Table of Contents
How this page ranks
A provider is listed if its own page or public API lists a Debian image. Providers are ranked by the monthly list price of their smallest plan with at least 2 GB of memory; where the smallest plan is larger (OVHcloud 4 GB, Contabo 8 GB) that plan is shown with its size. The Debian version column reports only what the source states: Vultr's and Linode's APIs and DigitalOcean's and OVHcloud's pages name versions; the others say "Debian" and show versions on the order form. Debian's own facts are from debian.org pages read in September 2026. An earlier version of this page reported idle memory figures for Debian, Ubuntu and AlmaLinux from a testing narrative, priced Hetzner at a European rate that no longer applies in the US, and listed BuyVM at a price it does not charge; all of that has been removed.
Debian in September 2026: versions, dates, support
Debian's releases page states: "The current stable distribution of Debian is version 13, codenamed trixie", initially released as 13.0 on August 9, 2025; the trixie release page adds that Debian 13.7 was released on September 12, 2026. The releases table gives each version's dates:
| Version | Codename | Released | End of life (security team) | End of LTS | End of ELTS | Status in September 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 13 | trixie | 2025-08-09 | 2028-08-09 | 2030-06-30 | 2035-06-30 | Current stable; install this |
| 12 | bookworm | 2023-06-10 | 2026-07-11 | 2028-06-30 | 2033-06-30 | Oldstable, on LTS; upgrade when convenient |
| 11 | bullseye | 2021-08-14 | 2024-08-14 | 2026-08-31 | 2031-06-30 | LTS end date has passed; ELTS (paid, third-party) after it |
The security FAQ sets the policy behind the table: "The security team will support a stable distribution for three years after its release." LTS, run by a separate team, extends that to about five years from release; Extended LTS beyond it is a paid service. For a server you intend to keep, that means a Debian 13 install in September 2026 has regular security support to August 2028 and LTS to mid-2030 before you must upgrade, and a Debian 12 install is already in its LTS phase.
Debian VPS ranked by price at 2 GB
| Provider | Plan | vCPU / RAM / disk / transfer | Debian image (as stated) | Monthly | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| InterServer | 1 slice | 1 / 2 GB / 40 GB / 2 TB | Debian (version on order form) | $3 | Monthly, no contract; NYC, Dallas, LA |
| OVHcloud | VPS-1 | 2 / 4 GB / 40 GB / unmetered | Debian 13; Debian 12 (Docker, Plesk, n8n) | $5.35 | No 2 GB plan; $4.54 yearly; Virginia, Oregon |
| Contabo | Cloud VPS 4 | 4 / 8 GB / 100 GB / unlimited | Debian (version on order form) | $6.60 | Introductory for 24 months; US East, Central, West |
| BuyVM | Slice 2048 | 1 / 2 GB / 40 GB / unmetered | Debian (version on order form) | $7 | Stock-dependent; Las Vegas, New York; 1 GB slice $3.50 |
| Hostwinds | Unmanaged Linux 2 GB | 1 / 2 GB / 50 GB / 2 TB | Debian (version on order form) | $9.99 | Monthly; Dallas, Seattle |
| Vultr | vc2-1c-2gb | 1 / 2 GB / 55 GB / 2 TB | Debian 13 (trixie), Debian 12 (bookworm) | $10 | Hourly; API; nine US regions |
| Linode | Linode 2GB | 1 / 2 GB / 50 GB / 2 TB | Debian 13, 12, 11 | $12 | Hourly; API; ten US regions; image EOL dates published |
| DigitalOcean | Basic 2 GiB | 1 / 2 GiB / 50 GB / 2 TB | Debian 13 | $12 | Hourly; $12 Regular-CPU plan in NYC, SFO; Premium-CPU Basic also in Atlanta, Richmond, Kansas City |
| Hetzner | CPX11 (US) | 2 / 2 GB / 40 GB NVMe / 1 TB | Debian (version on order form) | $20.49 | US price since June 15, 2026; Ashburn, Hillsboro |
Two providers with Debian images sit outside the table: Kamatera, whose pricing page prints sample configurations rather than a plan ladder ($4 for 1 vCPU and 1 GB; $25 for 2 vCPU and 2 GB on its General purpose CPU type; $39 for 4 GB; Debian in its OS list) and whose $25 sample would sit last if ranked and RackNerd, whose KVM page as read did not list operating systems in text; confirm Debian on its order form. Google Cloud, Lightsail and Oracle Cloud also offer Debian images and are metered or bundled rather than priced per plan; their reviews cover them.
What each provider's image list says
- Vultr. The public OS endpoint returns 48 images in September 2026, two of them Debian: "Debian 12 x64 (bookworm)" (id 2136) and "Debian 13 x64 (trixie)" (id 2625). The OS endpoint is not plan-specific; the review covers which plan lines and regions the images apply to.
- Linode. The images API lists three Debian images with end-of-life dates: Debian 11 (EOL 2026-06-30, still listed and not flagged deprecated in September 2026), Debian 12 (EOL 2028-06-10) and Debian 13 (created 2025-09-09, EOL 2030-06-30), plus Kubernetes node images built on Debian 13. Linode is the only provider here that publishes when it will stop offering each image.
- DigitalOcean. Its images documentation lists "Debian 13" with the slug debian-13-x64; no Debian 12 entry appears in that list in September 2026, so a Debian 12 Droplet would need a custom image.
- OVHcloud US. The VPS page's image selector offers "Debian 13" and three "Debian 12" application images (Docker, Plesk, n8n).
- InterServer, Contabo, Hostwinds, BuyVM, Kamatera, Hetzner. Each names Debian in its OS list (InterServer has a Debian VPS product page; Hetzner's docs list "Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, CentOS, Rocky Linux, and AlmaLinux"); the versions are shown on the order form and were not readable as text on the pages this site fetched. Ask, or install 12 and upgrade if 13 is missing.
Why Debian on a VPS, without the folklore
The case for Debian on a server is about what does not change. Within a stable release, package versions are frozen and receive security fixes and bug fixes only, so a server installed in 2025 and one installed in 2027 from the same release run the same versions and behave the same way; upgrades are deliberate events every two to three years rather than a stream. The package archive is large, the documentation is thorough, and Ubuntu, the other common VPS choice, is built from it, so anything written for Ubuntu usually applies with small changes. Debian ships no vendor agent, no snap daemon and no telemetry by default, and its cloud images are small. What this page will not tell you is how many megabytes an idle Debian uses compared with Ubuntu; that depends on the image, the provider's agent and what you install, and the site has not measured it. If a 512 MB or 1 GB server is the constraint, the practical answer is the same on any distribution: install only what you run and add swap.
The case against is the same fact from the other side: stable means older. A new server in September 2026 on Debian 13 gets the versions of PHP, PostgreSQL and the kernel that were current in mid-2025, and stays on them. Backports and vendor repositories cover the gaps for most people; if you need the newest of everything every month, a rolling or shorter-cycle distribution fits better.
Backports, cloud images and cloud-init
Backports. Debian's backports instructions describe trixie-backports as providing "new packages for Debian 13 (trixie), backported from Debian testing (forky), which will be updated until 1 year after the forky release". Enable it with a sources entry for the trixie-backports suite as shown there, then install one package from it with apt install -t trixie-backports packagename; nothing else moves. The same page notes bookworm-backports was "updated until August 9th 2026", so Debian 12 servers have lost that route.
Cloud images. Debian publishes official cloud images at cloud.debian.org, with trixie and trixie-backports image directories updated in September 2026. The image page describes the "generic" build as one that "Should run in any environment using cloud-init, for e.g. OpenStack, DigitalOcean and also on bare metal", and a genericcloud build with fewer drivers. Providers either use these or build their own; on any of the providers in the table, SSH keys and hostname are set at first boot and you log in as root or a named user with your key.
First hour. Identical to Ubuntu: apt update && apt full-upgrade, a sudo user, key-only SSH, nftables or ufw, unattended-upgrades, swap on small servers. The hardening guide has the commands; Debian 13 uses the same apt, systemd and sshd configuration paths.
Moving a Debian 12 server to 13
Debian supports in-place upgrades between consecutive releases, and the trixie release notes have an upgrading chapter that is the authority; read it before starting, because each release has specific notes (package renames, removed packages, configuration changes). The shape of the procedure is constant across releases: take a backup and confirm it restores; bring the Debian 12 system fully up to date; change the suite from bookworm to trixie in the apt sources; run apt update, then apt upgrade --without-new-pkgs, then apt full-upgrade; reboot; remove obsolete packages. Do it inside a screen or tmux session over SSH so a dropped connection does not interrupt it. On a provider with hourly billing, the safer path for a production server is to build a fresh Debian 13 server and move the site across using the migration guide, keeping the old one until the new one is proven.
What this page could not verify
- Debian versions on InterServer, Contabo, Hostwinds, BuyVM, Kamatera and Hetzner order forms: their pages name Debian without a version in text.
- Whether RackNerd offers Debian: its KVM page as fetched lists no operating systems in text.
- Idle memory, boot time or any performance figure for Debian against other distributions: not measured, not quoted.
- Whether DigitalOcean still offers a Debian 12 image through the API or console: its documentation list in September 2026 shows only Debian 13.