Table of Contents
- The plan lines, from the API
- Cloud Compute: the base line
- High Frequency and High Performance
- Optimized Cloud and bare metal
- Nine US regions and what each offers
- Operating systems and Windows
- What this review could not verify
- Against DigitalOcean, Linode and the fixed-price hosts
- Who should pick Vultr
- Verdict and rating
- FAQ
- Sources
The plan lines, from the API
Vultr's plans endpoint returns seven values in its type field (vc2, vhf, vhp, voc, vcg, vdm, vx1; the eleven vdm plans are dedicated GPU machines whose ids begin with vcg-, so grouping by id prefix shows six). The five that matter to a VPS buyer, plus bare metal from its own endpoint, with counts and the cheapest US-available plan in each (September 2026):
| Family (API type) | What it is | Plans | Cheapest | Disk type label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloud Compute (vc2) | Shared vCPU, Intel, SSD | 12 | $2.50 (512 MB, IPv6 only); $5 with IPv4 at 1 GB | SSD |
| High Frequency (vhf) | Shared vCPU, Intel, larger disks | 10 | $6 (1 GB, 32 GB) | HIGHFREQUENCY |
| High Performance (vhp) | Shared vCPU, AMD or Intel, more transfer | 16 | $6 (1 GB, 25 GB, 2 TB) | AMDHIGHPERF |
| Optimized Cloud (voc) | Dedicated vCPU, AMD; general, CPU, memory and storage variants | 51 | $28 (1 vCPU, 2 GB) | DEDICATEDOPTIMIZED |
| Cloud GPU (vcg) | Shared GPU slices | 15 | $43 (2 vCPU, 8 GB, 2 GB VRAM) | CLOUDGPU |
| Bare Metal (plans-metal) | Dedicated servers, hourly | 23 (11 with a US location) | $120 (4 cores, 32 GB) |
Cloud Compute: the base line
| Plan | Monthly | Hourly | vCPU | RAM | SSD | Transfer | US regions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| vc2-1c-0.5gb-v6 | $2.50 | $0.003 | 1 | 512 MB | 10 GB | 0.5 TB | New Jersey, Atlanta (IPv6 only) |
| vc2-1c-0.5gb | $3.50 | $0.005 | 1 | 512 MB | 10 GB | 0.5 TB | New Jersey |
| vc2-1c-1gb | $5 | $0.007 | 1 | 1 GB | 25 GB | 1 TB | Eight |
| vc2-1c-2gb | $10 | $0.014 | 1 | 2 GB | 55 GB | 2 TB | Eight |
| vc2-2c-4gb | $20 | $0.027 | 2 | 4 GB | 80 GB | 3 TB | Eight |
| vc2-4c-8gb | $40 | $0.055 | 4 | 8 GB | 160 GB | 4 TB | Eight |
"Eight" is New Jersey, Chicago, Dallas, Seattle, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Silicon Valley and Miami; the API does not list Cloud Compute plans for Honolulu. The two 512 MB plans are worth knowing about: the IPv6-only one is the cheapest server on this site and useless to anyone who needs an IPv4 address; the IPv4 one is sold only in New Jersey. The $5 plan is where most people start, and at that price it matches Linode and undercuts DigitalOcean by a dollar.
High Frequency and High Performance
Both start at $6 for 1 vCPU and 1 GB, a dollar over Cloud Compute, and differ in what the extra dollar buys: High Frequency (vhf-1c-1gb) has a 32 GB disk the API labels HIGHFREQUENCY and 1 TB of transfer; High Performance (vhp-1c-1gb-amd, and an Intel twin) has 25 GB labelled AMDHIGHPERF and 2 TB of transfer. At 2 GB both are $12 against Cloud Compute's $10; High Performance's 2 vCPU, 4 GB plan is $24 with 5 TB. Vultr's product pages describe the processors and storage behind the labels; those pages returned 403 to our tools, so this review does not restate what they say. Read the labels as "newer hardware line, more disk or transfer, a dollar or two more" and test a plan for an hour if the difference matters.
Optimized Cloud and bare metal
Optimized Cloud (voc) reserves the vCPU for one instance and comes in general-purpose, CPU-optimized, memory-optimized and storage-optimized variants on AMD, from $28 for 1 vCPU and 2 GB (CPU-optimized) and $30 for 1 vCPU and 4 GB (general), available in all nine US regions including Honolulu. Bare metal (plans-metal endpoint) lists 23 servers, eleven with a US location, from $120 for 4 cores and 32 GB (New Jersey, Chicago, Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, Miami) and $185 for 6 cores (eight US regions), billed hourly like everything else. This is the part of Vultr's catalog with no equivalent at the fixed-price hosts.
Nine US regions and what each offers
| Region | City (API label) | DDoS option | Block storage | Load balancers, Kubernetes | Cloud Compute plans |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ewr | New Jersey | Yes | Storage and high-performance | Yes | Yes, incl. both 512 MB plans |
| ord | Chicago | Yes | Storage and high-performance | Yes | Yes |
| dfw | Dallas | Yes | Storage | Yes | Yes |
| sea | Seattle | Yes | Storage and high-performance | Yes | Yes |
| lax | Los Angeles | Yes | Storage and high-performance | Yes | Yes |
| atl | Atlanta | Yes | Storage and high-performance | Yes | Yes, incl. IPv6-only 512 MB |
| sjc | Silicon Valley | Yes | Storage | Yes | Yes |
| mia | Miami | Yes | Storage | Yes | Yes |
| hnl | Honolulu | Yes | Storage | Yes | Optimized Cloud only |
The API reports the options per region, which is how the table is filled: the DDoS protection option, block storage in a storage-optimised tier everywhere and a high-performance tier in five regions, and load balancers and Kubernetes in all nine. Honolulu is the only US region with no shared-vCPU plans listed. The US datacenter guide covers which region to pick for which audience.
Operating systems and Windows
The OS endpoint lists the usual Linux distributions and BSDs plus Windows Server 2016, 2019, 2022 and 2025 in Standard and Datacenter editions, with Core variants. Windows images carry a license fee added at checkout on top of the plan price, so a 2 vCPU, 4 GB Windows server is $20 plus the license; InterServer's $10 Windows plan includes the license and is the cheaper flat price, while Vultr is the one with hourly billing and nine regions. Vultr's API reference also documents snapshot and custom-ISO endpoints, which is the basis for the snapshot and ISO mentions on this page.
What this review could not verify
Vultr's pricing, product, promotion and legal pages returned 403 to our tools in September 2026, so the following are not claimed here: the price of automatic backups and of snapshot storage, the refund or credit policy, any sign-up credit, the support channels and their scope, and the hardware descriptions behind the High Frequency and High Performance labels. Earlier versions of this page stated figures for several of these (and reported latency and benchmark tests that could not be sourced); they have been removed. Vultr's own pages are the place to check them before buying.
Against DigitalOcean, Linode and the fixed-price hosts
| Provider | 1 GB | 2 GB | 4 GB | US regions | Billing | Windows |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vultr | $5 | $10 | $20 | 9 | Hourly | Yes, license at checkout |
| DigitalOcean | $6 | $12 | $24 | 2 | Per-second, monthly cap | No |
| Linode | $5 | $12 | $24 | 10 | Hourly, monthly cap | No |
| InterServer | No 1 GB | $3 | $6 | 3 cities | Monthly, no refund | Yes, from $10 with license |
| OVHcloud | No 1 GB | No 2 GB | $5.35 | 2 | Monthly, 6 or 12 months | Paid option |
| Hetzner (US) | No 1 GB | $20.49 | $37.49 | 2 | Hourly, monthly cap | No |
Among the developer clouds Vultr is the cheapest at 2 and 4 GB and the only one with Windows images. Against the fixed-price hosts it costs three times as much at 2 GB, which is the recurring theme of this site: the platform is the product, and if you do not use the platform you are overpaying for a server.
Who should pick Vultr
- Anyone who creates and destroys servers, or who wants the same server available in eight or nine US metros with one API.
- Windows workloads that need hourly billing or a region InterServer does not have.
- Dedicated vCPU or bare metal in a specific US city, billed hourly.
- Not a single small server that runs all month: InterServer or OVHcloud does that for a third to half the price.
Verdict and rating
Vultr is the most transparent provider on this site in one specific way: its whole catalog can be read by anyone from a public API, prices included, which is how this page was written. What the API shows is a broad developer cloud with nine US regions, seven plan families from $2.50 to bare metal, hourly billing throughout, and Windows images, priced a little under DigitalOcean and Linode and well above the fixed-price hosts. Rating for US buyers: 4.4 out of 5. Credit for the regions, the plan range, the API and hourly billing, and for being the cheapest of the developer clouds at 2 and 4 GB; held down by price against fixed-price hosts at small sizes, and by the pages our tools could not read, which leaves backups, refunds and support unverified here.
Choose Vultr if you script infrastructure, need many US regions, or want Windows or bare metal by the hour. Choose Linode if you want ten regions and a platform of similar shape. Choose InterServer or OVHcloud if you want one server at one price.