VPS Recommendations
How to Choose After the 2026 VPS Price Increases: New Hetzner Prices, OVH VPS 2027 and Cheap Alternatives
Hetzner raised prices for new Cloud purchases and rescales in June 2026, while OVHcloud launched a cheaper VPS 2027 entry plan and Scaleway adjusted prices for some instances and network resources. This article breaks down the increases using official price tables and gives renewal, downsizing and migration advice for website hosting, development, dedicated CPU and Asian-node needs.
I originally assumed European VPS prices would all rise together in 2026, but after checking the official announcements from three providers, it turns out things are not that simple.
Hetzner made major changes to Cloud new-purchase and rescale prices on June 15, with some x86 plans more than doubling; Scaleway raised prices for some instances, storage and network resources starting June 1; OVHcloud, by contrast, added a lower-threshold VPS 2027 entry plan on June 17.
So the real question now is not "did all VPS prices go up," but: which product line are you using, will your existing instance be affected, and what do you lose by switching to a cheaper plan.
| Your situation | More suitable action | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Hetzner existing instance still running, specs sufficient | Leave it alone for now, don't rescale casually | The official adjustment targets new purchases and Cloud rescales after June 15 |
| Hetzner needs dedicated x86 CPU | Recalculate CCX cost, then compare with dedicated servers | CCX increases are significant, the previous price advantage has shrunk |
| Ordinary blog, test environment, lightweight Docker | Look at ARM or shared CPU | CAX and CX also rose, but absolute prices are still lower than dedicated CPU |
| Preparing to buy a new European entry VPS | Compare OVH VPS 2027, Hetzner CAX/CX | OVH's new entry plan starts at €3.81, while Hetzner wins on mature Cloud operation experience |
| Already using multiple add-on resources on Scaleway | Calculate instance, IPv4, storage and gateway separately | This is not a uniform increase; the gaps between different resources are large |
The easiest trap to fall into is staring only at "a few euros per month" without accounting for IPv4, taxes, backups, traffic and migration time.
This article does not treat the three providers' numbers as a same-spec comparison. Hetzner's table shows monthly prices excluding VAT and excluding IPv4; OVH VPS 2027's official starting price excludes VAT, but the plan includes IPv4 and IPv6; Scaleway's announcement mainly lists hourly-billed instances and add-on resources. They can only be used to judge what happened to each product line; at payment time you still need to re-compare using the same configuration, same region and the full bill.
Hetzner's official price adjustment takes effect from June 15, 2026, 08:00 CEST, and applies to new orders and Cloud instance rescales. Orders placed before June 15 but delivered afterward are still handled at the old price.
Below are several common plans in the German and Finnish regions for comparison. Prices are all monthly prices excluding VAT and excluding IPv4:
| Plan | Type | Old price | New price | Approx. increase |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CAX11 | ARM shared | €4.49 | €5.99 | 33% |
| CAX31 | ARM shared | €15.99 | €20.99 | 31% |
| CX23 | x86 shared entry | €3.99 | €5.49 | 38% |
| CX43 | x86 shared | €11.99 | €15.99 | 33% |
| CPX22 | AMD x86 shared | €7.99 | €19.49 | 144% |
| CPX42 | AMD x86 shared | €25.49 | €69.49 | 173% |
| CCX13 | x86 dedicated | €15.99 | €42.99 | 169% |
| CCX33 | x86 dedicated | €62.49 | €138.49 | 122% |
The most important information in this table is not "Hetzner went crazy across the board," but that the increases differ completely by architecture and resource type.
CAX and CX rose by about 30%, painful but still understandable; CPX and CCX changed much more. People who used CCX for compilation, databases or sustained high-CPU tasks now have to re-compare dedicated servers, dedicated-CPU cloud hosts and shared instances.
The Singapore region cannot simply use European prices either. For example, CCX13 rose from €27.49 to €53.99, since regional costs are inherently higher. Before buying, be sure to check the checkout page again for the target data center.
Official price table: Hetzner Price Adjustment 15 June 2026
If your old instance is still running, the safest action is usually: first take a screenshot to save the current plan, monthly price and resources, then decide whether to resize.
The official statement is clear: the new prices apply to new orders and Cloud instance rescales. This means that if you click rescale just to temporarily add a bit of configuration, you may bring the instance into the new pricing system. Before operating, check the final monthly price shown in the console; don't click confirm from memory.
I would judge by these three steps:
- Is the current instance stable, and are CPU, memory and disk really insufficient;
- Under the new prices, what can the same budget still buy;
- Is the cost of migration and downtime higher than the extra money paid over a year.
If it's only a few euros more per month, but the machine has been running stably for a year with monitoring, backups and DNS all configured, migrating immediately may not be worth it. Conversely, if you happen to be preparing to reinstall, change data centers or split the architecture, this price adjustment is an opportunity to re-select.
For migration costs, you can continue reading: What to Do When a VPS Is Cheap on the First Order but Expensive to Renew (2026) and VPS Migration Guide (2026).
OVHcloud released the VPS 2027 series on June 17, 2026. The new VPS 1 starts from €3.81/month (excluding VAT), while the previous generation entry plan started at €6.50/month.
This is not an automatic price cut for all existing users. The official notes include:
- Old VPS will not be migrated automatically;
- Original configurations, infrastructure, local NVMe and current prices remain unchanged;
- No forced upgrades;
- Only after actively switching to VPS 2027 do the new series' prices and upgrade rules apply.
OVHcloud's official announcement states that the entire VPS 2027 series includes IPv4, IPv6, unlimited traffic and a 99.9% SLA. Whether a specific model is offered in a specific region, final taxes and settlement currency are still subject to the purchase page.
The new VPS 1 is suitable for lightweight websites, test environments, personal applications and low-load services. Being cheap does not mean it is necessarily better than the old plan. Before migrating, compare vCore, memory, storage type, backups and upgrade paths, not just €3.81.
Official announcement: OVHcloud VPS 2027
Scaleway's new prices take effect from June 1, 2026. The official notice did not apply a uniform percentage increase, but listed affected products item by item; products not in the table keep their prices unchanged.
A few easy-to-understand examples:
| Product or resource | Old price | New price | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| DEV1-S | €0.0088/hour | €0.00898/hour | About 2% |
| GP1-XS | €0.091/hour | €0.0928/hour | About 2% |
| STARDUST1-S | €0.00015/hour | €0.0006/hour | 300%, but the absolute amount is still small |
| Zonal Flexible IPv4 | €0.004/hour | €0.005/hour | 25% |
| VPC Public Gateway S | €0.0199/hour | €0.026/hour | About 31% |
| Compute Local Storage | €0.000044/GB/hour | €0.000049/GB/hour | About 11% |
This exactly shows why "up to 300% increase" is misleading. STARDUST1-S's percentage is exaggerated, but it was already an extremely low-priced small instance; when actually running production environments, IPv4, storage, gateways and load balancers stacked together may make the bill change more noteworthy.
Official details: A transparent update on Scaleway pricing
These projects usually don't need dedicated CPU. For WordPress, Hugo, small Node.js applications, Uptime Kuma or personal panels, prioritize whether shared CPU and memory are sufficient.
You can compare:
- OVH VPS 2027 entry tier: low starting price, includes IPv4/IPv6, suitable for new projects;
- Hetzner CAX11: ARM price is still low, but check image and software compatibility first;
- Hetzner CX23: x86 compatibility is worry-free, price is slightly lower than CAX11, but the resource structure is different;
- DigitalOcean 512 MiB Basic Droplet: $4/month, suitable for truly lightweight testing, not for cramming in a database and multiple containers.
If you plan to choose ARM, read first: Is an ARM VPS Worth Buying (2026). Many common Docker images support linux/arm64, but closed-source software, old panels and programs that only ship x86 binaries may still get stuck.
Don't be fooled by "one core and 512MB can boot." With a reverse proxy, database, Redis, monitoring and business containers together, 2GB of memory will soon hit the limit.
I would first list the resident memory of each container, then leave 20%–30% headroom. If a cheap instance requires buying extra backups, block storage and public IPv4, the final bill may not be lower than a higher-tier plan.
Compilation, transcoding, game servers, high-frequency databases and tasks that run at full load continuously are not suitable for choosing based only on vCPU numbers. A shared-CPU "4 cores" does not equal four dedicated cores that can run at full load long-term.
With Hetzner CCX's new prices, you can compare at the same time:
- Dedicated-CPU cloud instances;
- Monthly dedicated servers;
- Older-model Server Auction;
- Converting batch processing into short-lived instances billed by the second.
DigitalOcean's official pricing page states that starting January 1, 2026, Droplets use per-second billing, with a minimum charge of 60 seconds or $0.01, and a monthly cap. Temporary compilation and automated testing may therefore be easier to control in cost; for long-term 24-hour operation, still look at the monthly price.
The lowest European price does not equal the best access experience. When a website targets mainland China, routing, evening peak, return path and packet loss are often more important than saving two euros a month.
If the target users are in Asia, at least do these checks:
- Create a test instance in the target data center;
- Run
mtrduring the day and at evening peak separately; - Test real page TTFB, not just ping;
- Check the outbound traffic allowance and overage unit price;
- Keep the old machine before migrating, to avoid moving back if the routing is unsuitable.
Alternative providers can be added to the test list, but don't order based only on the marketing page. First use monthly or hourly instances to test CPU stability, disk I/O, target routing and the actual bill, then decide whether to migrate long-term.
A VPS listed at €5 does not mean it only costs €60 a year. It is recommended to put the following items into the same table:
| Cost item | What is easily missed |
|---|---|
| Instance | Hourly or monthly cap, whether billing continues when stopped |
| IPv4 | Whether included, or charged separately by the hour |
| Traffic | Free inbound does not mean free outbound, regional rules may differ |
| Backup | Charged as a percentage of the instance or by GB |
| Snapshot | Long-term retention continues to be billed |
| Block storage | Whether there are performance-tier fees beyond capacity fees |
| Taxes | Whether the page excludes VAT |
| Exchange rate | Euro, US dollar and credit card conversion costs |
| Migration | Manual time, running two machines in parallel and downtime risk |
If you save €3 a month but have to spend a weekend migrating, and the new machine's routing is worse, the math may not be worth it. If the original plan costs €200 more a year and the business is easy to move, then there is no need to stay just because "it has been used for a long time."
- Export the database and actually restore it once;
- Back up website files, environment variables, keys and scheduled tasks;
- Record firewalls, security groups and open ports;
- Check the new machine's CPU architecture and Docker images;
- Test routing during the day and at evening peak separately;
- Lower DNS TTL in advance;
- Run old and new servers in parallel for at least 48 hours;
- Confirm email, Webhooks, payment callbacks and third-party whitelists;
- Download the last backup before canceling the old machine;
- Check whether the old machine has auto-renewal and unreleased add-on resources.
Don't just take a screenshot of "backup successful." The most useful verification is to restore the backup on the new machine and confirm the website opens, the admin panel can log in, and scheduled tasks can run.
The official announcement says the new prices apply to new orders and Cloud instance rescales after June 15, 2026. Before resizing existing instances, you should first check the target price shown in the console.
If the software fully supports ARM, CAX's absolute price is still attractive. Before buying, check whether the system image, Docker images, panels and closed-source dependencies provide arm64 versions.
No. OVHcloud explicitly states there is no automatic change or forced migration; old configurations, infrastructure, local NVMe and current prices remain unchanged.
No. The official notice lists adjustments item by item by product; products not listed keep their prices unchanged. Instances, IPv4, storage and network components need to be checked separately.
Look at the terms first. Annual payment can reduce the risk of short-term price changes, but it also increases refund and migration restrictions. Before testing routing, performance and compatibility, it is not recommended to pay for a long period just because you "fear a price increase."
If an old Hetzner instance is stable and the price hasn't changed, I wouldn't move immediately just to chase a lower list price; when a rescale is needed, I would first put the new price, OVH VPS 2027, dedicated servers and ARM instances into the same table.
For new projects that are just blogs, tests or lightweight services, I would pick two from OVH's new entry tier, Hetzner CAX/CX and DigitalOcean's basic tier to trial-run, then keep one based on routing and console experience. For sustained high-CPU tasks, I would no longer default to CCX, but compare dedicated CPU and dedicated servers together.
Prices will change, and pages will also vary by region, taxes and IPv4 rules. The data in this article was verified on July 17, 2026; before payment, the checkout page prevails.