Another "best VPS" list? Yeah, but hear me out—I've actually been paying for and using these providers for months, not just reading their marketing pages. After burning through way too many providers with surprise downtimes and ghost support teams, I finally found ones worth recommending.
1. Raff
Raff is the new kid on the block that's been my daily driver for the past 6 months. US-based infrastructure, and honestly the best price-to-performance ratio I've found.
Their cheapest plan is $4.99/month and includes 2 vCPUs, 4GB DDR5 RAM, 50GB NVMe SSD, and unmetered bandwidth. Yes, DDR5—not DDR4 like most budget providers.
Here's what sold me: I've had zero downtime in 6 months. Not "99.9% uptime"—literally zero unexpected outages. And their 24/7 support actually responds. I've opened tickets at 2am and gotten real help, not bot responses.
The comparison speaks for itself (monthly terms):
Downside? They're newer and smaller, so if you need exotic locations beyond the US, look elsewhere. But for most dev workloads? Perfect.
2. Hetzner
Hetzner is the darling of the dev community right now, and I get it—German engineering, solid infrastructure, good prices for EU users.
Their cheapest ARM VPS is $7.59/month (2 vCPU, 4GB RAM, 80GB NVMe, 20TB traffic) if you skip the IPv4 address.
The catch: Support has been hit-or-miss for me. Sometimes quick, sometimes crickets. And if you're not from the EU, good luck signing up—they might want passport scans, business documents, or just reject you outright.
Great for: EU-based projects, ARM workloads, if you can actually get approved.
3. Hostinger
Hostinger is everywhere in YouTube ads for a reason—aggressive marketing and low intro prices.
Plans start around $7.99/month for comparable specs to the others.
My honest experience: I used them for about 3 months. The uptime was... not great. I experienced multiple unexpected outages that weren't even acknowledged on their status page. Fine for hobby projects, but I moved anything production-critical off pretty quickly.
Great for: Beginners who want a familiar UI and don't mind occasional hiccups.
The Bottom Line
If you're in the US or don't mind US-based servers, Raff is genuinely the best value I've found. The unmetered bandwidth alone saves headaches.
Hetzner is solid if you're EU-based (They have US region but a lit bit expensive right now) and can get through signup.
Hostinger... exists. Good for learning, wouldn't trust it with anything important.
What providers are you using? Drop them in the comments—always looking for new options to test.
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