Complete guide, 2026
How much does a VPS cost? The real price, not the headline.
Every pricing page shows you a number. Here’s the bill: what a VPS really costs, what changes it, and the cheapest way to get the size you need.
- Lite 22 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, 40 GB NVMe$4or $0.006 an hour
- Lite 66 vCPU, 6 GB RAM, 100 GB NVMe$8or $0.012 an hour
- Lite 88 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, 160 GB NVMe$12or $0.018 an hour
- Lite 1616 vCPU, 16 GB RAM, 320 GB NVMe$20or $0.03 an hour
- Lite 3216 vCPU, 32 GB RAM, 640 GB NVMe$40or $0.06 an hour
The short answer
A small VPS with 2 vCPU and 2 GB of RAM costs about $4 to $18 a month at list price in 2026, and 4 GB plans run up to $24. On LiteKeep, plans go all the way up to 64 vCPU and 256 GB.
On LiteKeep, a Lite 2 is $4 a month, billed by the hour, at the same price in all 15 countries. Then watch the extras: backups, IPv4 and traffic can add a third to a bill elsewhere. The calculator below gives you your exact monthly cost.
Search “how much does a VPS cost” and you get ranges. $5 to $50. $10 to $100. $20 to $200.
Here’s the problem: a range doesn’t tell you what you’ll pay. The size does. So does the region, the billing and the extras a host adds on top.
The good news? A VPS for a website, a bot or a VPN costs less than most people expect. On LiteKeep, 2 vCPU, 2 GB of RAM and 40 GB of NVMe is $4 a month, and you can start with an hour.
Below: real price bands, what drives them, the extras that change a bill, a calculator for your exact cost and three worked budgets.
In this guide you’ll learn
- Real price bands for small, medium and large servers
- Every LiteKeep price, live, in one table
- What drives the price: CPU, RAM, disk, traffic, region
- The extras that change the bill: backups, IPv4, traffic
- Hourly, yearly or once: which billing wins when
- A free calculator and three real budgets
Chapter 1
The short answer, with real numbers
Here’s what a VPS costs right now, grouped by size, against what you’d pay on LiteKeep.
| Size | Typical market price | On LiteKeep |
|---|---|---|
| 2 vCPU, 2 GB RAM | $4 to $18 a month | Lite 2: $4 a month |
| 4 to 6 GB RAM | $5 to $24 a month | Lite 6: 6 vCPU, 6 GB, $8 a month |
| 16 GB RAM | Varies widely by host | Lite 16: 16 vCPU, 320 GB NVMe, $20 a month |
Look at the first row. The same size costs four times as much depending on where you buy it. Big-name clouds sit at the top of that band. Lite 2 sits at the bottom, and it bills by the hour, so a server you need for a week costs a week.
Chapter 2
The price table: every plan, today
These are today’s prices, straight from our catalog. Click any plan to deploy it.
| Plan | Size | Traffic | Monthly | Hourly |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lite 2 | 2 vCPU, 2 GB, 40 GB NVMe | 1 TB | $4 | $0.006 |
| Lite 6 | 6 vCPU, 6 GB, 100 GB NVMe | 2 TB | $8 | $0.012 |
| Lite 8 | 8 vCPU, 8 GB, 160 GB NVMe | 3 TB | $12 | $0.018 |
| Lite 16 | 16 vCPU, 16 GB, 320 GB NVMe | 4 TB | $20 | $0.03 |
| Lite 32 | 16 vCPU, 32 GB, 640 GB NVMe | 6 TB | $40 | $0.06 |
| Lite 64 | 24 vCPU, 64 GB, 1,280 GB NVMe | 8 TB | $80 | $0.12 |
| Lite 96 | 32 vCPU, 96 GB, 1,920 GB NVMe | 10 TB | $120 | $0.18 |
| Lite 128 | 40 vCPU, 128 GB, 2,560 GB NVMe | 12 TB | $160 | $0.24 |
| Lite 192 | 48 vCPU, 192 GB, 3,840 GB NVMe | 14 TB | $240 | $0.36 |
| Lite 256 | 64 vCPU, 256 GB, 5,120 GB NVMe | 16 TB | $320 | $0.48 |
Need something more specific than a general-purpose server? Each family is built around one job:
| Type | Built for | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Lite | Websites, apps, bots, VPNs | From $4 a month |
| Traffic Lite | Streaming, downloads, heavy traffic (32 TB) | From $8 a month |
| Vault | Backups, archives, nodes (700 GB to 3 TB) | From $10 a month |
| Forge | NVIDIA GPU slices, by the hour | From $40 a month |
| Forever Keep | Pay once, no renewals | From $140 once |
Chapter 3
What drives the price
Two servers with the same RAM can differ a lot in price. These are the reasons.
1. CPU
Most plans share CPU cores with other customers, and that’s fine for nearly every website, app and bot. More vCPUs cost more. On LiteKeep, every Lite up to Lite 16 has one vCPU for every gigabyte of RAM.
2. RAM
RAM is usually the biggest single cost driver. Doubling RAM at the big clouds often adds $5 or more a month. Our step from Lite 2 to Lite 6 triples the RAM and the cores for twice the price.
3. Disk
NVMe SSDs are faster than SATA SSDs, which beat hard drives. Every LiteKeep plan is NVMe, including the 3 TB Vaults.
4. Traffic allowance
Allowances range from 1 TB to “unlimited at a capped speed”. If you serve video, downloads or a busy site, this matters more than CPU. On LiteKeep, every plan’s allowance joins one pool shared by all your servers, and a Traffic Lite includes 32 TB.
5. Region
Many hosts charge more outside Europe or North America: three times as much in some US regions, 20 to 40% more in parts of Asia and South America. LiteKeep doesn’t. One price in all 15 countries.
Chapter 4
The extras that change the bill
This is where the advertised price and the real price part ways, and where LiteKeep keeps it simple.
Backups: usually 20 to 30% more
Most big providers price automatic backups as a percentage of the server: 20% for weekly, up to 30% for daily. On LiteKeep you take snapshots when you want them, at $0.0072 per GB a month, and pay only for what you keep.
IPv4 addresses: now a line item
IPv4 addresses are scarce, and some clouds now charge for every public one, up to about $3.65 a month each. Every LiteKeep server comes with its IPv4 address in the plan price.
Traffic beyond your allowance
Go over your allowance elsewhere and you pay $5 to $10 per TB, and up to $90 per TB at the priciest clouds. On LiteKeep, anything past your pooled allowance is $2 per TB.
Stopped servers still count
At hourly hosts, a stopped server keeps its disk and IP reserved, so it keeps billing. LiteKeep works the same way, and the fix is one click: delete a server you’re done with and billing stops at that hour.
Chapter 5
Hourly, monthly, yearly or lifetime
The same server can cost very different amounts depending on how you pay for it. LiteKeep offers all four.
Hourly, with a monthly cap
Our hourly rate is 0.15% of the monthly price, so a Lite 2 reaches its $4 cap after 667 hours and the rest of the month is free. Hourly wins for anything part-time: test servers, build machines, a server you need for a week.
Monthly
Built in. Leave a server running all month and the cap makes it a monthly price automatically. No plan to switch, nothing to cancel.
Yearly
Our yearly Keeps include free months: a Keep 2 is $40 a year instead of $48. One payment, then forget about it for 12 months.
Lifetime
A Forever Keep 2 is $200, once. Against a Lite 2 at $4 a month, it pays for itself after 50 months, and every month after that is free. See how Forever Keeps work, or read whether a lifetime VPS is worth it.
| If your server runs… | Best fit |
|---|---|
| A few hours or days | Hourly Lite |
| Most of the month, month after month | Hourly Lite (the cap does the work) |
| All year | Keep, with free months |
| For years | Forever Keep, pay once |
Chapter 6
Calculate your true monthly cost
Set how much RAM you need, how many hours it runs and how much traffic it sends. The calculator finds the cheapest LiteKeep plans that fit, with the full bill.
Today’s LiteKeep prices, the same in all 15 countries. Billed by the started hour, never more than the monthly price. Traffic is pooled across your servers; past the pool it’s $2.00 per TB.
Best fit: Lite 2
2 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, 40 GB NVMe, 1 TB traffic
$4.00/month
- Server
- $4.00 (capped)
- Extra traffic
- $0.00
- 12 months
- $48.00
Traffic Lite 2
1 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, 40 GB NVMe, 32 TB traffic
$8.00/month
- Server
- $8.00 (capped)
- Extra traffic
- $0.00
- 12 months
- $96.00
Lite 6
6 vCPU, 6 GB RAM, 100 GB NVMe, 2 TB traffic
$8.00/month
- Server
- $8.00 (capped)
- Extra traffic
- $0.00
- 12 months
- $96.00
Drag the hours slider and watch the bill drop for part-time servers. Push traffic past a few terabytes and a Traffic Lite jumps to the top, because 32 TB is already included.
Chapter 7
Three real budgets
Here’s what three common projects cost on LiteKeep, worked out with the same prices as the calculator.
1. A personal VPN or bot: always on, light traffic
Lite 2 (2 vCPU, 2 GB, 40 GB NVMe) at 0.2 TB a month: $4.00 a month. That’s the whole bill. Our WireGuard tutorial gets the VPN running in minutes.
2. A small business site: 4 GB or more, 1 TB of traffic
Lite 6 (6 vCPU, 6 GB, 100 GB NVMe), always on: $8.00 a month. Add a weekly snapshot for a few cents more.
3. A part-time dev server: about 8 hours a day on weekdays (176 hours)
Lite 2: $1.06 a month. Delete it on Friday, deploy a fresh one on Monday, and you only pay for the hours it exists.
Chapter 8
Cheap vs too cheap
A low price is great. A low price that hides a catch isn’t. Here’s what to check, and how LiteKeep answers each one.
| Check | Why it matters | On LiteKeep |
|---|---|---|
| Is the price for a long commitment? | Some headline prices need 12 or 24 months upfront | No commitment: billed by the hour |
| Can you actually order it? | Some headline plans are out of stock or in one location only | Every plan in all 15 countries |
| What does extra traffic cost? | From $2 to $90 per TB across the market | $2 per TB, after a pooled allowance |
| Is the IPv4 address extra? | Some clouds now bill every public IPv4 | Included |
| Is the disk NVMe? | Slow disks make fast CPUs wait | NVMe on every plan |
| How do you pay? | Most hosts want a card and sometimes ID | Crypto, no card, no ID |
Weighing a move from a specific host? Our Hetzner alternative guide matches your current server to a Lite.
Quick answers
Is a $1 VPS real? Usually as a tiny IPv6-only or promotional plan that renews higher. A Lite 2 at $4 has 2 vCPU, 2 GB, an IPv4 address and no renewal trick.
Do I pay VAT? It depends on where you are. EU customers see VAT added at checkout where it applies.
Can I try before I commit? Yes. Deploy, test for an hour, delete. You pay for the hour.
Now it’s your move
A small VPS costs $4 to $24 a month at list price. The bill depends on size, traffic, region and the extras a host adds.
LiteKeep keeps it simple: one price in 15 countries, billed by the hour, never more than the month, IPv4 included, paid in crypto. Run the calculator, pick your plan and deploy it now.