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Unmetered, unlimited, and the difference that costs money

"Unlimited" is a word with an acceptable-use policy behind it. "Unmetered" means there is no counter and the port speed is the limit. 32 of our 182 plans are genuinely unmetered; the other 150 print a number instead. This page argues that most people should buy one of the numbered ones — including against our own more expensive line.

Deploy BD-8 · 32 TBSee the unmetered line

Three words, three meanings

What each one actually promises

Unlimited

A marketing word. There is an acceptable-use policy underneath it, and that policy — not the word — decides how much you may transfer, usually judged after the fact. We do not use it.

Unmetered

No counter. Nothing adds up your gigabytes, and the port speed is the ceiling. Checkable, and narrower than it sounds — it says nothing about how fast the port is.

A stated allowance

A number, printed next to the plan: 1 TB upwards here. The least glamorous of the three and the only one you can do arithmetic against before you buy.

Why we are careful with the word: a page on this site once advertised machines in a country the supplier does not operate in, and it stood until the owner recognised his own supplier list. The rule that came out of it applies to "unmetered" exactly as it applies to a city — it is a claim, and a claim needs a source. 32 plans have one.

The arithmetic

What a 32 TB allowance actually covers

Four ordinary workloads against the 32 TB allowance on BD-8 — the cheapest machine we sell that covers every one of them, at $11.90 a month.

Monthly transfer for four workloads, compared against the largest allowance we sell
WorkloadTransfer a monthShare of 32 TBVerdict
A busy WordPress site100k pageviews at 2.5 MB244 GBunder 1%The allowance is not the constraint. Buy on cores and memory.
A media-heavy shop500k pageviews at 5 MB2.4 TB7%The allowance is not the constraint. Buy on cores and memory.
A file or backup target200 GB in and out daily11.7 TB37%The allowance is not the constraint. Buy on cores and memory.
A 24/7 1080p stream6 Mbit/s, continuously1.9 TB6%The allowance is not the constraint. Buy on cores and memory.

Traffic in counts as well as traffic out, which is why the backup row doubles. A terabyte here is 1024 GB, not 1000 — the smaller, less flattering definition.

Against ourselves

Buy the metered one

For most workloads the plan with a number on it is the better machine for the money. That is our own cheaper answer, and it is the true one.

Usually right

BD-8 · $11.90/mo

4 cores, 8 GB, 100 GB NVMe and 32 TB of transfer. The table above is the argument: an ordinary site or application uses a few percent of that. You are buying cores and memory, and the allowance is simply not the thing that runs out.

Deploy BD-8

When unmetered earns it

U1-1 · $7.90/mo

Two cases, and only two: traffic you genuinely cannot predict, and anything that runs continuously — a stream, a mirror, a relay — where the meter never pauses. In both, the value is not the gigabytes, it is never having to think about them again. Outside those, you are paying for a worry you do not have.

The unmetered line

Questions

What people ask before they choose.

Is unlimited bandwidth real?
The bandwidth is real; the word is not. Every "unlimited" hosting plan has an acceptable-use policy underneath it, and that policy is what actually decides how much you may transfer — usually phrased as whatever is normal for the plan, judged after the fact by the host. It is not a lie so much as a promise with the terms written somewhere else. Unmetered is the narrower and more checkable claim: there is no counter, and the port speed is the limit.
Which of your plans are genuinely unmetered?
32 of 182, and they are marked as such in the catalogue rather than in the marketing — the cheapest is U1-1 at $7.90 a month. The other 150 carry a stated monthly allowance, from 1 TB upwards. We use the word only where the supplier's own terms carry it, because we have been wrong about this before: a page on this site once advertised machines in a country the supplier does not operate in, and the rule that came out of that is the one this page is built on.
Should I buy unmetered?
Probably not, and the arithmetic is on this page. An allowance of 32 TB — which BD-8 carries at $11.90 — is more than almost any site, bot or application will move in a month, and it costs less than the unmetered line for the same shape of machine. Unmetered earns its money in two cases: traffic you genuinely cannot predict, and a continuous stream, where the meter runs all month at a constant rate.
What happens if I go over a metered allowance?
We tell you before anything is charged. There is no automatic overage that appears on an invoice you did not expect — the honest failure mode for a plan that has outgrown its allowance is a conversation about moving it to a plan that fits, not a bill. If you would rather not have that conversation at all, that is the reason to buy unmetered.
Does unmetered mean unlimited speed?
No, and this is the part the word hides. Unmetered means nothing counts your gigabytes; the port still has a speed, and that speed is the real ceiling — a port that runs flat out for a month moves a finite, calculable amount. Anyone promising both unlimited transfer and unlimited speed is describing something that does not exist. When the port speed matters to you, ask us before you order and we will tell you what the plan actually has.
How do I work out what I need?
Multiply. For a site: page weight × pageviews. For a stream: bitrate in Mbit/s × 2,592,000 seconds ÷ 8 = megabytes a month. For a backup target: the daily volume × 30, and count both directions, because traffic in is traffic. Then compare against the allowance rather than against a promise. The table below does this for four common cases.

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