Published: 2 October 2026
For €4 a month, a KVM VPS should give you a real virtual machine with its own kernel, RAM that is allotted to you, SSD storage, a public IPv4 address and traffic you never have to count. That is the bar. Plenty of cheap offers clear it, and plenty only look like they do until the first invoice. Below are the eight things worth checking before you buy any cheap KVM VPS, with our own smallest plan measured against each one.
The €4 plan, in full
| Plan | VPS I KVM |
|---|---|
| vCPU | 1 |
| RAM | 2 GB |
| Storage | 20 GB SSD |
| Traffic | Unmetered, on a 1 Gbps port |
| IPv4 | One address included |
| Price in Bucharest | €4 per month, or €0.0056 per hour |
| Setup fee | None |
| Operating systems | 26 Linux and FreeBSD images, full root access |
The full range runs from this plan up to 8 vCPU and 32 GB of RAM on the KVM VPS hosting page, and every size is also sold by the hour on the hourly VPS line.
Eight checks before you buy a cheap VPS
| Check | Why it matters | Our VPS I KVM |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Is it real KVM? | Container based plans share the host's kernel, so kernel modules, some VPN setups and certain Docker features simply do not work. | Full KVM virtual machine with its own kernel |
| 2. Is the RAM yours? | Some budget plans advertise burst memory you only get when the host is idle. | 2 GB allotted to your machine |
| 3. What does "unlimited" mean? | "Unlimited" with a fair use clause can mean a throttled port after a few terabytes. | No monthly transfer quota and no overage bill |
| 4. Is an IPv4 address included? | IPv4 is scarce and some providers now charge for every address, including the first. | One IPv4 included, extras at €1.50 a month each, up to ten in total |
| 5. Any setup fee or lock in? | A low monthly price can hide a setup fee or a mandatory year up front. | No setup fee. Pay by the hour, month, quarter or year |
| 6. Where does it run? | Cheap plans are often sold in one location only, wherever the host is cheapest. | Seven countries in Europe and the US, at a small location fee outside Romania |
| 7. Can you fix it yourself? | Without a console you are one bad firewall rule away from a support ticket. | Browser console, power controls, reinstall and root password reset in the client area |
| 8. Can it grow? | Some hosts make you rebuild on a new plan, with a new IP, to get more RAM. | An upgrade is a resize in the panel, not a rebuild |
There is one thing a €4 plan does not include, and you should know it before you buy rather than after: automatic backups. There are no snapshots on our VPS plans at the moment, so keep your own copies off the server. You can capture up to three images of your machines for a small monthly storage fee, which is handy for cloning a setup, but an image is not a backup policy.
Where cheap stops being cheap
When you compare providers, compare the bill you will actually pay, not the headline. The usual extras are a monthly fee per IPv4 address, overage charges above a traffic quota, a setup fee, a price that only applies with a year paid in advance, and a "from" price that only exists in one location.
On our side the extras are short and printed on the order form: a location fee outside Romania, extra storage at €4 per 50 GB (up to 150 GB more) and extra IPv4 addresses at €1.50 each. A VPS I KVM in Bucharest with 50 GB of extra storage and a second IPv4 address comes to €9.50 a month. The same server without extras is €4.
What the smallest plan runs comfortably
Two gigabytes of RAM on a full virtual machine is enough for more than people expect: a WordPress or other small PHP site with its database, a WireGuard VPN for a family or a small team, a few chat bots, an uptime monitor, a small Git server, or a reverse proxy in front of services that live elsewhere. What it is not is a database server for a busy shop or a box for several Docker stacks at once. For that, the next sizes are VPS II KVM with 4 GB of RAM at €6 a month and VPS III KVM with 8 GB at €10 a month, both in Bucharest.
Hourly or monthly?
The hourly rate for the €4 plan is €0.0056. An hourly server is billed for at most 720 hours in a calendar month, so a machine you leave running all month costs the monthly price to within a few cents. Hourly billing needs at least €5 of account credit before you order, and it draws from that credit as the server runs. One trap to know: a stopped VPS still bills. Only deleting it stops the meter.
For anything that stays up all year, the yearly cycle takes 10% off the plan price. For anything you spin up and tear down, hourly is the honest choice. We went through the break even maths in this post on when hourly beats monthly.
What the €4 plan costs in each country
| Location | Per month | Per hour |
|---|---|---|
| Bucharest, Romania | €4.00 | €0.0056 |
| Warsaw, Poland | €5.00 | €0.0070 |
| Amsterdam, Netherlands | €5.00 | €0.0070 |
| Frankfurt, Germany | €5.50 | €0.0077 |
| Vienna, Austria | €5.50 | €0.0077 |
| Sofia, Bulgaria | €5.50 | €0.0077 |
| Ashburn, United States | €5.50 | €0.0077 |
Stock moves quickly at this price. At the time of writing Romania, Bulgaria and the United States have room for new servers, and the order form shows live availability for the other four countries before you pay. Bucharest is the cheapest location and the one we have written about in most detail, in our Bucharest VPS guide. The full grid for all six plans is in hourly VPS pricing by location.
Getting one
- Open the VPS order page and choose VPS I KVM.
- Pick a location, a billing cycle and an operating system. The total, location fee included, updates before you confirm.
- Log in as root with the credentials shown in your client area.
New to KVM and wondering why it matters? Our explainer on what KVM virtualization is covers the difference from container based hosting in a few minutes.