What’s Worth Buying – Continuously Updated (VPS Recommendations)

1. Hetzner#

Often called the “Alibaba Cloud of Europe”, a real performance powerhouse. Hetzner operates hundreds of thousands of servers and is one of the largest data center operators in Europe. Since its founding in 1997, Hetzner has been providing powerful hosting products and reliable IT infrastructure for both private and business customers. By combining strengths in innovative technologies, attractive pricing, expert support, and flexible customer service, Hetzner has expanded its market in and beyond Germany and Europe. It’s a German company that owns and operates its own high-tech data centers in Nuremberg and Falkenstein (both in Germany) and Helsinki in Finland, and recently added a new facility in Ashburn, Virginia, USA. In total there are four locations: 2 in Germany, 1 in Finland, 1 in the US. Hetzner’s VPS and dedicated server pricing is very affordable, performance is stable, NVMe SSD storage, 10 Gbps bandwidth, and supports credit card and PayPal payments. The only downside is relatively poor connectivity back to mainland China. The AMD EPYC-based VDS plans perform well. In 2024, Hetzner also refreshed the old CX product line, bringing pricing in line with the ARM series – very suitable for small workloads. Update August 2024: a new Singapore region is online, but the price-to-performance ratio is not great.

Related Benchmarks#

Benchmark: Hetzner-Dedicated-VDS-EPYC-9654

Benchmark: Hetzner-Shared vCPU-VPS-X86

Benchmark: Hetzner-Shared vCPU-VPS-ARM

Benchmark: Hetzner-Dedicated server

Benchmark: Hetzner Singapore VDS Benchmark

2. Crunchbits#

A US host founded on November 30, 2021. They mainly offer NVMe KVM VPS, EPYC high-frequency NVMe VPS, Ryzen 5950X NVMe KVM VPS, large-capacity storage VPS, Ryzen 7950X VDS, GPU servers, and dedicated servers, with their data center in Idaho, USA. Recently they’ve been running promos on LowEndTalk and business is good; they even won “Most Recommended Provider” in 2023. Stability is solid – I have one yearly box with nearly 360 days of uptime. Early 2024 they had very cost-effective yearly plans: 4.5 GB RAM with 125 GB disk, perfect for monitoring, small logs, etc. (Those yearly plans can no longer be renewed on the same terms; the provider offers a migration/upgrade path instead.)

3. Liteserver (Insane price increases in the last two years – only recommend during Black Friday)#

An established provider since 2007 with their own ASN AS60404. Servers are colocated in the Netherlands at the Serverius DC1 facility. Both NVMe and HDD are available, with 1 Gbps network on all plans; after using up your traffic allotment, speed is capped at 10 Mbps. Liteserver offers excellent value for money and has a good reputation in Europe. You can switch between NVMe and HDD variants, and every Black Friday they typically run 50% off deals. During Black Friday 2023 they added AMD EPYC 4th-gen 9754 nodes. Their NVMe line now has two options with different CPUs: 7763 and 9754. Performance between the two isn’t dramatically different, but the 9754 plans do have IO limits. Enter with caution.

4. Netcup#

A German provider on par with Hetzner, offering ARM, VDS, VPS, domains, block storage, and more. They frequently run promotions where you can sometimes grab excellent configurations, such as an RS2000 with doubled disk to 1 TB. The only downside is how seriously Germans take contracts – some plans have fixed-term contracts, so read carefully before buying. Netcup has been voted Europe’s favorite web host for multiple years in a row. They care a lot about their reputation and their support is excellent.

Benchmark: Netcup RS 1000 G11 Vienna AMD 9634 Benchmark

Signup guide: Netcup Tax-Free Signup Guide (includes coupons)

5. Alwyzon#

Alwyzon is an Austrian cloud provider under Hohl IT e.U., mainly selling KVM-based VPS, large storage VPS, and dedicated servers, all operated in the Interxion campus, Austria’s largest internet hub. Peering in Europe is excellent. In 2024 they also refreshed their performance product line, now using 4th-gen EPYC with RAID10 storage.

6. Nube.sh#

A brand run by the KuaiCheDao owner, a well-known upstream; many familiar names like lain resell their services. Bandwidth on their VMs is billed one-way: only outbound traffic counts, inbound is free. They support hourly billing as well. They also provide bare metal rentals at very competitive prices, especially for APAC. Current regions: HK, US, SG, JP. Performance is very good – the cheapest Zen 3 EPYC plan with 1 vCPU and 1 GB DDR4 RAM starts at just $2.82/month. They operate their own IP backbone. The control panel is custom-built, very clean and intuitive.

7. Evoxt#

Evoxt is a US provider founded in 2020, operating its own ASN 212083. The owner is a Malaysian Chinese and support tickets can be handled in Chinese. They currently have 12 locations. CPU and IO performance are solid across the board. Some popular regions are hosted with reputable upstreams – for example, their Hong Kong and Japan nodes are in xTom data centers. Hong Kong uses the 7950X, and other regions also have high-end configs like 4th-gen EPYC.

1. HostBrr (Good for PT, but watch bandwidth usage, Hetzner reseller)#

A Hetzner reseller with extremely good value. Very cheap (average around $2.2/TB), ideal for seeding and offline downloads. They’ve been in business for over a year now and are doing great. Servers are mainly in Germany/Finland. They provide Linux/Windows, storage VPS, high-performance VPS (7950XD, 5950X, 3900X, 12900K), dedicated servers, shared hosting, NAT VPS – basically everything. Ticket responses are reasonably fast; if it’s urgent, you can DM the owner on LET directly, and their attitude is excellent with no customer discrimination. Refund policy: unconditional refunds within 14 days (very straightforward), just open a ticket.

2. BuyVM (Poor for PT seeding, good for offline downloads, main advantage: strong DMCA resistance)#

A veteran VPS provider operating for over a decade. Their unmetered VPS plans start from as low as $3.5/month. Add a 256 GB block storage slice for just $1.25/month and you get a 256 GB, unmetered bandwidth “big disk” box for only $4.75/month. Pay for three consecutive months and you can upgrade to PRO status, which bumps your port to 10 Gbps unmetered. Thanks to the excellent price-performance, they’re often out of stock. If you’re interested, register an account first. Restocks usually happen late at night.

Update 2025: BuyVM has been acquired by Cloudzy AI. The Luxembourg location may be migrated to Switzerland or the Netherlands; exact plans are not yet announced. How well they’ll still resist DMCA remains to be seen.