---
title: "VPS & Hosting: ranked reviews and comparisons"
description: "Cloud servers compared on what a real server costs per month (the instance, backups and a public IP, then the egress bill), where the data sits and who owns the company, whether the one-click images stay maintained, and the services a small team uses: managed databases, Kubernetes, object storage, an API and Terraform."
canonical: "https://saaskly.com/category/vps-hosting"
last-updated: "2026-09-08"
---

# VPS & Hosting: ranked reviews and comparisons

> Cloud servers compared on what a real server costs per month (the instance, backups and a public IP, then the egress bill), where the data sits and who owns the company, whether the one-click images stay maintained, and the services a small team uses: managed databases, Kubernetes, object storage, an API and Terraform.

- Last updated: 2026-09-08

## Ranking

Ranked by Saaskly's editorial score (0–5). Ties share a rank. Method: https://saaskly.com/editorial-policy.md

1. **1. [Vultr](https://saaskly.com/category/vps-hosting/vultr.md)**: 4.4/5. The cloud we run Saaskly on: the cheapest credible cloud compute in the field, 33 locations including London and Manchester, the widest range of instances from a $5 shared VM to bare metal and GPUs, a free Kubernetes control plane, a read-only-by-default MCP server, and two things to know before you sign: it is a US company contracting from Florida, and its Trustpilot record is the worst here.
2. **2. [Hetzner](https://saaskly.com/category/vps-hosting/hetzner.md)**: 4.2/5. The German family company that sets the price floor for European cloud: 2 vCPU, 4 GB and 80 GB with 20 TB of transfer for €19.99 a month, backups at 20%, overage at €1 a terabyte, ISO 27001 and BSI C5, and the trade-offs of no UK data centre, no managed databases or Kubernetes, identity checks at signup and a cloud line that has been on limited availability since June.
3. **3. [UpCloud](https://saaskly.com/category/vps-hosting/upcloud.md)**: 4.0/5. The Finnish founder-led cloud that sells sovereignty and simplicity together: a London data centre plus eight EU sites, zero-cost data transfer under a fair-use policy, backups at 10% for a daily plan, managed databases and Kubernetes, a 99.999% SLA with a 50x payback, and a Trustpilot record clustered around automated account suspensions.
4. **4. [DigitalOcean](https://saaskly.com/category/vps-hosting/digitalocean.md)**: 3.9/5. The developer cloud with the best documentation in the business and the best Trustpilot score of the big names: a London Droplet from $4, the reference server at $24 with weekly backups taking it to $28.80, pooled egress at a cent a gigabyte, managed databases, Kubernetes with a free control plane, App Platform, a three-tier marketplace, and a US Delaware company on the contract.
5. **5. [OVHcloud](https://saaskly.com/category/vps-hosting/ovhcloud.md)**: 3.8/5. Europe's largest cloud company and the cheapest server on this page: a 4 vCore, 8 GB, 75 GB VPS with unlimited traffic, daily backups and the IPv4 included for £6.29 a month, a London data centre and seven in the EU, SecNumCloud-qualified sovereign lines and a direct claim of protection from the CLOUD Act, and the reasons it is not higher: billing and cancellation friction in 8,466 reviews, monthly-only VPS billing, and a Public Cloud line that unbundles IPv4 and storage from October 2026.
6. **6. [IONOS Cloud](https://saaskly.com/category/vps-hosting/ionos-cloud.md)**: 3.6/5. Germany's largest hosting group, contracting UK cloud customers through IONOS Cloud UK Ltd, with London and Worcester data centres, BSI C5 and ISO 27001, "100% independent from US and Chinese jurisdictions", a 2 vCPU, 4 GB, 120 GB Cloud Cube for £9.36 a month, an official MCP server, and the same billing reputation as the rest of the IONOS group.
7. **7. [Krystal](https://saaskly.com/category/vps-hosting/krystal.md)**: 3.5/5. The UK's largest independent host, a B Corp, with a cloud (Katapult, renamed Krystal Cloud in April 2026) in London, Amsterdam and New York, per-second billing in pounds, UK engineers on the phone, a Trustpilot 4.9 on 2,412 reviews, and the honest limits: £10 for the smallest server, £2 a month for the IPv4, no managed databases or Kubernetes, base OS images only, and a DPA that allows processing outside the UK.
8. **8. [Linode (Akamai Connected Cloud)](https://saaskly.com/category/vps-hosting/linode.md)**: 3.3/5. The 2003-era VPS pioneer, owned by Akamai since 2022: a $5 Nanode and a $24 reference Linode in London and six EU cities, flat $5 backups, the cheapest egress overage of the US providers, managed databases and LKE, a Swiss contracting entity under US law, no GBP, no official MCP server, and a Trustpilot of about 2.5 with 2025 outages and account suspensions in the one-star column.
9. **9. [Scaleway](https://saaskly.com/category/vps-hosting/scaleway.md)**: 3.2/5. Iliad's cloud, "Europe's sovereign cloud and AI provider": cheap compute by the hour in Paris, Amsterdam and Warsaw, free instance egress, ISO 27001 and HDS, a stated freedom from the CLOUD Act, and the reasons a UK small business will hesitate: no UK data centre, no pounds, a disk and a public IP that are sold separately and turn a €28.79 instance into a €42.89 server, a 99% SLA on shared instances, and a Trustpilot of 1.6.
10. **10. [Amazon EC2](https://saaskly.com/category/vps-hosting/amazon-ec2.md)**: 3.0/5. The platform every other one imitates, priced by the component: a t4g.medium in London is $27.45 a month before the $7.42 disk, the $3.65 public IPv4 and the $4.24 snapshot that make it a $42.76 server, then egress at $0.09 a gigabyte after the first hundred, support from $29 a month, a 99.99% regional SLA, a separate EU Sovereign Cloud since January 2026, and a Trustpilot of 1.3 for AWS as a whole.
11. **11. [Amazon Lightsail](https://saaskly.com/category/vps-hosting/amazon-lightsail.md)**: 2.7/5. Amazon's VPS: fixed bundles from $5 a month in London and five EU regions, a reference server at $24 with the snapshot taking it to $28, egress at $0.09 a gigabyte beyond the bundle, USD only, AWS support terms, and the one-click blueprints that Broadcom stopped updating on 20 May 2026 and withdrew on 10 June 2026, which is the migration project we have already done for clients.

## Comparison table

| Provider | Rating | Smallest instance | Reference instance | Real monthly cost* | Hourly billing | Transfer included | Egress overage | Public IPv4 | Backups | UK location | EU locations | Locations | Owned in** | Sovereign offering | Owner | Vendor-maintained images | Managed databases | Kubernetes | Object storage | API | Terraform | MCP server | Uptime SLA (%) | Trustpilot (reviews) |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [Vultr](https://saaskly.com/category/vps-hosting/vultr.md) | 4.4/5 | $5/mo (1 vCPU / 1 GB / 25 GB SSD) | $20/mo (2 vCPU / 4 GB / 80 GB SSD) | $24/mo | Yes | 3 TB | $0.010/GB | Included | 20% of the instance price | Yes | 7 | 33 | US-owned | None | The Constant Company, LLC | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | 100.00 | 1.6 (579) |
| [Hetzner](https://saaskly.com/category/vps-hosting/hetzner.md) | 4.2/5 | €5.99/mo (2 vCPU / 4 GB / 40 GB NVMe (CX23, limited availability)) | €19.99/mo (2 vCPU / 4 GB / 80 GB NVMe (CPX22)) | €23.99/mo | Yes | 20 TB | €0.001/GB | Included | 20% of the instance price | No | 3 | 6 | EU-owned | None | Independent | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | 99.90 | 3.0 (2,951) |
| [UpCloud](https://saaskly.com/category/vps-hosting/upcloud.md) | 4.0/5 | €3/mo (1 vCPU / 1 GB / 10 GB (Starter)) | €26/mo (2 vCPU / 4 GB / 50 GB MaxIOPS (Premium)) | €28.60/mo | Yes | — | Unmetered | Included | 10% (daily), 20% (weekly), 40% (monthly) of the server price | Yes | 8 | 15 | EU-owned | None | Independent | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | 100.00 | 3.0 (169) |
| [DigitalOcean](https://saaskly.com/category/vps-hosting/digitalocean.md) | 3.9/5 | $4/mo (1 vCPU / 512 MiB / 10 GB SSD) | $24/mo (2 vCPU / 4 GB / 80 GB SSD) | $28.80/mo | Yes | 4 TB | $0.010/GB | Included | 20% weekly or 30% daily of the Droplet price | Yes | 2 | 16 | US-owned | None | DigitalOcean Holdings, Inc. | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | — | 4.6 (2,542) |
| [OVHcloud](https://saaskly.com/category/vps-hosting/ovhcloud.md) | 3.8/5 | £3.31/mo (2 vCores / 4 GB / 40 GB NVMe (VPS-1)) | £6.29/mo (4 vCores / 8 GB / 75 GB NVMe (VPS-2)) | £6.29/mo | Yes | — | Unmetered | Included | Daily backup included on VPS; premium backup £0.96/mo | Yes | 7 | 15 | EU-owned | Dedicated sovereign cloud | OVH Groupe SA | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | 99.90 | 3.9 (8,466) |
| [IONOS Cloud](https://saaskly.com/category/vps-hosting/ionos-cloud.md) | 3.6/5 | £5.04/mo (1 vCPU / 2 GB / 60 GB SSD (Cube XS)) | £9.36/mo (2 vCPU / 4 GB / 120 GB SSD (Cube S)) | £17.76/mo | Yes | 2 TB | £0.030/GB | Included | £0.07 per GB per 30 days (Automated Backup Service) | Yes | 5 | 10 | EU-owned | Local contracting entity | United Internet AG (majority) | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | — | 4.7 (41,660) |
| [Krystal](https://saaskly.com/category/vps-hosting/krystal.md) | 3.5/5 | £10/mo (1 vCPU / 1 GB / 10 GB NVMe (C-1)) | £27.50/mo (2 vCPU / 4 GB / 75 GB NVMe (C-4)) | £33.25/mo | Yes | 2.5 TB | £0.020/GB | £2/mo | £0.05 per GB per month of backup storage | Yes | 1 | 3 | UK-owned | Local contracting entity | Independent | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | — | 4.9 (2,412) |
| [Linode (Akamai Connected Cloud)](https://saaskly.com/category/vps-hosting/linode.md) | 3.3/5 | $5/mo (1 shared CPU / 1 GB / 25 GB (Nanode)) | $24/mo (2 shared CPUs / 4 GB / 80 GB (Linode 4 GB)) | $29/mo | Yes | 4 TB | $0.005/GB | Included | Flat per plan: $2/mo (1 GB), $5/mo (4 GB) | Yes | 6 | 25 | US-owned | Local contracting entity | Akamai Technologies, Inc. | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | — | 2.5 (207) |
| [Scaleway](https://saaskly.com/category/vps-hosting/scaleway.md) | 3.2/5 | €10.42/mo (1 vCPU / 2 GB, disk extra (PLAY2-PICO)) | €28.79/mo (2 vCPU / 4 GB, disk extra (BASIC3-X2C-4G)) | €42.89/mo | Yes | — | Unmetered | €3.65/mo | Block snapshots €0.036 per GB per month (no automatic backup product found) | No | 3 | 3 | EU-owned | None | Iliad group | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | 99.00 | 1.6 (348) |
| [Amazon EC2](https://saaskly.com/category/vps-hosting/amazon-ec2.md) | 3.0/5 | $6.86/mo (2 vCPU (ARM) / 1 GiB, disk extra (t4g.micro, London)) | $27.45/mo (2 vCPU (ARM) / 4 GiB, disk extra (t4g.medium, London)) | $42.76/mo | Yes | 0.1 TB | $0.090/GB | $3.65/mo | EBS snapshots $0.053 per GB-month (London); AWS Backup at the same rate | Yes | 6 | 39 | US-owned | Dedicated sovereign cloud | Amazon.com, Inc. | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | 99.99 | 1.3 (420) |
| [Amazon Lightsail](https://saaskly.com/category/vps-hosting/amazon-lightsail.md) | 2.7/5 | $5/mo (2 vCPU / 512 MB / 20 GB SSD) | $24/mo (2 vCPU / 4 GB / 80 GB SSD) | $28/mo | Yes | 4 TB | $0.090/GB | Included | Snapshots $0.05 per GB-month, manual or automatic | Yes | 5 | 15 | US-owned | None | Amazon.com, Inc. | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | — | 1.3 (420) |

*Real monthly cost: the reference instance (the nearest to 2 vCPU / 4 GB / 80 GB) with automatic backups switched on and a public IPv4 address, per month at the monthly or capped-hourly rate, in the currency the vendor shows a UK visitor on the research date; see each profile for the VAT basis, the backup rule and the egress bill on top.

**Owned in: where the company that owns the provider answers to. A US-owned provider is subject to US law (including the CLOUD Act) wherever the data centre is; a local data centre is not the same thing as local jurisdiction. "Sovereign offering" records what the vendor offers beyond a local data centre.

## Articles

- [Best VPS and Cloud Hosting for UK Business in 2026: Vultr Wins, Hetzner Sets the Price, and the One-Click Images That Stopped Being Maintained](https://saaskly.com/comparisons/best-vps-cloud-hosting-2026.md): Comparison. We compared eleven cloud providers on what a real server costs per month once backups, a public IP and the egress bill are counted, on where the data sits and who owns the company, and on whether the one-click images you deploy will still be maintained next year. Vultr wins on price, range and reach; Hetzner is the European price benchmark; UpCloud and DigitalOcean are the London options. We explain what "sovereignty" means and does not mean for a US-owned cloud, why OVHcloud's £6.29 server is not higher, and why Amazon Lightsail is last after Broadcom withdrew its Bitnami images with three weeks' notice.

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Researched and drafted with AI assistance; reviewed and approved by Tim Meredith. See https://saaskly.com/ai-transparency.md and https://saaskly.com/editorial-policy.md.

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