Table of Contents
- Every US VPS plan under $7, in one table
- The memory floor: why 512 MB and 2 GB are different products
- The cheapest usable server: InterServer at $3
- The sub-$4 tier: Vultr, DigitalOcean, RackNerd
- The $5 to $7 tier: where features come back
- What the cheapest plans leave out
- What the sub-$4 limits cost, by the size of the buyer
- Picks by what you are running
- FAQ
- Sources
Every US VPS plan under $7, in one table
Monthly price unless marked, US datacenter locations only, read from each provider's pricing page or public API on the same day (September 2026). Sorted by monthly cost.
| Provider, plan | Monthly | vCPU | RAM | Storage | Transfer | US locations | Catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RackNerd, 512 MB KVM (annual) | $26.99/yr (about $2.25) | 1 | 512 MB | 30 GB SSD | 500 GB | LA, San Jose, Seattle, Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Ashburn and more | Yearly billing; promos vary |
| Vultr, vc2-1c-0.5gb-v6 | $2.50 | 1 | 512 MB | 10 GB SSD | 512 GB | New Jersey, Atlanta | IPv6 only |
| InterServer, 1 slice | $3.00 | 1 | 2 GB | 40 GB SSD | 2 TB | New York, Los Angeles, Dallas | Monthly only, no refund |
| Vultr, vc2-1c-0.5gb | $3.50 | 1 | 512 MB | 10 GB SSD | 512 GB | New Jersey | Tiny |
| DigitalOcean, Basic 512 MiB | $4.00 | 1 | 512 MB | 10 GB SSD | 500 GB | Select regions | Tiny |
| Vultr, vc2-1c-1gb | $5.00 | 1 | 1 GB | 25 GB SSD | 1 TB | 8 US regions | Add swap for anything with a DB |
| OVHcloud, VPS-1 | $5.35 ($4.54 on a 12-month term) | 2 | 4 GB | 40 GB NVMe | Unlimited | Vint Hill VA, Hillsboro OR | Monthly billing; daily backup and anti-DDoS included; 500 Mbps port |
| DigitalOcean, Basic 1 GB | $6.00 | 1 | 1 GB | 25 GB SSD | 1 TB | Most US regions | Same |
| Hostinger, KVM 1 | $6.49 (24-month term) | 1 | 4 GB | 50 GB NVMe | 4 TB | US locations offered | Renews at $11.99 |
| Contabo, Cloud VPS 4 | $6.60 | 4 | 8 GB | 100 GB SSD | Unlimited | US locations offered | 200 Mbit/s port; intro price for 24 months |
Two names are missing on purpose. Hetzner's cheap plans are Germany and Finland only; its US entry plan is $20.49 (our Hetzner review has both grids). BuyVM and the other LowEndTalk regulars sell out and change prices too often to put in a table that claims a date.
The memory floor: why 512 MB and 2 GB are different products
The table sorts by price, but the column that decides what you can run is RAM. A 512 MB server holds a Linux base system with a few hundred megabytes to spare. That is enough for a static site behind Nginx, a Discord or Telegram bot, a WireGuard endpoint, an uptime monitor or a small Go or Rust service. It is not enough for PHP-FPM and MySQL at the same time: WordPress on 512 MB works until the first traffic spike, and then MySQL is killed to free memory.
At 1 GB you can run a light dynamic site if you add swap and keep the plugin count down. At 2 GB you can run a normal WordPress or Laravel stack with a caching layer and stop thinking about memory for a while. That is why this page treats "cheapest" as two questions. The cheapest plan is a 512 MB Vultr or RackNerd box. The cheapest plan you will still be using in six months is a 2 GB InterServer slice.
The cheapest usable server: InterServer at $3
InterServer's Cloud VPS sells in $3 slices: 1 core, 2 GB RAM, 40 GB SSD, 2 TB transfer on a shared 10 Gbps port, KVM, root access, one IPv4 address, in New York City (Secaucus), Los Angeles or Dallas (September 2026). Two slices are $6 for 4 GB; four slices are $12 for 2 cores and 8 GB. The grid is linear and the price on the page is the monthly rate, with no introductory qualifier.
What the $3 leaves out is written in InterServer's own FAQ: no trial, no refund, no hourly billing, and no API or snapshots advertised. Your exposure on a bad first month is $3, and billing is month to month. For a first server, a small business site, a staging box or a personal project that runs all month, it is the lowest US price that comes with enough memory to be useful. Our InterServer review walks through ordering, slice sizing and the first-hour setup checklist, including the swap step every 2 GB server needs. If the site is WordPress, the Webuzo on InterServer guide is the included-panel path. Because snapshots are not advertised, the backup guide is the first-hour job. Ordering and My.InterServer are in the setup guide.
The sub-$4 tier: Vultr, DigitalOcean, RackNerd
Vultr sells the cheapest monthly instance on the list: 512 MB, 1 vCPU, 10 GB, 512 GB transfer, for $2.50 with IPv6 only (New Jersey or Atlanta) or $3.50 with an IPv4 address (New Jersey). It is billed hourly, has the full Vultr API and snapshots, and is the right pick for a throwaway test box or a bot that only needs to reach IPv6 services. It is the wrong pick for a website, because 512 MB is the memory floor described above and the IPv6-only version cannot be reached by IPv4-only clients at all.
DigitalOcean matches with a 512 MiB, 1 vCPU, 10 GB droplet at $4 in select regions, with 500 GB of transfer. Same use cases as Vultr's smallest plan, with per-second billing (since January 2026) and the DigitalOcean tooling; the extra $0.50 over Vultr's $3.50 IPv4 plan, or $1.50 over the $2.50 IPv6-only plan, buys the ecosystem, not the hardware.
RackNerd is the per-month winner if you pay yearly: the public 512 MB KVM plan is $26.99 a year (1 vCore, 30 GB SSD, 500 GB transfer) across a long list of US locations, and the promotional plans RackNerd publishes on its blog and on deal sites are lower. The trade is that a year is paid up front for a 512 MB box. It is the classic choice for a VPN or a small self-hosted tool where the price matters more than the memory; our RackNerd review covers the current promotions and the datacenter network behind them.
The $5 to $7 tier: where features come back
Between $5 and $7 the question stops being "can it run anything" and becomes "what do I get besides the hardware".
- Vultr vc2-1c-1gb, $5: 1 GB, 25 GB, 1 TB, in the eight US regions on its plans API (New Jersey, Chicago, Dallas, Seattle, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Silicon Valley, Miami). The most locations of anything on this page, hourly billing, API and snapshots. Add swap and it runs a small dynamic site.
- OVHcloud VPS-1, $5.35: 2 vCores, 4 GB, 40 GB NVMe and unlimited traffic on a 500 Mbps port in Virginia or Oregon, with a daily backup and DDoS protection included, and $4.54 a month if you commit to a year. On hardware per dollar at 4 GB it beats InterServer's $6 two-slice plan; what it lacks is a 2 GB size, hourly billing, a Dallas or New York location and an included snapshot. Our OVHcloud review has the option prices.
- DigitalOcean Basic 1 GB, $6: the same shape as Vultr's, with DigitalOcean's managed database and app platform one click away if the project grows.
- Hostinger KVM 1, $6.49: 4 GB of RAM and 50 GB NVMe for the price of a 1 GB droplet, which is why it appears in so many "cheapest" lists. The number is a 24-month term price that renews at $11.99, so the real comparison is $6.49 for two years then $11.99, against InterServer's $6 or OVHcloud's $5.35 for the same 4 GB with no term.
- Contabo Cloud VPS 4, $6.60: 4 vCPU, 8 GB and 100 GB SSD is the most hardware per dollar on the page by a wide margin. The port is 200 Mbit/s and the price is an introductory rate for the first 24 months. Our Contabo review explains who the slow port does and does not matter for.
What the cheapest plans leave out
| Plan | Billing | Refund or trial | API and snapshots | The thing to know |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| InterServer $3 | Monthly only | None | Not advertised | No hourly billing; backups are a paid add-on |
| Vultr $2.50 / $3.50 / $5 | Hourly | None stated; hourly billing limits exposure | Yes | $2.50 plan is IPv6 only |
| DigitalOcean $4 / $6 | Per-second | None stated | Yes | 500 GB transfer on the $4 plan |
| RackNerd $26.99/yr | Annual | See RackNerd terms | Panel-based | A year paid up front |
| Hostinger $6.49 | 24-month term | See Hostinger terms | Yes | Renews at $11.99 |
| OVHcloud $5.35 | Monthly, 6 or 12 months | None stated | Paid option from $0.60 | No hourly billing; daily backup included |
| Contabo $6.60 | Monthly | None stated | Panel-based | 200 Mbit/s port; intro price for 24 months |
Refund and trial policies change and are worded differently by each provider; the cells above reflect what each provider's plan or FAQ page said on the day, and "see terms" means the page did not state it plainly. Check before you rely on one.
What the sub-$4 limits cost, by the size of the buyer
Three of the entries in the table above are not footnotes but product shapes, and each one costs something different depending on who is buying. None of them is a defect in the plan; each is the reason the plan is that cheap.
| Limit | Where it appears | Cost to one person | Cost to a team |
|---|---|---|---|
| IPv6 only | Vultr vc2-1c-0.5gb-v6 at $2.50, against $3.50 for the same plan with an IPv4 address | A bot or a probe that only talks to IPv6 services can live here. A VPN server, a backup target and a website cannot: the other end has to open the connection, and an IPv4-only network cannot. The same limit runs the other way when the box itself has to reach an IPv4-only destination. | A blocker rather than a cost. Anyone on the team whose network is IPv4-only cannot reach the box, and each of those incidents becomes a workaround. The $3.50 plan is the same size with an IPv4 address. |
| Paid up front for a year | RackNerd from $26.99 a year | A decision you have to be right about once. For a VPN endpoint or a name server that will still be there in twelve months, the annual price is the cheapest way to run it, and the risk is small because the workload is stable. | A budget line that does not move, which is usually welcome, with one catch: the service is committed whether or not the project is. If a team might move a workload to a larger machine in six months, the annual saving is smaller than the cost of paying twice. |
| Monthly only | InterServer and OVHcloud | Close to nothing. One person running one always-on box has no use for an hourly meter, and the monthly bill is the same either way. | A workflow constraint. A team that creates and destroys machines for testing, previews or build runners pays a month for an hour of work on these providers, which is why the hourly hosts appear in that row of the picks below. |
The pattern is the one worth carrying away from a page about cheap plans: the low price is not a discount on a full-featured machine, it is the price of a machine with a boundary drawn around it. In a market where every plan page lists twenty features, a $2.50 instance with no IPv4 address, a $3 server with no advertised API and an annual box that costs less per month than a monthly one are three deliberate products, each sized for a shape of use. The question to answer before ordering is which row above describes you, not which plan has the longest list.
Picks by what you are running
- A WordPress, PHP or small app site: InterServer 1 slice ($3). Move to 2 slices ($6) when you add WooCommerce or a second site. The Webuzo guide is the included panel; the backup guide is the first-hour job because snapshots are not advertised.
- A VPN endpoint or a bot: RackNerd annual if you are sure about the year, Vultr $3.50 if you want to be able to delete it tomorrow. Our VPN VPS page has the WireGuard setup.
- A test box you will destroy in an hour: Vultr or DigitalOcean; hourly billing is the feature, and InterServer's monthly-only billing is the wrong shape for it.
- The most RAM you can get under $7: Contabo Cloud VPS 4, as long as a 200 Mbit/s port is acceptable.
- A server in a city not on InterServer's list: Vultr's $5 plan, which the plans API lists in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, New Jersey, Seattle and Silicon Valley. The US datacenter guide maps every provider to its cities.