Cheapest VPS in Europe 2026: provider price comparison

A search for “cheap VPS Europe” usually ends with two numbers: $3 in the headline and $10 in the cart. We checked the entry plans of providers from our catalog against their official price pages (October 2026) and looked at what sits behind those numbers. Picking a location and a virtualisation type is covered in our guide to VPS in Europe. Here it is only about money.

Providers with European servers are in our VPS in Europe ranking; the lowest starting prices are in the budget hosting selection. Below: what $3–6 a month buys, and where the catch is.

Entry plans: what the price lists say

We opened the pricing pages in October 2026 and noted the cheapest plan shown on each. Vultr, Fornex and Time4VPS did not serve their pricing pages to an automated request (HTTP 403), so for them we only have the starting price from our catalog, with no specific plan. Hetzner, which often comes up in talk about cheap European VPS, is not in our catalog and so is not in this comparison.

What $3–6 a month actually gets you

The spread is wide. For similar money one provider gives 512 MB of memory and another 8 GB. The $4 plan with half a gigabyte works out to about $8 per gigabyte, while at Contabo a gigabyte costs more than ten times less. You pay for that with the term: 24 months upfront instead of month to month.

In practice (our estimate, not provider data): 512 MB is enough for a learning server, a Telegram bot or a test bench. With 1 GB a small Nginx site with a light CMS will run. WordPress with a few plugins is more comfortable from 2 GB, and Docker with several containers wants 4 GB. So the real entry point for a website is not $4 but $6–7 for 3–4 GB.

Where the catch is: why the cart costs more

• Billing term. The Contabo price is the effective rate for a 24-month subscription. The minimum initial term is one month, but the page does not show a price for it. Hostinger takes payment upfront and renews at $11.99 instead of $6.49. Friendhosting sells month to month, and its discount for a longer term is small (3% for three months, 10% for a year), so paying ahead there makes little sense.
• Add-ons. At DigitalOcean, backups cost 20% (weekly) or 30% (daily) of the droplet price, and snapshots cost $0.06 per GB a month. The $4 plan with weekly backups comes to $4.80.
• Traffic. “Unlimited” often means fair use: at Contabo incoming traffic is not counted, while outgoing traffic falls under a fair-use policy. On the $4 plan DigitalOcean includes 500 GiB, and Zomro's cheapest plans come with 1 TB. Plenty for a website, not enough for serving video. More in our piece on “unlimited” bandwidth.
• Port speed. Friendhosting's “up to 1 Gbit/s” is shared with other virtual servers on the node, and Contabo's cheapest plan has a 200 Mbit/s port. Fine for an API or a website; check before big downloads.
• IPv4. According to their sites, DigitalOcean, Friendhosting and Contabo include a public address in the price. Check this with each provider separately, since on cheap offers IPv4 is sometimes a paid option.
• VAT. Contabo's page has a toggle for prices with and without VAT. Check the total in the cart, not the storefront.

Renewal prices and other traps of cheap plans are covered in whether a cheap VPS is worth it.

Catalog providers with servers in Europe

The summary from our catalog and our measurements. A caveat about the “From” column: it is the provider's lowest starting price for any service, not for a VPS. If the host also sells shared hosting, that is usually what the number refers to. Example: our catalog shows Zomro “from $4.45”, while the cheapest VPS on its site is €5.95.

Which location: Germany, the Netherlands, Poland or Finland

For a site aimed at Ukraine, all four work. The difference is in price and in how many providers you can choose from. We did not measure milliseconds between cities; latency figures are in the guide.

• The Netherlands is offered by ten of the eleven providers in the table (all but Contabo), so it is the easiest place to find a plan for your budget. The list: Netherlands.
• Germany means Contabo, Fornex, DigitalOcean (Frankfurt) and Vultr, the main option for the most hardware per dollar. The list: Germany.
• Poland is the closest to Ukraine; in our catalog Friendhosting, Zomro, TheHost and Fozzy have it. The choice is narrower. The list: Poland.
• Finland in our catalog means HostKey and Inferno. Not the first pick for a site aimed at Ukraine, but fine for backups and jobs where latency does not matter.

The price also depends on the city within one provider. At Zomro the cheapest plan is in the Netherlands (€5.95 for 3.5 GB), while the cheapest in Germany costs €6.95 and gives 2.5 GB.

Speed: what our measurements showed

We measured TTFB (time to first byte) of the public websites of 32 hosts on 10.10.2026: three attempts, the minimum is taken, one vantage point (a GitHub runner in the US). The median is 596 ms. From Ukraine the absolute numbers will be higher, but the comparison between hosts is fair. For providers with cheap VPS: DigitalOcean 95 ms, Hostinger 129, Friendhosting 140, Zomro 254, TheHost 549, AdminVPS 614, HostKey 886. The full table is on the speed tests page.

How not to overpay: the order of steps

• Fix the minimum memory for the job: a bot or VPN needs 512 MB–1 GB, a CMS site 2–4 GB.
• Work out the price per gigabyte of RAM. In the table above it ranges from €0.55 to €8.
• Find the renewal terms before paying. If the price is given for 12–24 months, divide it by the months and compare with the monthly price.
• Pay the first month monthly, even if it costs more, and check the disk, latency and support over a week or two. Zomro gives a 3-day trial after a balance top-up (per its site), and through the link from our catalog Vultr credits new customers $300 for 30 days.
• Look for discounts. In our catalog, Fornex has −5% on VPS through our link, and Zomro up to 15% on Cloud VPS.

The entry plan is a shop window. The price per gigabyte of memory and the renewal line in the terms tell you more about a server.

Ihor Jazov, Tophosting editor

Who should pick what

• A bot, a VPN or a test bench: Friendhosting from €3.99 or DigitalOcean from $4 with pay-for-time-used billing. Little money, and you can leave after a month.
• A website or a small shop at $6–7: Zomro (€5.95, 3.5 GB, Netherlands) or Hostinger ($6.49 for the first term, but keep the $11.99 renewal in mind).
• The most hardware for the money and readiness to commit for 24 months: Contabo.
• Germany or the Netherlands with a high rating in our catalog: Fornex, 4.9 from 18 reviews. We could not open its pricing page automatically, so check the plans on site.

Some links in this article are affiliate links: the price for you does not change. Full lists with prices, reviews and speed measurements are in the categories VPS in Europe and budget hosting.