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Cloud VPS · Hourly

Pay for the hours it ran. Not the month it sat in.

154 of our 183 plans can be bought by the hour — from $0.0108 an hour across 48 cities. No minimum term, no day rounded up, and the meter stops the moment you delete the server.

Build one by the hourAdd funds first
Rendering of a host machine sliced into virtual servers, one highlightedBilled by the hourDestroy any time

What it costs

The cheapest machine, at four different lifespans.

Computed at $0.0108 an hour — the entry plan's real rate — so you can see where hourly stops being the cheaper answer.

Cost of the entry cloud VPS plan at four different running times, hourly versus monthly
You run it forHoursHourlyMonthly plan
One afternoon of debugging4$0.04$7.90
A weekend load test48$0.52$7.90
A CI runner, three hours a working day66$0.71$7.90
Left running all month730$7.88$7.90

The last row is the point: an hourly machine left running all month never costs more than the monthly price. Above about 730 hours there is nothing left to save, and below it you keep the difference.

How it works

Four facts, and no asterisks under them.

Hourly billing is where hosting pages usually get vague. These are the mechanics as the meter actually implements them.

The rate is the monthly price ÷ 730

Nothing is marked up for being flexible. A machine left running for a full month costs what its monthly plan costs — $7.90 at the bottom of the catalogue, which is $0.0108 an hour. The rate is rounded down to four decimal places, so a full month by the hour comes to a cent or two under the monthly price rather than over it.

2 hours up front, refunded if you do not use them

Starting the cheapest machine costs $0.02. That is a floor under our own supplier cost, not a minimum term: delete after twenty minutes and the rest goes straight back to your balance.

Prepaid, so nothing arrives after the fact

Hours are drawn from a balance you have already funded. You cannot run up a bill you did not intend, which is the failure mode that makes people avoid hourly billing on the big clouds.

Delete stops the clock. Power-off does not.

A stopped machine still holds its disk and its address, and we are still charged for it. Saying otherwise would be the polite lie that shows up on your next invoice, so the portal says delete where it means delete.

If the balance runs out

What happens, in order, with nothing left to discover.

Every step is announced by email before it happens, and any of them can be undone by adding funds.

  1. Step 1

    We top your balance up in $5 steps

    If you have a card on file we collect enough to cover at least another day — the smallest number of $5 steps that does it — and the server never notices. Card processing carries a fixed fee per transaction, so collecting a few cents at a time would cost more than it recovers. Anything you do not use stays on your balance and comes back when you delete the server.

  2. Step 2

    You are warned

    No card, or the card declined: an email with the balance, the burn rate and how long is left, plus a link that adds funds in a couple of taps.

  3. Step 3

    The server is powered off

    At zero. Nothing is deleted — the disk is exactly as you left it, and topping up starts it again on its own within a few minutes.

  4. Step 4

    After 24 more hours, it is deleted

    Those 24 hours are metered like any other, because the machine and its address are still reserved for you. After them the server and its disk are removed, and that cannot be undone.

Questions

The ones hourly billing usually hides from.

Is there a minimum term?
No. An hour used is an hour paid. We take 2 hours up front when the machine is built — a supplier charges us for the instance and its public address the moment it exists, so a create-and-delete inside five minutes is not free for us either — and whatever you do not use of that comes back to your balance when you delete the server. There is no 24-hour minimum, no rounding up to a day, and no monthly floor.
When does the meter stop?
When the server is deleted, not when it is powered off. A stopped machine still holds its disk, its memory allocation and its IP address, and the supplier bills us for all three — so we would be paying for it while telling you that you were not. Delete it from the portal and the clock stops that instant, with the unused balance returned.
How is it charged — do I get an invoice every hour?
No. Usage is metered every hour and invoiced once a day, so a month of one server is about thirty lines in your billing history rather than seven hundred. Each invoice names the day and the hours it covers, and is settled from your balance.
What happens if my balance runs out?
First we top it up from the card on file, if you have one — in $5 steps, enough for at least another day, never more than $200 at once — and the server does not notice. If there is no card or it declines, you get a warning, then the server is powered off. It stays reserved for you for 24 hours after that — those hours are still metered, because the machine is still held — and is then deleted along with its disk. You are warned by email before each step, and adding funds at any point brings it back up within minutes.
Which plans can be bought by the hour?
154 of the 183 plans we sell, which is every line except the Big disk and Unmetered lines. Those are billed to us a whole month at a time and refunded nothing when a machine goes back, so selling them by the hour would mean buying a month for somebody who rents an afternoon — the cart says so before you pay rather than after. On every other plan the choice is a cycle at checkout, not a different product.
Is hourly more expensive than monthly?
No — it is the same price, divided. The rate is the monthly price divided by 730 hours and rounded down, so a machine you leave running for a whole month costs the monthly price or a cent or two less, never more. You are not paying a premium for the flexibility; you are simply not paying for the days you did not use.

Nearby

Which machine, by the hour?