The cheapest VPS you can run in a UK data center is UpCloud's Starter 1 GB at about £2.55 a month (€3.00, $3.38), billed by the hour. For real headroom, OVHcloud's VPS-1 gives you 2 vCPUs and 4 GB of RAM for about £3.81 a month (€4.49), and it drops to about £3.23 on a 12-month term, with no renewal increase.
We checked these prices on 7 October 2026, at the shortest billing term unless we say otherwise. Most of these providers bill in US dollars or euros; pound figures are conversions at that day's rates (about £0.75 per dollar and £0.85 per euro), so your card's rate will move them a little. Where a provider shows its own pound prices, we use those. Prices exclude VAT, which UK consumers should expect to see added at checkout.
How we picked
We count cloud servers as VPS and kept only Linux plans that the provider sells in a UK location, at the price shown. That gives us 647 plans from 14 of the 20 providers we track. We left out managed servers such as Cloudways, which cost more because you pay for the management layer.
Who's missing matters as much as who's there. Hetzner and netcup, two of the cheapest European hosts, have no UK location in our data. Neither do InterServer, Namecheap or DreamHost, which sell their VPS only in the US. And Vultr's $2.50 and $3.50 512 MB plans exist only in its US regions. So the UK's cheapest server costs a little more than America's. At 4 GB it's the other way round: OVHcloud's VPS-1 is sold in the UK but not in the US, which makes 4 GB cheaper here than across the Atlantic.
The 12 cheapest VPS plans in the UK
| # | Plan | vCPU | RAM | Storage | Price per month | Billing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | UpCloud Starter 1 GB | 1 | 1 GB | 10 GB SSD | £2.55 ($3.38) | Hourly |
| 2 | DigitalOcean Basic 512 MB | 1 | 512 MB | 10 GB SSD | £3.02 ($4.00) | Hourly |
| 3 | Bluehost VPS NVMe 2 | 1 | 2 GB | 50 GB NVMe | £3.76 ($4.99) | Monthly, renews at $5.99 |
| 4 | Vultr Regular 1 GB | 1 | 1 GB | 25 GB SSD | £3.77 ($5.00) | Hourly |
| 5 | Linode Nanode 1 GB | 1 | 1 GB | 25 GB SSD | £3.77 ($5.00) | Hourly |
| 6 | Lightsail Linux 512 MB | 2 | 512 MB | 20 GB SSD | £3.77 ($5.00) | Hourly |
| 7 | IONOS VPS S+ | 1 | 2 GB | 60 GB NVMe | £3.77 ($5.00) | 12-month term, renews at $6.00 |
| 8 | OVHcloud VPS-1 | 2 | 4 GB | 40 GB NVMe | £3.81 (€4.49) | Monthly |
| 9 | Scaleway VPS-START-2-XS | 1 | 1 GB | 20 GB NVMe | £4.23 (€4.99) | Monthly |
| 10 | DigitalOcean Basic 1 GB | 1 | 1 GB | 25 GB SSD | £4.52 ($6.00) | Hourly |
| 11 | Contabo Cloud VPS 4 | 4 | 8 GB | 100 GB SSD | £5.40 plus a UK location fee | Monthly |
| 12 | Hostinger KVM 1 | 1 | 4 GB | 50 GB NVMe | £6.99, or £4.99 on 24 months | Monthly, renews higher |
All of these are unmanaged: you get root access and look after the operating system yourself.
Cheapest overall: UpCloud Starter 1 GB
UpCloud charges one global price in every location, so its Starter 1 GB is €3.00 a month in London, the same as in Helsinki or Frankfurt. You get 1 vCPU, 1 GB of RAM and 10 GB of SSD, billed by the starting hour and capped at the monthly price, and UpCloud doesn't charge for outbound traffic under its fair transfer policy. The small disk is the catch: it suits a VPN, a bot or a light API better than a site with lots of uploads.
Best value: OVHcloud VPS-1
OVHcloud's VPS-1 costs €4.49 a month (about £3.81) for 2 vCPUs, 4 GB of RAM and 40 GB of NVMe, four times the memory of the hourly clouds at a similar price. OVHcloud includes a daily backup, anti-DDoS and unlimited traffic, at 500 Mbit/s on this plan. Commit to 12 months and it's €3.81 (about £3.23), with the same price on renewal. Its bigger sibling, VPS-2, has 4 vCPUs and 8 GB for €8.49 (about £7.20).
It is billed monthly rather than hourly, so it's less suited to quick tests. Our 4 GB VPS comparison shows how it compares with every other 4 GB plan we track.
Cheapest 2 GB: Bluehost and IONOS
Two plans give you 2 GB for about £3.77 a month:
- Bluehost VPS NVMe 2: 1 vCPU and 50 GB of NVMe for $4.99 month to month, renewing at $5.99. Bluehost lists London among its VPS data centers.
- IONOS VPS S+: 1 vCPU and 60 GB of NVMe with unlimited traffic at 1 Gbps. It's sold only on a 12-month term, where $5.00 is the average across a cheaper first three months and nine months at the regular price. It renews at $6.00.
With IONOS, the low headline price covers only the first three months, so compare it on the full-year cost.
Hostinger in pounds: watch the renewal
Hostinger has a UK site that prices its VPS in pounds. KVM 1, with 4 GB of RAM and 4 TB of bandwidth, is £6.99 for the first month, then £15.99. On a 24-month term it's £4.99 a month, renewing at £10.99; on the 12-month term, £5.99 renewing at £11.99.
Converted at the day's rate, that £10.99 renewal is about $14.58, while Hostinger's dollar page shows $11.99 for the same plan and term. We can't tell from the pages whether tax is treated the same way on both, so compare the total at checkout. KVM 2 (8 GB) is £6.99 a month on 24 months, renewing at £12.99.
Contabo: most RAM, plus a location fee
Contabo's Cloud VPS 4 has 4 vCPUs, 8 GB and 100 GB of SSD. In pounds it's £5.40 a month, or £4.32 on a 24-month term, but those prices are for Contabo's German data center. Choosing the UK adds a monthly location fee, which Contabo lists from €1.05 for UK and US Central on this plan, so budget around €6.55 (about £5.56) month to month. It's still the most memory per pound here. Our 8 GB VPS guide covers its 200 Mbit/s port and the alternatives.
Watch out for
- VAT. UK consumers should expect VAT on top of most of these prices. Businesses with a VAT number can usually reclaim it.
- Currency. Euro- and dollar-billed hosts will charge in their own currency; your bank may add a foreign transaction fee.
- Intro prices. Bluehost, IONOS and Hostinger renew higher. UpCloud, OVHcloud, DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode and Scaleway charge the same every month.
- German alternatives. If your users are spread across Europe rather than only in the UK, Hetzner and netcup in Germany are worth a look; see our Germany VPS guide.
FAQ
What is the cheapest VPS in the UK?
UpCloud's Starter 1 GB at €3.00 a month (about £2.55), billed hourly in its London location. The cheapest with more than 1 GB is Bluehost's VPS NVMe 2 at $4.99 (about £3.76) for 2 GB.
What is the cheapest 4 GB VPS with a UK data center?
OVHcloud's VPS-1 at €4.49 a month (about £3.81), or €3.81 on a 12-month term, with no renewal increase. Hostinger's KVM 1 is £4.99 a month on its UK site, but only on a 24-month term, and it renews at £10.99.
Does Hetzner have a UK data center?
Not in our data. Hetzner's cloud servers run in Germany, Finland, the US and Singapore. The cheapest UK alternatives at a similar price are OVHcloud's VPS-1 and UpCloud's Starter plans.
Do VPS prices in the UK include VAT?
Mostly not. The prices above exclude VAT, as most providers show them, and UK consumers will usually see it added at checkout.
The bottom line
The UK lacks a few of the cheapest names from the US and Germany, but the essentials are here. UpCloud's Starter 1 GB at about £2.55 is the cheapest UK server, and OVHcloud's VPS-1 at about £3.81 for 4 GB is the best value, with no renewal jump. Contabo gives you 8 GB if you can live with its location fee and 200 Mbit/s port.
To see every VPS we track with a UK location, filtered and sorted live, use our VPS hosting page, or see the full, live ranking of cheap VPS hosting.