Billing explained, 2026
Hourly vs monthly VPS billing. Which one is cheaper for you?
No rules of thumb. Here’s how the cap works, what to watch for, and a calculator using our live prices.
30 days across two months: $4.32
- 16 to 31 October384 h × $0.006 = $2.30
- 1 to 14 November336 h × $0.006 = $2.02
30 days inside one month: $4.00
- 1 to 30 November720 h, capped at $4.00
The short answer
Hourly billing with a monthly cap is the cheaper choice for almost everyone. A server you delete within the month costs only its hours, and one that runs all month never costs more than the monthly price.
That’s exactly how every LiteKeep Lite bills. Running it all year? A yearly Keep is cheaper still, and breaks even at 10 or 11 months of use. The calculator below prices your own server.
“Hourly or monthly?” sounds like a choice between two prices. With a monthly cap, it isn’t: you get both, and you pay whichever is lower for the month.
The real decisions are elsewhere: whether to delete or just stop a server, and whether to pay a year ahead once you know it’s staying.
The figure above shows the one detail worth knowing. Each calendar month gets its own cap, so the same 30 days cost a little more when they cross the end of a month.
In this guide you’ll learn
- The short answer: hourly, monthly, yearly and once, side by side
- A calculator with our live prices and your usage
- How the cap works, hour by hour
- Four billing rules that save you money
- Prepaid balance or card: why prepaid is safer
- When paying ahead wins, with break-even numbers
Chapter 1
The short answer
Four ways to pay for the same LiteKeep server, and when each one is cheapest.
| How it bills | Cheapest when | |
|---|---|---|
| Hourly | Per started hour, from your balance | The server lives less than about 4 weeks, or only some months |
| Monthly cap | Built into hourly: never more than the monthly price in a calendar month | Automatic: you never choose it |
| Keep (yearly) | One payment for 12 months | It runs 10 or more months of the year (11 on Lite 16 and up) |
| Forever Keep | One payment, no renewals | You will run it for years; see the break-even below |
Chapter 2
Work it out for your server
Pick a plan and how much it runs. The numbers use the same billing code that charges your balance, and the button deploys that plan by the hour.
One month on hourly
$4 capped at the monthly price
The cap is reached at hour 667 of a calendar month (about 28 days).
A year of this
- Hourly12 months, billed by the hour$48
- KeepPaid once for 12 months, whether it runs or not$40
The Keep is cheaper for this. Running all month, a Lite 2 Keep breaks even at 10 months a year.
Forever Keep 2, the same size, costs $200 once: that’s 50 months of the monthly price, or 5 years of Keeps.
Today’s prices. Start hourly, switch to a Keep once you know it’s staying. See every plan.
Chapter 3
How monthly caps really work
A cap means the hourly charges stop adding up once they reach the monthly price. Where that happens depends on how the hourly rate is set.
On LiteKeep the hourly rate is 0.15% of the monthly price, so a Lite 2 costs $0.006 an hour and reaches its $4 cap at the 667th started hour, about 27.8 days. After that, the rest of the month is free.
| LiteKeep | |
|---|---|
| Billing unit | Per started hour, from a prepaid balance |
| Cap | The monthly price, reached at hour 667 of a calendar month (UTC) |
| Stopped server | Still billed until deleted |
| Deleted server | Billing ends at that hour |
The calendar-month detail
Caps apply per calendar month. A server you create on 16 October and delete 30 days later is billed for 384 hours in October and 336 in November. Neither month reaches the cap, so you pay for all 720 hours: $4.32 on a Lite 2. Run the same 30 days inside November and you pay $4.
It’s a few cents, and it disappears once a server runs a full month. After that, every month is the monthly price or less.
Chapter 4
Four billing rules that save you money
Hourly billing follows the server existing, not you using it. Know these four rules and you’ll never pay for an hour you didn’t want.
1. Delete, don’t stop
A stopped server keeps its disk and IP address reserved, so it keeps billing. Deleting it ends billing at that hour. Take a snapshot first if you might want it back.
2. Reuse a test server
We bill per started hour, so ten five-minute test servers are ten hours. For quick create-and-delete loops, keep one server for the session and rebuild it instead.
3. Add-ons bill the same fair way
A Windows licence bills by the hour with its own monthly cap. Traffic past your plan’s pooled allowance is $2 per TB. IPv4 and DDoS filtering are included.
4. Keep a few days of balance
On a prepaid balance, we email you at about 72 and 24 hours left. At zero, servers are powered off, not deleted, and kept for 7 days, so nothing is lost while you top up. Every billing rule, in detail.
Chapter 5
Prepaid balance or a card on file
Hourly billing comes in two flavours: pay first and spend down, or use first and get invoiced. Prepaid is the one that can’t surprise you.
| Card on file, invoiced | Prepaid balance (LiteKeep) | |
|---|---|---|
| When you pay | After use, often for the whole previous month | Before: you top up, servers spend it hour by hour |
| A runaway server | Shows up on next month’s invoice | Stops at your balance; you get emails first |
| What you need | A card or bank account, sometimes ID | Crypto: BTC, ETH, USDT, USDC, BNB, XRP, SOL, TRX, LTC or XMR |
| Unused money | Never paid | Cash credit is refundable on request |
A prepaid balance caps your risk at what you put in. The console shows your runway as “about N days”, so you always know when to top up.
Chapter 6
When paying ahead wins
Paying ahead trades flexibility for a lower price. The break-even tells you when it’s worth it.
| Plan | Monthly | Keep (12 months) | Keep breaks even at |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lite 2 | $4 | $40 | 10 months |
| Lite 8 | $12 | $120 | 10 months |
| Lite 16 | $20 | $220 | 11 months |
| Lite 64 | $80 | $880 | 11 months |
Keep: one payment for a year, with months free. It renews from your balance at the end of the year; if the balance is short, the server keeps running and bills by the hour instead, so nothing is switched off for a missed renewal.
Forever Keep: one payment, no renewals, for as long as LiteKeep runs, under our terms. A Forever Keep 2 has the same 2 vCPU, 2 GB RAM and 40 GB disk as a Lite 2 and costs $200 once: that’s 50 months at $4, or 5 years of Keeps. After that, every month is free.
Now it’s your move
Hourly with a monthly cap is the smart default: you can’t pay more than the monthly price in a calendar month, and you pay much less for short jobs. Once a server proves it’s staying, a Keep makes it cheaper still.
Deploy a Lite by the hour now, and switch it to a Keep whenever you’re ready. Every plan’s hourly, monthly and yearly price is on the pricing page, and the exact rules are in when a server bills, and when it stops.