Recommendations for a low cost VPS

[zeeclor]

@Belfry

I suppose it depends on what your use case is, @zeeclor, and whether you need something low latency, something with a lot of resources available, something where you can learn about the features and experiment with a larger cloud platform’s offerings, or some other use case.

I spent the day trying to upgrade the bookworm kernel at HLB. In the end Gemini and I gave up and we pinned the current version.

I’ve also recently received notification from Hetzner about an increase in the monthly pricing. It’s not huge but of their various POPs Singapore is the most expensive they offer.

Product	previous price	New price as of 1 April 2026
CPX21 (SIN)	€ 15.51	€ 20.34
Snapshot (per 1 GB/Month)

@Belfry has given me lots of good suggestions for a VPS (as above) but I’ve lacked the energy to actually make the change. The issues today have increased my motivation almost to the critical level.

I asked Perplexity her recommendations and they are similar to @Belfry’s.

Provider	Region	Approx resources	Approx price (ex tax)
Hetzner CPX21	EU/US	3 vCPU, 4 GB, 80 GB NVMe	7 EUR ≈ A$11–12/mo
BinaryLane	AU (multi-city)	2–4 vCPU, 2–4 GB, SSD	Similar or a bit above A$12/mo for 4 GB-class plans​
VPSCloud	Brisbane	Intel, SSD, DDoS	Likely >A$12/mo for 4 GB, local latency​
OVH VPS-2 SG	Singapore	6 vCores, 12 GB, 100 GB NVMe	From A$15.04/mo
Rackmill	Perth	Entry NVMe VPS	From A$9.20/mo; CPX21-like size costs more​
Vultr Sydney	Sydney	2 vCPU, 4 GB, 80–100 GB NVMe	~US$20–24/mo

We are currently on a Hetzner CPX21 out of Singapore and latency does not appear to be a problem for our Jitsi server.

The pricing in the table above is probably suspect (given the discrepancy in the CPX21 pricing between quoted and imminent). I am currently leaning toward OVH or perhaps Binary Lane.

Given that Discourse is a fairly heavy on RAM. OVH with its bigger resources looks like the major contender but would be interested in what the experts here think.