Cloud servers (VPS)

Cloud servers, also called VPS or virtual machines, are Linux or Windows servers you rent by the hour or the month and run yourself: websites, APIs, databases, game servers, build machines and side projects. Developers, small software teams and agencies use them when they want full control of a server without buying hardware. The products differ in how they bundle CPU, memory, disk and transfer, what an IPv4 address and backups cost on top, how much outbound transfer is included and what more of it costs, how you leave with your data, and which compliance reports and account controls come with them.

We compare them on the same six indicators, read from each vendor's pricing, billing, transfer, backup, trust and legal pages:

• Pricing clarity: whether the plan you need has a published USD price, whether the hourly rule, the monthly cap, the transfer overage and the IPv4 charge are stated, and whether the pages leave prices out or contradict each other.
• Free credit and trial: an always-free server or a sign-up credit, how much it is worth, and whether it needs a card or a promo code or turns into a paid bill when it ends.
• Price of the reference server: the monthly cost of one Linux server in a US region with at least 2 vCPUs, 4 GB of RAM and 80 GB of SSD, an IPv4 address, 2 TB of outbound transfer and automatic backups, with the arithmetic shown; 0 when the pages cannot price it.
• Transfer terms: the overage price per GB, the allowance on that plan, whether allowances are pooled across servers, and whether inbound transfer is free.
• Backups, cost control and exit: priced and daily backups, snapshot prices, whether you can download a server image, spending caps or alerts, and how long data is kept after you leave.
• Compliance and account security: SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, HIPAA and GDPR agreements, an EU region, two-factor sign-in, single sign-on and an audit log.

How fast a server runs and how often it is down depend on the workload and the moment, not on the public pages, so we do not score them. Each review says which pages it was written from and when. Where we have run a product hands-on, the evidence is on its page.