Pillar essay
The cheapest VPS for self-hosting in 2026
The honest answer is Hetzner. Their CAX11 (ARM, 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 40 GB SSD) at €3.79/mo (~$4.13) is the cheapest VPS that you can actually deploy a real OSS app on without immediately running out of memory. Below: the four cheapest providers ranked, what each one is good for, and which projects fit on which plan.
The four cheapest providers, head to head
Cheapest entry-level plan from each major cloud VPS provider that ships at least 1 GB of RAM (since less than that breaks most self-hosted apps):
| Provider | Plan | Specs | Monthly | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| vultr | VC2 | 1c · 0.5GB · 10GB | $0.00 | Sign up → |
| digitalocean | Basic Regular 512MB | 1c · 0.5GB · 10GB | $4.00 | Sign up → |
| hetzner | CAX11 | 2c · 4GB · 40GB | $4.13 | Sign up → |
| linode | Nanode 1GB | 1c · 1GB · 25GB | $5.00 | Sign up → |
Hetzner, in particular
Hetzner has been running production European workloads since 1997. Their cloud-VPS pricing is consistently 40-60% cheaper than AWS, DigitalOcean, or Linode for equivalent specs. They publish a transparent price list, no surprise overage charges, and 20 TB of bandwidth is included on every plan.
Their CAX11 (ARM) plan at €3.79/mo runs about 75% of self-hosted apps just fine. Vaultwarden, Plausible, Umami, Cal.com, FreshRSS, Pi-hole, Wireguard, Gitea, and dozens more fit comfortably. The CX22 (AMD, same RAM) is the choice if your stack has any x86-only Docker images that don't have ARM builds.
DigitalOcean's $200 credit, and why it matters for new accounts
DigitalOcean's basic Droplet is $6/mo (slightly more than Hetzner), but new accounts get a $200 credit good for 60 days when you sign up via a referral link. That covers your first month of three to five different services so you can experiment without committing.
For a serious long-running deployment, the math still favors Hetzner because the credit runs out and the per-month price is higher. For initial experimentation and proof-of-concept, the credit lets you try four self-hosted apps for free.
Linode and Vultr
Linode (now part of Akamai) offers the Nanode 1 GB at $5.12/mo. Vultr offers a 1 GB plan at $5/mo and a 0.5 GB plan at $3.50/mo. Both are reliable, both have global datacenters, both have free public APIs you can scrape pricing from. The marginal pricing difference between Linode, Vultr, and Hetzner is mostly down to which datacenter region is closest to your users.
The minimum spec for "actually usable"
Anything under 1 GB of RAM forces you to either skip Postgres (use SQLite, which most modern OSS apps support) or accept frequent OOM crashes during heavy operations. We recommend ignoring sub-1 GB plans for self-hosting, even when the price tempts you.
The sweet spot for a single self-hosted app: 2 vCPU + 2-4 GB RAM + 40-80 GB disk. Hetzner CAX11 (€3.79) and CPX21 (€8.43) both sit in that band. DigitalOcean's $12/mo basic plan is the equivalent.
What you'll actually pay over a year
- Hetzner CAX11: €45.48/year (~$49.50). Plus optional $5/mo Storage Box for backups: $109.50/year all-in.
- Vultr 1 GB: $72/year. Plus $5-10/mo for backups via S3-compatible storage: $132-192/year.
- Linode Nanode 1 GB: $61.44/year. Plus $5/mo for Object Storage: $121.44/year.
- DigitalOcean Basic 1 GB: $72/year. Plus $5/mo for Spaces: $132/year.
The all-in difference between the cheapest (Hetzner) and the most expensive of these four (DigitalOcean Basic) is about $80/year on a single VPS. Over five years that's $400, which is real money for an indie operator but rounding error for a 10-person team replacing $20,000+/year of SaaS.
Pick by use case, not just price
- Cheapest production deployment: Hetzner CAX11 + Hetzner Storage Box backup. €8.39/mo all-in.
- Best for trying multiple things: DigitalOcean (the $200 credit lets you try 4-5 services without paying).
- Best US-only deployment: Vultr or Linode (both have more US datacenter options than Hetzner in 2026).
- Best ARM-only deployment: Hetzner CAX series (€3.79). Most Docker images now ship ARM builds.
Already know what you want to deploy?
Every project page on ossreplace shows the cheapest plan from each provider that meets the project's detected requirements. Pick a project (browse by category) and you'll see a comparison table at the top of its page.
Or for the most popular projects, the dedicated cost-deep-dive pages compare 3-year savings against the SaaS they replace: Plausible cost, Vaultwarden cost, Mattermost cost.