linode G8 Dedicated), because they can't be compared fairly on monthly price.

Order

By default, plans are sorted by price and nothing else. You can sort by other columns, but no provider can pay to rank higher, and whether a provider has a referral programme never changes the order.

The "View deal" button goes to the provider's own website. Buttons marked Ad are affiliate links, which pass through the provider's affiliate network on the way.

Some lists show one Featured partner at the top. It's a provider whose links earn us a commission, clearly labelled, and shown separately from our results. It never changes the price ranking below it.