Our first query said netcup changed no prices in September. That was wrong. On 22 September netcup replaced its G12 plans with a G12.5 generation that costs 40% more on the x86 VPS line and has half the disk, and no existing plan's price moved. OVH did much the same in June by moving each configuration up one tier name. Meanwhile 273 VPS plans at five US clouds really have held one price since February.
The five are DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, AWS Lightsail and Hostwinds, and in Europe Hetzner's shared-CPU CPX cloud line also went up, by 144% to 154% in June.
Europe is still mostly the cheap option. After its 40% increase, a 2 vCPU / 4 GB netcup VPS still costs about a third of the same configuration at DigitalOcean. Of the shared-CPU lines that got more expensive this year, only Hetzner CPX has landed at American prices.
Everything below comes from our nightly price tracking, checked against the providers' own pages and announcements on 1 October 2026. Prices exclude VAT. Euro prices are converted to dollars at the flat 1.15 rate the rest of HostingSift uses, and every price carries its billing term, because the price on a 12-month term and the month-to-month price of the same plan, billed with no commitment, are not the same number.
The 273 plans that never moved
Every active VPS and cloud plan at DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, AWS Lightsail and Hostwinds has held a single price for the whole time we have tracked it, 273 plans in all:
| Provider | Active VPS and cloud plans | Tracked since | Nightly readings (longest series) | Distinct prices seen per plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DigitalOcean | 90 | 12 Feb 2026 | 196 | 1 |
| Linode (Akamai) | 39 | 24 Feb 2026 | 186 | 1 |
| Vultr | 79 | 22 Feb 2026 | 182 | 1 since 23 Feb |
| AWS Lightsail | 25 | 25 Feb 2026 | 185 | 1 |
| Hostwinds | 40 | 25 Feb 2026 | 185 | 1 |
Ten of Vultr's plans picked up one contradictory reading on 22 February, the first night our Vultr scraper ran, and nothing since. That was us, not Vultr. Seven of the Lightsail plans and 20 of the Hostwinds plans entered our tracking later than the rest, so their series are shorter, though still flat. We also checked that none of the five retired a VPS plan during this period, for a reason the netcup section makes clear: a provider can raise prices without a single existing plan changing.
We also looked for announcements. As of 1 October 2026 we found no announced increase for CPU-based plans at any of the five. DigitalOcean did raise GPU Droplet prices on 1 August 2026, but GPU servers are outside the tables in this article. The current list prices for the 2 vCPU / 4 GB configuration are $24 at DigitalOcean, Linode and Lightsail, $20 at Vultr and $18.99 at Hostwinds. All five are billed month-to-month.
Who raised, and when
Six providers in our tracking raised VPS prices in 2026 in ways we could check against their own pages or announcements: netcup, Hetzner, OVHcloud, IONOS, Hostinger and Contabo. The table shows one example plan from each, with its billing term. The sections after it explain each case, including the plan generations and rate types named here.
| Provider | What changed | Date | Example | Before | After | Term |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| netcup | x86 VPS, G12 replaced by G12.5 | 22 Sep 2026 | VPS 500, 2 vCPU / 4 GB | €4.97 | €6.94 | 12-month |
| netcup | Root servers, G12 replaced by G12.5 | 22 Sep 2026 | RS 1000, 4 cores / 8 GB | €10.75 | €18.26 | 12-month |
| Hetzner | CPX shared and CCX dedicated cloud | 15 Jun 2026 | CPX22, 2 vCPU / 4 GB | €7.99 | €19.49 | Month-to-month |
| OVHcloud | VPS 2026 range replaced by VPS 2027 | Jun 2026 | 4 vCPU / 8 GB / 75 GB | €6.49 | €8.49 | Month-to-month |
| IONOS | VPS+ regular rate | 18 Sep 2026 | VPS M+, 2 vCPU / 4 GB | $11 | $14 | 1-year |
| Hostinger | KVM intro price | 3 Mar 2026 | KVM 1, 1 vCPU / 4 GB | $4.99 | $6.49 | 24-month |
| Contabo | Cloud VDS (dedicated cores) | Not datable | Cloud VDS S, 6 cores / 24 GB | €31.20 | €39.20 | 24-month |
Two of these providers gave a reason: netcup's CEO pointed to memory prices, OVH to hardware costs in general. Hetzner's price adjustment page states no reason.
netcup charged 40% more for half the disk
On 22 September 2026 netcup CEO Alexander Windbichler posted "RAMpocalypse: We need to talk about pricing ... again" on the netcup forum. His numbers: netcup now pays about 5x what it paid a year earlier for DDR4 and DDR5 memory. The new G12.5 generation, which replaces G12, costs up to 40% more for x86 VPS, 70% to 110% more for root servers and up to 20% more for VPS Lite. netcup's price adjustment page confirms the scope.
The disk cut got less attention. Every G12.5 plan has the same vCPU count and RAM as the G12 plan it replaced, and exactly half the storage. The x86 VPS pages now list that storage as SSD, where our G12 records said NVMe.
| Plan | G12 (before) | G12.5 (after) | Price change | Disk | Price per GB of disk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VPS 500 | €4.97, 128 GB | €6.94, 64 GB | +40% | Halved | 2.8x |
| VPS 1000 | €8.71, 256 GB | €12.18, 128 GB | +40% | Halved | 2.8x |
| VPS 2000 | €16.18, 512 GB | €22.62, 256 GB | +40% | Halved | 2.8x |
| VPS 4000 | €27.24, 1 TB | €38.12, 512 GB | +40% | Halved | 2.8x |
| VPS 8000 | €40.29, 2 TB | €56.39, 1 TB | +40% | Halved | 2.8x |
| RS 1000 | €10.75, 256 GB | €18.26, 128 GB | +70% | Halved | 3.4x |
| RS 2000 | €18.01, 512 GB | €34.20, 256 GB | +90% | Halved | 3.8x |
| RS 4000 | €33.55, 1 TB | €65.40, 512 GB | +95% | Halved | 3.9x |
| RS 8000 | €59.97, 2 TB | €124.72, 1 TB | +108% | Halved | 4.2x |
All prices are on netcup's 12-month term. netcup shows German visitors prices with 19% VAT included (VPS 500 is €8.26 there). We divided by 1.19 so this table matches every other price in the article. Visitors who pick the US in netcup's country selector see 0% VAT, so they pay the figures in the table.
If you buy a VPS mainly for storage, this is the number to watch. A gigabyte of netcup VPS disk now costs 2.8 times what it did on 21 September. On the RS 8000 it costs 4.2 times as much. RAM per euro fell by 29% on the VPS line (the same RAM for 1.4 times the price), which is painful but nowhere near the disk change.
Existing customers are protected. netcup's post says current contracts keep their price at renewal and can still upgrade within their own generation at the old rate.
Plan by plan, our netcup price history barely registers any of this. The G12 plans stopped appearing in our data after 22 September, and the G12.5 plans first appeared on 25 September, each with a single price. A tool that compares a plan's price tonight to its price last night sees zero changes at netcup. That is exactly what our own first query reported. When a provider swaps one generation of plans for another, the increase shows up as new rows in the data and no existing row changes.
Hetzner CPX now costs about what the US clouds charge
Hetzner's price adjustment of 15 June 2026 took effect at 08:00 CEST for new orders and for rescales (resizes) of existing cloud servers. Prices for the German and Finnish locations, excluding VAT and the IPv4 address:
| Plan | Specs | Before | After | Change | Hetzner's own USD price after |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPX22 | 2 vCPU / 4 GB / 80 GB | €7.99 | €19.49 | +144% | $22.99 |
| CPX32 | 4 vCPU / 8 GB / 160 GB | €13.99 | €35.49 | +154% | $41.99 |
| CCX13 | 2 dedicated vCPU / 8 GB / 80 GB | €15.99 | €42.99 | +169% | $50.49 |
At €19.49 (Hetzner's own US-dollar list price is $22.99), CPX22 sits within about a dollar of the $24 that DigitalOcean, Linode and Lightsail charge, and costs more than Vultr's $20. CPX32 is worse: $41.99 on Hetzner's dollar list, against $40 at Vultr and $38.99 at Hostwinds for the same 4 vCPU / 8 GB configuration. Hetzner's cheaper shared lines, CX and CAX (Arm), would undercut all of that, but our scraper has read all eight of those plans as not orderable, and Hetzner's cloud page marks the cost-optimised line as "Currently not available". We left them out because you can't order them.
Our Hetzner price history shows this jump in July instead of June, and bigger (CCX13 at +244%). Until mid-August our Hetzner scraper read a stale catalogue page, so the early part of that chart is unreliable. The dates and sizes above come from Hetzner's documentation, not from our chart.
OVH moved every spec up one tier name
On 17 June 2026 OVHcloud announced its VPS 2027 range, citing "a global context of rising hardware component costs". The headline was a cheaper entry point: VPS-1 now starts at €3.81 a month on a 12-month commitment. The 2026 VPS-1 cost €5.52 on the same term. The new VPS-1 is also a smaller machine, with 2 vCores, 4 GB and 40 GB instead of 4 vCores, 8 GB and 75 GB.
The old configurations still exist under the next name up, and they cost more:
| vCores / RAM / disk | VPS 2026 name and price | VPS 2027 name and price | Change, month-to-month | Change, 12-month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 / 8 GB / 75 GB | VPS-1, €6.49 | VPS-2, €8.49 | +31% | +31% (€5.52 to €7.21) |
| 6 / 12 GB / 100 GB | VPS-2, €9.99 | VPS-3, €12.24 | +23% | +22% (€8.49 to €10.40) |
| 8 / 24 GB / 200 GB | VPS-3, €19.99 | VPS-4, €23.49 | +18% | +17% (€16.99 to €19.96) |
OVH's VPS page now lists only the 2027 range. Existing VPS 2026 customers keep their configuration and price, and OVH says no migration will be forced. In our OVHcloud price history neither range has changed price once since it entered our tracking in June. As with netcup, each plan's line is flat while the configuration got more expensive.
IONOS and Hostinger raised in smaller steps
On 18 September 2026 IONOS raised the regular rate, the price a plan costs once its promotion ends, on four of its five VPS+ plans, and the promotional rate on four. The new prices have held on every nightly reading since then, and the live page matches:
| Plan | Specs | Before (promo / regular) | After (promo / regular) | Regular rate change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VPS S+ | 1 vCore / 2 GB / 60 GB | $2 / $5 | $2 / $6 | +20% |
| VPS M+ | 2 vCores / 4 GB / 120 GB | $4 / $11 | $5 / $14 | +27% |
| VPS L+ | 4 vCores / 8 GB / 240 GB | $6 / $21 | $8 / $25 | +19% |
| VPS XL+ | 8 vCores / 16 GB / 480 GB | $11 / $44 | $14 / $47 | +7% |
| VPS XXL+ | 12 vCores / 24 GB / 720 GB | $18 / $68 | $20 / $68 | 0% |
IONOS's page today says the promotional price applies "for 3 months with a 1-year term". So a VPS M+ costs $5 three times and $14 nine times: $141 in year one, or $11.75 a month. The regular rate is the number that decides what you pay, and on VPS M+ it went up more than the promotional rate did.
Hostinger moved earlier. On 3 March 2026 its whole KVM line went up on the intro price, the rate for the first 24-month term: KVM 1 from $4.99 to $6.49, KVM 2 from $6.99 to $8.99, KVM 4 from $9.99 to $12.99 and KVM 8 from $19.99 to $25.99. The renewal rates had moved a few days before, on 27 February: KVM 1 from $9.99 to $11.99, KVM 2 from $12.99 to $14.99 and KVM 4 from $24.99 to $28.99. KVM 8 stayed at $49.99. Hostinger's live page still shows exactly these numbers seven months later, and our Hostinger price history shows them holding every night since. To compare a 24-month intro price with a month-to-month cloud server, the true cost calculator spreads the intro and renewal rates over the full term.
We know the size of Contabo's increase but not the date
Contabo's Cloud VDS line, its dedicated-core VPS, costs 25% to 26.5% more than it did, on the same 24-month term: VDS S €31.20 to €39.20, M €39.20 to €49.60, L €55.20 to €69.60, XL €75.20 to €94.40 and XXL €111.20 to €139.20. The live page shows the new prices.
When it changed, we can't say. For a while Contabo's own pricing catalogue kept showing the old base price after the checkout had already moved to the new one. Our scraper read the catalogue and only switched to the checkout figure on 16 September. That is the date of our fix, not Contabo's change. Our Contabo price history shows a step on that night, and only the size of that step is real.
Contabo's shared Cloud VPS 4 has not moved since its current plan names first appeared in our data in August. Cloud VPS 4 (4 vCPU / 8 GB / 100 GB) costs €4.40 on a 24-month term and €5.50 month-to-month.
What 2 vCPU and 4 GB costs on 1 October
A plan that went up can still be cheap. This table lists the cheapest orderable 2 vCPU / 4 GB plan at each provider in this article, sorted by the dollar equivalent of the committed price, the rate you get for signing up for the term in the Commitment column:
| Plan | Disk | Committed price | Commitment | Month-to-month | USD equivalent (committed) | Moved in 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OVHcloud VPS-1 (2027) | 40 GB NVMe | €3.81 | 12 months | €4.49 | $4.38 | New smaller tier, June |
| netcup VPS 500 G12.5 | 64 GB SSD | €6.94 | 12 months | €7.98 | $7.98 | +40%, 22 Sep |
| IONOS VPS M+ | 120 GB NVMe | $5 for 3 months, then $14 | 1 year | Not listed | $11.75 (year-one average) | Regular +27%, 18 Sep |
| Hostwinds Unmanaged SSD Cloud 3 | 75 GB SSD | $18.99 | None | $18.99 | $18.99 | No |
| Vultr Regular 2 vCPU / 4 GB | 80 GB SSD | $20.00 | None | $20.00 | $20.00 | No |
| Hetzner CPX22 | 80 GB NVMe | €19.49 | None | €19.49 | $22.99 (Hetzner's own USD list price) | +144%, 15 Jun |
| DigitalOcean Basic Regular | 80 GiB NVMe | $24.00 | None | $24.00 | $24.00 | No |
| Linode Shared 4 GB | 80 GB SSD | $24.00 | None | $24.00 | $24.00 | No |
| AWS Lightsail 4 GB | 80 GB SSD | $24.00 | None | $24.00 | $24.00 | No |
netcup after its increase costs 33% of DigitalOcean's price on a 12-month term, and 38% month-to-month. OVH's new entry tier is cheaper still if 40 GB of disk is enough. IONOS is the plan where the promotional price misleads most: the $5 lasts three months.
And at 4 vCPU and 8 GB
| Plan | Disk | Committed price | Commitment | Month-to-month | USD equivalent (committed) | Moved in 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contabo Cloud VPS 4 | 100 GB SSD | €4.40 | 24 months | €5.50 | $5.06 | Flat since August (tracking start) |
| OVHcloud VPS-2 (2027) | 75 GB NVMe | €7.21 | 12 months | €8.49 | $8.29 | +31% for this spec, June |
| netcup VPS 1000 G12.5 | 128 GB SSD | €12.18 | 12 months | €14.02 | $14.01 | +40%, 22 Sep |
| IONOS VPS L+ | 240 GB NVMe | $8 for 3 months, then $25 | 1 year | Not listed | $20.75 (year-one average) | Regular +19%, 18 Sep |
| Hostwinds Unmanaged SSD Cloud 5 | 150 GB SSD | $38.99 | None | $38.99 | $38.99 | No |
| Vultr Regular 4 vCPU / 8 GB | 160 GB SSD | $40.00 | None | $40.00 | $40.00 | No |
| Hetzner CPX32 | 160 GB NVMe | €35.49 | None | €35.49 | $41.99 (Hetzner's own USD list price) | +154%, 15 Jun |
| DigitalOcean Basic Regular | 160 GiB NVMe | $48.00 | None | $48.00 | $48.00 | No |
| Linode Shared 8 GB | 160 GB SSD | $48.00 | None | $48.00 | $48.00 | No |
Lightsail has no 4 vCPU / 8 GB plan. Its 8 GB bundle comes with 2 vCPUs and costs $44. Hostinger doesn't fit either table: its KVM 2 pairs 2 vCPUs with 8 GB for $8.99 a month and KVM 4 pairs 4 vCPUs with 16 GB for $12.99, but both prices require paying for 24 months up front, and they renew at $14.99 and $28.99.
For the cost of a GB of RAM across all 700-odd VPS plans we track, see our VPS price per GB of RAM index. Our dedicated vs shared vCPU comparison covers what the dedicated lines (Hetzner CCX, Contabo VDS) charge for their guarantee. All current plans are on the VPS hosting and cloud hosting listings.
If you already rent one of the raised plans
All three providers that announced their increases also protected existing customers. At two of them, changing the server is how you lose that protection.
- netcup: existing contracts keep their price, renewals included, and can upgrade within their own generation at the old rate. Cancelling a G12 server to order a new one moves you onto G12.5 pricing and half the disk.
- Hetzner: the new prices apply to new orders and to rescales. Hetzner warns that "certain changes to servers with legacy pricing may trigger a switch to the current pricing". Resizing an old CPX22 is a €11.50 a month decision.
- OVHcloud: VPS 2026 servers keep their configuration and price, and no migration will be forced.
IONOS, Hostinger and Contabo published nothing about existing customers. What you pay at renewal is whatever your contract's renewal line says, so read it before you renew.
How we tell a price hike from our own scraper bug
Nightly data finds price changes. It also finds every mistake our scrapers make, and the mistakes look identical. Before any change in this article went in, it had to pass these checks:
- One multiplier across a whole catalogue usually means units, not prices. Earlier this year one European host's 25 plans, covering web hosting, VPS and Arm servers, all moved by between 21.4% and 24.3% on the same night. Real repricing doesn't hit 25 different products with one multiplier. That was a change in how we read VAT. netcup's September VPS line did move by 1.40 on all five plans, which would normally fail this test. It passed because the root servers moved by 1.70 to 2.08 on the same night, the disk halved, and netcup published the 40% figure itself.
- The same absolute amount on every plan is usually a fix in our code. We once saw ten plans at one cloud host each drop by exactly $6 overnight. The $6 was something our scraper had been adding.
- A changed billing term makes two prices incomparable. If the price on display switches from a 36-month to a 24-month rate, the "change" mostly measures the term. We compare only like-for-like terms, which is why every table here carries one.
- The first night of a series is never an event, and neither is the night we fixed a scraper. Vultr's ten odd readings on 22 February and Contabo's step on 16 September are both about our tracking, not about prices.
- A generation swap shows up as new rows. netcup and OVH both raised prices without a single existing plan changing. For the five providers we call flat, we also checked that no VPS plan was retired and replaced.
When our series and the provider's own page disagree, the provider's page wins. That is why the Hetzner numbers come from Hetzner's documentation. The full nightly series for every provider in this article is on the price trends page.
What I'd buy at 2 vCPU / 4 GB and 4 vCPU / 8 GB today
2 vCPU / 4 GB: OVHcloud VPS-1 (2027) at €4.49 month-to-month, or €3.81 if you'll commit for a year. It includes a daily backup and costs less month-to-month than anything else in the table. The catch is 40 GB of disk. If that's too tight, netcup VPS 500 at €6.94 on a 12-month term gives you 64 GB and still costs a third of DigitalOcean's $24. If you want a US cloud with no commitment, take Vultr's Regular plan at $20: the same 80 GB of disk as DigitalOcean's $24 plan, and a price that hasn't moved since February. I would not start a new project on Hetzner CPX22 at this configuration. At €19.49 it is no longer the bargain it was at €7.99.
4 vCPU / 8 GB: OVHcloud VPS-2 (2027) at €7.21 on a 12-month commitment. Contabo's Cloud VPS 4 is cheaper at €4.40, but that price needs a 24-month commitment and comes with a 200 Mbit/s port. OVH's VPS-2 gets 1 Gbps and the daily backup for under €3 more. If 75 GB of disk is too little, netcup VPS 1000 gives you 128 GB at €12.18. On the US side, Vultr at $40 and Hostwinds at $38.99 now undercut Hetzner's CPX32. In May, CPX32 cost €13.99, about $16, or 40% of Vultr's price.
If you already run a Hetzner CPX or a netcup G12 server, the best price available to you is the one you have. Don't resize it and don't cancel it.
Originally published at hostingsift.com.
Top comments (2)
The distinction between a flat plan series and a replacement generation is the most useful part here. Do you keep a versioned mapping from retired plans to their successors, separate from the scraper version? I'd give an unmatched new plan an explicit "not comparable yet" state, rather than silently joining on vCPU/RAM alone: your netcup example shows that disk and contract terms can change even when those two fields stay fixed. Keeping the raw source snapshot with that mapping would also make later corrections easier to explain.
Not yet. Today a plan only links to itself across a rename, when the specs and price stay the same. The netcup match in the article was done by hand and checked against their announcement.
Agreed on the explicit state. A join on vCPU and RAM would have paired the old plan with one that has half the disk, and with the Arm plan too, since it has the same vCPU and RAM.
We keep each nightly reading of every plan as parsed (price, term, disk, RAM), along with the scraper commit that produced it, and retired plans keep their history. We don't keep the raw page. So a successor table can sit on top of what's there.