If you're shopping for a cloud VPS in 2026, the same 4 GB RAM server can cost $8 or $24 per month depending on which provider you pick. That's not a discount or a promo — that's just the spread between Hetzner and the rest of the developer cloud market.
We track 40+ cloud providers on CloudMart and refresh pricing every Monday and Thursday. This guide compares the four most popular developer-focused VPS providers — Hetzner, DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Linode — at the 4 GB RAM tier, where most small apps and side projects land. We'll cover real pricing, included bandwidth, the hidden costs most articles skip, and which provider to pick based on your situation.
TL;DR comparison
All four providers offer roughly the same 4 GB RAM tier. Here's what they cost as of May 31, 2026:
| Provider | Plan | Price / mo | vCPU | Storage | Transfer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hetzner | CX32 | $8.20 | 2 (Intel) | 80 GB SSD | 20 TB |
| Hetzner | CPX21 (AMD) | $8.90 | 3 (AMD) | 80 GB NVMe | 20 TB |
| DigitalOcean | Basic Droplet 4 GB | $24.00 | 2 | 80 GB SSD | 4 TB |
| Vultr | Cloud Compute 4 GB | $24.00 | 2 | 80 GB SSD | 3 TB |
| Linode | Shared 4 GB | $24.00 | 2 | 80 GB SSD | 4 TB |
At a first glance, Hetzner costs roughly 3× less than the other three. But picking a provider on price alone is how you end up regretting the decision two months in. Let's look at what you're actually getting.
Hetzner — the price leader (with caveats)
Hetzner is a German cloud provider that has quietly become the price benchmark for Linux servers worldwide. Their CX32 plan gets you 4 GB RAM, 2 Intel vCPUs, 80 GB SSD, and an absurd 20 TB of monthly bandwidth for $8.20. Their AMD CPX21 bumps the CPU to 3 cores and NVMe storage for $8.90.
The catch: Hetzner is a raw VPS. You get an SSH key and an empty Ubuntu/Debian box. There's no one-click WordPress installer, no managed Postgres add-on, no Kubernetes service, no integrated CDN. You patch the OS, you configure the firewall, you set up backups. Their newer cloud console is fine, but the ecosystem is intentionally minimal.
The other thing: Hetzner's primary regions are in Germany, Finland, and (more recently) the US East Coast. If your users are in Asia, Africa, or South America, latency will not be your friend.
Pick Hetzner if: you're comfortable on the Linux command line, your users are in Europe or the US, and you'd rather save $20/mo than have a hosted Postgres click-button.
DigitalOcean — the developer ecosystem
DigitalOcean has been the default developer cloud for a decade and it shows. At $24 for the 4 GB Droplet, you're paying ~3× the Hetzner price, but you're also getting one of the best developer experiences in the industry — a clean dashboard, excellent documentation, managed Postgres / MySQL / Redis as add-ons, an S3-compatible object store (Spaces), managed Kubernetes (DOKS), a serverless platform (Functions), and App Platform for Heroku-style git-push deploys.
If your project will eventually grow past a single VPS, DigitalOcean is the only provider on this list where you can stay on the same dashboard for years without needing to migrate. They also bundle a $200 startup credit for new accounts.
Bandwidth is the weak point: 4 TB included on the 4 GB plan, vs Hetzner's 20 TB. Most small apps never hit 4 TB, but it's worth knowing.
Pick DigitalOcean if: you want compute + database + storage on a single bill, you're early in a project that might grow, or you just want the nicest UI in this category.
Vultr — the global footprint
Vultr's pricing is essentially identical to DigitalOcean ($24 for 4 GB), but they win on geographic reach. Vultr has 32 regions including emerging markets — São Paulo, Johannesburg, Mumbai, Seoul, Tel Aviv, Mexico City. No other developer cloud comes close.
They also offer bare metal (real dedicated servers), DDoS protection on every plan, and "High Frequency" instances with NVMe storage at a small premium. The ecosystem isn't as deep as DigitalOcean — fewer managed services — but if you need a VPS in Mumbai or Bogotá at midnight, Vultr is the answer.
Pick Vultr if: latency to a specific non-US/EU region matters, you want bare metal as a future option, or you need DDoS protection included.
Linode — the steady hand
Linode (now owned by Akamai) is the longest-running provider on this list — it predates DigitalOcean by almost a decade. Pricing is also $24 for the 4 GB shared plan, and the standout feature is stability. Linode has barely changed its pricing structure in 5+ years, and now that it's part of Akamai, you get the world's largest CDN as a one-click add-on.
Where Linode falls behind: feature velocity. DigitalOcean and Vultr ship new services constantly. Linode is more conservative. If your bet is "I want this server to look identical in 3 years," Linode is the safer pick. If your bet is "I want the latest managed service," it's not.
Pick Linode if: you're running a long-lived production workload, you value predictability over novelty, or you want a clean upgrade path to Akamai CDN/edge.
Bandwidth — the cost most people miss
All four providers include some monthly outbound bandwidth in the price. Once you exceed it, overage rates are very different:
- Hetzner: €1 per extra TB after 20 TB (so basically free)
- DigitalOcean: $0.01/GB after 4 TB ($10/TB)
- Vultr: $0.01/GB after the included transfer ($10/TB)
- Linode: $0.005/GB after 4 TB ($5/TB)
For most apps this doesn't matter — you'll never hit the cap. But if you're serving any kind of media (images, video, downloads), the bandwidth quota can flip the cost ranking. A site pushing 8 TB/mo costs $0 over base on Hetzner but $40 over base on DigitalOcean.
Which one should you actually pick?
Here's a decision tree that works for 90% of projects:
- Hobby project, side project, MVP, EU-based: Hetzner CX32 or CPX21. Done.
- Real product that needs managed DB, object storage, or Kubernetes later: DigitalOcean.
- Users in Asia, Africa, or South America: Vultr.
- Long-lived production workload, pricing predictability matters: Linode.
- Don't want to make this decision: open the Planner — it'll pick for you based on your stack, traffic, and budget.
The most expensive mistake is over-thinking this. All four providers will host a small app fine. If you're stuck between two, pick the cheaper one and migrate later if you need to — none of these lock you in beyond the monthly billing cycle.
Skip the comparison spreadsheet.
Describe your project. The Planner picks compute, GPU, LLM API, and no-code from 40+ providers — based on your real budget and traffic.
🏗️ Open the Planner →Methodology
Pricing for this article comes from CloudMart's tracked dataset. We re-check each provider's official published pricing twice a week (Monday and Thursday) using a combination of public pricing APIs (Azure, Linode, GCP) and AI-assisted scraping for providers without a public API (Hetzner, RunPod, Lambda Labs, etc). Each tracked plan also has a 90-day price history — you can see rising and dropping prices flagged directly on every provider card.
Pricing is accurate as of May 31, 2026. Always verify on the provider's official site before purchasing — that's why every card on CloudMart links to the source.