VPS Size Calculator

Answer four questions. The calculator works out a minimum spec and lists the cheapest plans in our provider data that meet it.

Picking a VPS size is a trade between headroom and cost. Too small and the site falls over under a traffic spike; too large and you pay every month for memory that sits idle. This calculator takes four inputs (use case, expected traffic, number of sites and budget), turns them into a minimum vCPU, RAM and disk figure, then lists the cheapest plans in our provider data that meet that minimum. It updates as you move the sliders, and the date each provider's prices were last checked is printed under the results.

1. What will you use the VPS for?

2. Expected monthly traffic

1,000 10,000 visits/mo 200,000+

3. How many websites/apps?

1 1 20+

4. Monthly budget

$2 $20/mo $100+

Your Recommended VPS Plans

How This Calculator Works

The calculator turns your four answers into a minimum spec, filters the plans in our provider data file (26 providers with structured plan data, each read from the provider's own pricing page or public API on the date shown under the results) and ranks the plans that pass by monthly price, lowest first. Plans without a published fixed price (usage-priced clouds, configure-to-order hosts) are not in the pool.

Minimum Specs by Use Case

Any use case: 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, 20 GB disk to start
E-commerce or SaaS: at least 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM
Game server: at least 4 vCPU, 4 GB RAM
Machine learning: at least 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM (GPU plans are outside this tool; see the machine learning page)
Disk: 20 GB plus 10 GB for each site

Traffic and Site Count

Over 10,000 visits a month: 2 GB RAM
Over 50,000 visits a month: 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM
More than 5 sites: 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM; more than 10 sites: 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM

These thresholds are rules of thumb set by the editorial team, not measurements: a cached WordPress site runs on less, an uncached WooCommerce store may need more. Plans sold on an annual or multi-year term compete at their term price and say so in their name, with the renewal price where the provider publishes one. The site publishes no benchmarks of its own; our storage page collects the specs providers publish.

Example Recommendations

What the calculator returns for four common scenarios, from the provider data as of September 2026.

WordPress blog, 10K visits a month

One site, $10 a month budget

Minimum: 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, 30 GB disk

Cheapest: CloudCone SSD VPS 1, $2.33 a month billed as $28 a year (2 vCPU, 1 GB, 30 GB).

Cheapest monthly: InterServer 1 slice, $3 (1 vCPU, 2 GB, 40 GB), then Hostwinds 1 GB at $4.99.

E-commerce store, 50K visits a month

WooCommerce with MySQL, $30 a month budget

Minimum: 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 30 GB disk

Cheapest: OVHcloud VPS-1, $5.35 (2 vCPU, 4 GB, 40 GB NVMe).

Next: Contabo Cloud VPS 4 at $6.60 (4 vCPU, 8 GB, 100 GB; introductory price on a 24-month term), Hostinger KVM 2 at $8.99 (2 vCPU, 8 GB, 100 GB NVMe; 24-month term, renews at $14.99).

Game server

One server, $25 a month budget

Minimum: 4 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 30 GB disk

Cheapest: Contabo Cloud VPS 4, $6.60 (4 vCPU, 8 GB, 100 GB; introductory 24-month price), then Cloud VPS 6 at $9 (6 vCPU, 12 GB, 200 GB).

Next: OVHcloud VPS-2 at $10 (4 vCPU, 8 GB, 75 GB NVMe). Take the memory figure from the game's own server requirements; modded packs list more than vanilla.

WordPress agency, 8 sites, 30K visits a month

Eight client sites on one server, $40 a month budget

Minimum: 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 100 GB disk (the site count drives the disk figure)

Cheapest: Contabo Cloud VPS 4, $6.60 (4 vCPU, 8 GB, 100 GB; introductory 24-month price).

Next: Hostinger KVM 2 at $8.99 (24-month term, renews at $14.99), Contabo Cloud VPS 6 at $9. For a month-to-month bill at this size, InterServer 4 slices is $12 (2 vCPU, 8 GB, 160 GB).

VPS Specs Guide by Use Case

How the thresholds above play out by workload, with the cheapest plans at each line from our provider data (prices as read from provider pages and APIs, September 2026).

Web Hosting (WordPress, Static Sites, CMS)

A single WordPress site with a page cache sits at the tool's 1 vCPU / 1 GB floor. The calculator moves to 2 GB above 10,000 visits a month and to 2 vCPU / 4 GB above 50,000 visits or five sites. Cheapest plans at the 2 GB line: InterServer 1 slice ($3, monthly billing), Vultr vc2-1c-2gb ($10) and DigitalOcean Basic 2 GiB ($12); Hostinger KVM 1 gives 4 GB with NVMe storage for $6.49 on a 24-month term, renewing at $11.99. Full WordPress VPS guide.

Game Servers (Minecraft, Valheim, ARK, Rust)

Game servers are about memory and about distance to the players. The calculator's floor is 4 vCPU / 4 GB; take the memory figure from the game's own dedicated-server requirements, since modded packs list more than a vanilla server does, and pick the datacenter nearest your player base. Plans at the 4 vCPU line: Contabo Cloud VPS 4 ($6.60, introductory 24-month price), InterServer 8 slices ($24, monthly) and Vultr vc2-4c-8gb ($40). Full game server guide.

Development & CI/CD

Development servers need flexibility more than size. 2 vCPU / 2 GB covers most single-developer workflows; self-hosted CI runners are sized per concurrent build. Hourly billing matters most here, because a test server should cost only the hours it ran: Vultr (vc2-1c-1gb, $5), DigitalOcean (Basic 1 GiB, $6) and Linode (Nanode, $5) all bill by the hour. Full dev VPS guide.

E-commerce & Business Applications

Checkout traffic is database traffic, so the calculator sets 2 vCPU / 4 GB as the floor for stores. Cheapest plans at that line in our data: OVHcloud VPS-1 ($5.35, NVMe) and Contabo Cloud VPS 4 ($6.60, introductory); Kamatera's configurator sets the exact shape, and its Pro sample card (2 vCPU, 4 GB) is $39. Managed platforms such as Cloudways and ScalaHosting take the server work off you at a higher monthly price. Full e-commerce guide.

VPN & Privacy

A WireGuard or OpenVPN server for personal use fits the smallest plan sold; the limit is the monthly transfer allowance, not CPU. BuyVM's slices come with unmetered bandwidth (Slice 512 at $24 a year, Slice 1024 at $3.50 a month), and Vultr's nine US regions (regions API, 2026-09-21) give a choice of exit city. Full VPN guide.

SaaS & API Services

Start a SaaS application server at 2 vCPU / 4 GB, the same floor the calculator uses for e-commerce, and move the database to a managed service when it becomes the bottleneck. Hourly billing (Vultr, DigitalOcean, Linode) suits staging; for a fixed monthly bill, OVHcloud VPS-2 is $10 (4 vCPU, 8 GB) and InterServer 4 slices is $12 (2 vCPU, 8 GB). Full dev guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

How accurate is this VPS calculator?

The calculator applies the rules of thumb listed under How This Calculator Works to plans whose prices and specs were read from provider pages and public APIs; the check dates are printed under the results. It runs no benchmarks and has not load-tested the plans it lists. Caching, a CDN and database tuning can cut what a site needs, so treat the result as a starting size and move up if monitoring shows memory pressure.

How much RAM do I need for WordPress?

A single WordPress site with under 10,000 monthly visitors runs on 1 GB of RAM (1 GB plans run $3 to $6 a month in our data). For 10,000 to 50,000 visitors, 2 GB. Several WordPress sites or a WooCommerce store, 4 GB and up. Object caching (Redis), Nginx and PHP-FPM tuning stretch any of these figures. See the WordPress VPS guide.

Can I upgrade my VPS plan later?

Yes. Most cloud VPS providers (Vultr, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, Kamatera) allow instant plan upgrades with minimal or no downtime. Start with the smallest plan that meets your needs and scale up as traffic grows. Hourly-billed providers make this the easiest, since you pay only for the hours each size ran.

What is the difference between vCPU and dedicated CPU?

A vCPU is a share of a physical core that other tenants on the same host also use. A dedicated CPU plan gives you cores that are not shared. For most web applications shared vCPUs are enough; dedicated plans cost more per GB of memory (Vultr, DigitalOcean, Linode and Hetzner each publish both ladders on their pricing pages) and pay off for sustained CPU work such as video encoding, CI builds or model inference.

Should I choose SSD or NVMe storage?

NVMe drives have much higher random I/O ceilings than SATA SSDs, which matters for database-heavy work (WooCommerce, Magento) more than for a cached blog. In our data Hetzner's US plans, Hostinger's KVM plans and OVHcloud's VPS range list NVMe; Vultr's High Frequency line and DigitalOcean's Premium Droplets are those providers' NVMe tiers. Our storage page collects the disk specs each provider publishes.

How much does a VPS cost for a small business?

In our provider data, plans at the 2 GB line run from $3 a month (InterServer 1 slice, monthly billing) through $10 (Vultr vc2-1c-2gb) and $12 (DigitalOcean Basic 2 GiB); Hostinger KVM 1 is $6.49 for 4 GB on a 24-month term, renewing at $11.99. Managed platforms such as Cloudways add a management fee on top of the server; see the review for current pricing. The cost calculator compares annual totals.

How many websites can I run on one VPS?

The calculator's rule: disk grows by 10 GB per site, above five sites the floor rises to 2 vCPU / 4 GB, and above ten sites to 4 vCPU / 8 GB. In practice memory per site depends on the CMS and plugins more than on visitors; a cached WordPress site needs a few hundred MB, an uncached one with many plugins more. Count the sites you will actually host, not the ones you might add.