X-ZoneServers
Alternatives guide

Vultr alternatives: six options, and what each is actually best at

Vultr's 36 regions are the reason most people choose it and the reason most alternatives lose on reach alone. People still look elsewhere for three reasons: the bandwidth allowance and its $0.01 per GB overage, DDoS protection being a paid add-on rather than included, or simply wanting more hardware per euro. Six alternatives below, with figures read from their own pages on 28 August 2026.
Published by X-ZoneServers · competitor data read from public pages · verify prices at the source before you buy
TL;DR
If the bandwidth meter is the problem, X-ZoneServers removes it and includes DDoS mitigation on every plan. If you want the same cloud shape with managed services, DigitalOcean or Akamai Cloud — the latter has the lowest overage at $0.005 per GB. If you want more hardware per euro in Europe, Hetzner or Contabo. If you want no egress fees plus a broad catalogue, Scaleway.
01How it works

How this list was put together

Each provider here is one our own customers actually weigh against Vultr, and each entry states what that provider is genuinely best at rather than why it is worse. Figures come from the provider's own public pages on the dates listed under Sources. Where we publish a full head-to-head comparison for a provider, the link sits under its entry.
02Alternatives

Six alternatives to Vultr

  1. 1

    X-ZoneServers

    Best at: Unmetered traffic and guaranteed 1–200 Gbps ports across 12 EU and US metros
    If the meter and the paid DDoS add-on are what pushed you to look: every plan is unmetered with no traffic counter and Layer 3/4/7 DDoS mitigation is included — a shared 1 Gbps port on a KVM VPS from €4.00/month, a shared 10 Gbps port from €9.99/month, dedicated servers by guaranteed port from 1 to 200 Gbps — billed hourly or monthly in EUR. Twelve metros in eleven countries rather than Vultr's 36 regions, so it wins on Europe and on transfer cost, not on global reach. We publish this page, so weigh it accordingly.
    This is us. We publish this page, so read our entry with that in mind — the disclosure below explains the method.
  2. 2

    DigitalOcean

    Best at: Managed databases, Kubernetes and object storage behind one API
    The nearest like-for-like cloud, with more managed services: DigitalOcean pairs Droplets with managed PostgreSQL, MySQL and Valkey, Kubernetes, App Platform and Spaces object storage behind one API and one invoice, in 12 cities. The bandwidth shape is the same as Vultr's — an outbound allowance pooled at team level, with additional transfer at $0.01 per GiB.
    Read the full comparison
  3. 3

    Akamai Cloud (Linode)

    Best at: Pooled transfer with the lowest overage rate of the mainstream clouds
    The reach-plus-cheaper-meter option: Linode has run since 2003 and now trades as Akamai Cloud, with 33 regions — close to Vultr's 36 — and transfer pooled across the account. Overage is $0.005 per GB in core datacenters, half Vultr's rate, and inbound transfer is free.
    Read the full comparison
  4. 4

    Hetzner

    Best at: The lowest price per CPU core in Germany and Finland
    For European workloads that do not need Vultr's global spread: Hetzner has run production hosting since 1997 from its own datacenter parks in Falkenstein, Nuremberg and Helsinki, and its AX dedicated line is the European reference point for cost per core. Cloud servers come with a monthly traffic allowance and a low per-terabyte charge above it, DDoS protection is included rather than an add-on, and the API, CLI and Terraform ecosystem are mature.
    Read the full comparison
  5. 5

    Contabo

    Best at: The most RAM and disk per euro
    Maximum hardware for the money at the cost of the port: Contabo lists Cloud VPS 4 at €5.50/month with 4 vCPU, 8 GB of RAM and 100 GB of SSD — more memory and disk per euro than almost anyone, and far more than a $6 Vultr instance. The trade is the port: 200 Mbit/s at the entry tier, reaching 1 Gbit/s only at €37.00/month on Cloud VPS 16.
    Read the full comparison
  6. 6

    Scaleway

    Best at: A broad French cloud with no egress fees
    The no-egress-fee cloud with a broad catalogue: Scaleway states that list prices include egress, so there are no outbound data-transfer fees, and the catalogue runs from €0.43/month instances up to GPU, serverless, Kubernetes and Apple silicon. Instance bandwidth is capped per type from 100 Mbps upward, across three regions: Paris, Amsterdam and Warsaw — a European-only footprint compared with Vultr's six continents.
    Read the full comparison
03Comparison

Why people look for a Vultr alternative

  • 1The bandwidth allowance and its $0.01 per GB overage: reach is Vultr's strength, but a busy instance in Europe or North America pays for every gigabyte above the plan.
  • 2DDoS protection is a paid add-on, and only in selected locations — a surprise for anyone hosting game servers or public APIs.
  • 3Hardware per dollar in Europe: the same money buys more RAM, or an unmetered gigabit port, from European hosts.
  • 4Support is ticket-first on standard accounts; teams that want a phone number or a named contact look elsewhere.

What Vultr still does better than most

  • Reach: 36 cloud regions across six continents, including cities nobody else on this list serves — Johannesburg, Tel Aviv, Santiago, Mexico City, Osaka, Delhi.
  • Breadth in one account: bare metal, GPU, Kubernetes, object storage and a CDN alongside the compute.
  • The lowest entry price on the page: $2.50/month for an IPv6-only instance, $3.50 with IPv4.
04Guide

Before you move off Vultr: a checklist

Five things that decide whether the switch goes smoothly. Most of them are about the invoice and the features you forgot you were using.
  1. Read the bandwidth usage graph for each instance and add the overage lines from the last three invoices — that total, not the instance price, is what an unmetered plan replaces.
  2. Vultr Reserved IPs, VPC networks, Block Storage and Object Storage each need an equivalent; rclone handles object storage, and block volumes are best migrated as file-level copies.
  3. Snapshots do not export; rebuild from Terraform or cloud-init and restore application data over rsync or a database dump.
  4. If you paid for the DDoS add-on, compare what is included on the target before assuming parity — some providers bundle Layer 3/4/7 mitigation, others sell only Layer 3/4.
  5. Vultr bills hourly, so overlap costs hours, not months: run both stacks through one full traffic cycle, switch DNS with a 300-second TTL, then destroy the old instances.

When to stay with Vultr

Switching has a cost. These are the cases where Vultr is still the right answer and this page should not change your mind.
  • You need a region nobody else on this list reaches — Johannesburg, Tel Aviv, Santiago, Mexico City, Osaka or Delhi.
  • You want the lowest possible entry price on a cloud instance and $2.50/month for an IPv6-only instance fits your use case.
  • You want GPU, Kubernetes, managed databases, object storage and a CDN in the same account as your compute.
05Questions

Frequently asked questions

What is the best Vultr alternative?

For unmetered bandwidth and included DDoS mitigation, X-ZoneServers. For a similar cloud with a managed platform, DigitalOcean, or Akamai Cloud if the overage rate matters — theirs is $0.005 per GB against Vultr's $0.01. For more hardware per euro in Europe, Hetzner or Contabo. Nothing on this list matches Vultr's 36 regions.

Which alternative includes DDoS protection?

X-ZoneServers includes Layer 3, 4 and 7 mitigation on every plan at no extra cost, and OVHcloud, netcup and IONOS all list DDoS protection as included on their VPS ranges. Vultr sells it as a paid add-on in supported locations, which is worth pricing in if your workload is exposed.

Does any alternative offer unmetered bandwidth?

X-ZoneServers does: no allowance and no overage on any plan, with a shared 1 Gbps port from €4.00/month, a shared 10 Gbps port from €9.99/month and guaranteed dedicated ports up to 200 Gbps. Scaleway does not charge for egress either, though its instance bandwidth is capped per type from 100 Mbps upward.

Is Vultr cheaper than the alternatives?

At the very bottom of the range, usually — $2.50/month for an IPv6-only 512 MB instance or $3.50 with IPv4 undercuts everything here. Once you compare at 4 GB or 8 GB of RAM, the European hosts generally give more hardware for the money, and once bandwidth is in the picture the unmetered options change the arithmetic entirely.
06Related

Sources and check dates

Every statement about another provider on this page traces to one of these public pages. Where a provider does not publish a figure, this page says so instead of estimating.
  1. Vultr public plans API
    https://api.vultr.com/v2/plans· checked 2026-08-28
  2. Vultr bandwidth overage documentation
    https://docs.vultr.com/support/platform/billing/what-is-the-bandwidth-overage-rate· checked 2026-08-28
  3. DigitalOcean Droplet pricing
    https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/droplets· checked 2026-08-28
  4. Akamai Cloud network transfer costs
    https://techdocs.akamai.com/cloud-computing/docs/network-transfer-usage-and-costs· checked 2026-08-28
  5. Hetzner Cloud
    https://www.hetzner.com/cloud/· checked 2026-08-28
  6. Contabo Cloud VPS
    https://contabo.com/en/vps/· checked 2026-08-28
07Legal

Disclosure, method and limits

We are one of the providers compared

This page is published by X-ZoneServers (X ZONE IT SRL, Bucharest, Romania). We sell one of the two services compared, so this is a vendor comparison rather than an independent review. Our method is to quote each provider's own published figures, name the date we read them, and state plainly where the other provider is the better choice.

How the numbers are gathered

Competitor data is read directly from that provider's public website — pricing pages, specification sheets, network and location pages — on the dates listed under Sources, plus public network registries such as PeeringDB and bgp.he.net for ASN details. We do not benchmark competitor hardware ourselves and we do not republish figures from review sites or affiliate directories.

How to read the prices

List prices only. Promotional offers, first-term discounts, renewal rates, setup fees, add-ons, region surcharges and currency all differ per provider and can change without notice. X-ZoneServers prices are in EUR excluding VAT. Where another provider publishes in a different currency or inclusive of VAT, that is marked in the table — those figures are not directly comparable to ours without adjustment.

Accuracy and corrections

The goal is that every claim here can be verified at the source in under a minute. Nothing on this page is a benchmark result, a prediction, or a statement about a competitor's internal operations. If a figure has drifted or is wrong — including where the error favours us — write to us and we will correct it and move the review date.

Trademarks and affiliation

All company and product names are the property of their respective owners and are used here for identification and comparison only. X-ZoneServers is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or a reseller of any other provider named on this page.
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