HOURLY BILLINGFrom €0.0056/hour
Hourly VPS.
Pay Only for What You Use
Deploy a KVM VPS in about a minute, pay by the hour, and destroy it whenever you're done. Billing is automatically capped at the monthly price — run it all month and you never pay more than the flat rate.
X-ZoneServers hourly VPS starts at €0.0056/hour (Nano: 2 GB RAM, 1 vCPU, 20 GB SSD) with billing automatically capped at €4/month — all six KVM plans deploy in about 60 seconds across seven locations in the EU and US East, and destroying the server stops billing immediately.
€0.0056 Lowest hourly rate60s Deployment timeREST API Deploy & destroy from code
Transparent Hourly Metering
No hidden fees, no minimum commitment
Billing increment1 hour
Monthly cost capAutomatic
Minimum commitmentNone
Destroy serverAnytime
01How it works
How Hourly VPS Billing Works
Pay-as-you-go cloud servers with a built-in price ceiling
Deploy in 60 Seconds
Pick a plan and a location, and your KVM VPS is online in about a minute. Full root access, SSD storage, and your choice of Linux distribution or FreeBSD from the first hour.
Pay by the Hour
Every hour your server exists is metered at a fixed hourly rate — from €0.0056/hr for the Nano plan. Your balance is only charged for the hours you actually keep the server.
Capped at the Monthly Price
Hourly charges stop accumulating once they reach the plan's flat monthly price. A server you keep 24/7 simply costs the monthly rate — hourly billing never costs more.
02Plans
Hourly VPS Rates
Six KVM plans, one simple rate per hour — capped at the monthly price
Nano
Entry Level
€0.0056
/hourcapped at €4.00/mo
2 GB RAM1 vCPU
20 GB SSD100 Mbps Networkper-VM cap
Unmetered traffic✓ Included
IP Addresses1 IPv4 · IPv6 where available
Micro
Enhanced Performance
€0.0083
/hourcapped at €6.00/mo
4 GB RAM2 vCPUs
40 GB SSD140 Mbps Networkper-VM cap
Unmetered traffic✓ Included
IP Addresses1 IPv4 · IPv6 where available
Most Popular
Starter
Dual-Core Power
€0.0139
/hourcapped at €10.00/mo
8 GB RAM2 vCPUs
60 GB SSD180 Mbps Networkper-VM cap
Unmetered traffic✓ Included
IP Addresses1 IPv4 · IPv6 where available
Basic
Quad-Core Performance
€0.0222
/hourcapped at €16.00/mo
16 GB RAM4 vCPUs
80 GB SSD220 Mbps Networkper-VM cap
Unmetered traffic✓ Included
IP Addresses1 IPv4 · IPv6 where available
Pro
High Performance
€0.0417
/hourcapped at €30.00/mo
24 GB RAM6 vCPUs
100 GB SSD260 Mbps Networkper-VM cap
Unmetered traffic✓ Included
IP Addresses1 IPv4 · IPv6 where available
Business
Enterprise Grade
€0.0806
/hourcapped at €58.00/mo
32 GB RAM8 vCPUs
120 GB SSD300 Mbps Networkper-VM cap
Unmetered traffic✓ Included
IP Addresses1 IPv4 · IPv6 where available
Each plan's network port is capped at the speed shown: 100 Mbps on Nano, rising to 300 Mbps on Business. The host node's uplink is shared with other instances, and traffic is unmetered.
03Use cases
What Hourly Billing Is Perfect For
Short-lived and bursty workloads where a monthly server would sit idle
CI Runners & Build Agents
Spin up clean build machines on demand, run the pipeline, destroy them when the job finishes. Pay cents instead of a full month.
Staging & Preview Environments
Give every branch or client demo its own short-lived environment without keeping servers running between reviews.
Batch Jobs & Data Processing
Rendering, imports, scraping runs, migrations — grab extra compute for a few hours and release it when the work is done.
Traffic Spikes & Experiments
Scale out for launches and seasonal peaks, or test a new stack for an afternoon. The monthly cap protects you if it runs long.
7
VPS Locations
~60s
Deployment Time
Direct
Operator Support
100–300 Mbps
Network Speed
04Billing
Hourly vs Monthly Billing
| Aspect | Hourly | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Billing increment | Per hour, from €0.0056/hr | Flat monthly rate |
| Commitment | None — destroy anytime | Renews monthly |
| Maximum monthly cost | Capped at the monthly price | The monthly price |
| Best for | Short-lived, bursty, experimental workloads | Always-on production workloads |
Same hardware, same network, same locations — only the billing differs. You can keep an hourly server as long as you like.
05API
Deploy and Destroy by API
Hourly billing pays off when servers come and go on their own. Let your pipeline order a VPS, hand it a first-boot script and delete it when the job is done.
- Order hourly plans with cloud-init user-data
- Custom images for fast rebuilds
- Idempotent orders, safe to retry from CI
- OpenAPI 3.0 spec, included with every account
curl -X POST https://my.x-zoneservers.com/api/v1/orders \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $XZ_API_KEY" \
-H "Idempotency-Key: ci-run-4812" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"productId": "<nano-plan-id>", "billingCycle": "hourly",
"configOptions": {"os_image_id": "<image-id>",
"user_data": "#!/bin/sh\n/opt/ci/run.sh"}}'
# ...job done: delete it, the meter stops
curl -X DELETE https://my.x-zoneservers.com/api/v1/vps/<vps-id> \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $XZ_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"immediate": true}'The X-ZoneServers Customer API orders any of the six plans on hourly billing, with cloud-init user-data and SSH keys applied at first boot. One DELETE call removes the server and stops the meter: you pay for each started hour it existed, never more than the monthly cap.
Keys are scoped (read, services, orders, billing, destructive), can be locked to your CI runners' IP addresses and given an expiry date, and orders accept an Idempotency-Key so a timed-out request never creates a second server.
06Guide
How the hourly price cap is calculated
Hourly billing meters every hour your server exists at its fixed rate — the 2 GB Nano plan, for example, bills €0.0056 for each started hour. The cap is simply the plan's flat monthly price: once your accumulated hourly charges within a billing month reach it (€4 for Nano), metering stops and the rest of the month costs nothing.
In practice that means short-lived servers cost cents — a 6-hour CI runner on Nano bills about €0.03 — while a server you forget to destroy can never surprise you with more than the monthly rate. A stopped server still reserves its RAM, CPU and IP address, so it keeps billing; destroying it ends the meter immediately, and you can redeploy a fresh one in about 60 seconds whenever you need it again.
07Questions
Hourly VPS FAQ
Everything about pay-as-you-go billing
How does hourly VPS billing work?
You pay a fixed rate for every hour your server exists — from €0.0056/hr on the Nano plan. Charges are metered continuously against your account balance, and there is no minimum commitment: keep a server for two hours, pay for two hours.
What happens if I keep the server all month?
Hourly charges are automatically capped at the plan's monthly price. Once the cap is reached, the rest of the month is free — running an hourly server 24/7 never costs more than the flat monthly rate.
Does a stopped server still cost money?
Yes. A stopped server still reserves its RAM, CPU, storage, and IP address, so it continues to bill hourly. To stop billing completely, destroy the server — you can always deploy a fresh one in about 60 seconds.
How fast can I deploy and destroy servers?
Deployment takes about 60 seconds; destruction is immediate. You can automate both from the client panel or the REST API, which makes hourly VPS practical for CI pipelines and scheduled batch workloads.
Which plans and locations support hourly billing?
All six KVM VPS plans — from 2 GB Nano to 32 GB Business — support hourly billing in every one of our seven VPS locations: Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Vienna, Warsaw, Bucharest and Sofia in the EU, plus Ashburn (US East). The hardware is identical to monthly plans: SSD storage and unmetered traffic on the same 100–300 Mbps port caps. Prices shown are the Bucharest rates; the other six locations carry a location premium that checkout shows before you order.
Can I get a dedicated server with hourly billing?
Dedicated servers are billed monthly because each one is provisioned bare-metal for a single customer. If you need short-lived capacity, the 32 GB Business VPS on hourly billing is the closest equivalent — pay-as-you-go, destroy it when you are done.
Is there an API for hourly VPS?
Yes. The Customer REST API (v1, public beta) lists the plans with their hourly prices, orders a VPS on hourly billing with cloud-init user-data and SSH keys, runs power actions and reinstalls, and deletes the server when the job is finished. API access is included with every account at no extra cost.
Is support included with hourly billing?
Yes. Hourly servers run on the same hardware and network as monthly plans and get the same operator-led support by ticket, email and live chat. There is no separate, reduced support tier for pay-as-you-go customers.
How do I pay for hourly servers?
Hourly servers are prepaid: the hourly charge is deducted from your account credit once per hour, and a minimum credit balance is required before an hourly server is created. Top up by card, PayPal, cryptocurrency or bank transfer, the same payment methods as monthly plans; a deleted server stops drawing from the balance immediately.
Is traffic metered on hourly servers?
No. Hourly servers have the same unmetered traffic as monthly plans: no transfer allowance and no per-GB charge, so a Nano that moves 20 TB in a month still costs at most its €4 cap. Hourly clouds that include 1–2 TB and then bill egress typically charge $0.005–0.01 per GB beyond it.
Get started
Deploy Your First Hourly VPS
60 seconds from order to root shell. No commitment — destroy it anytime.