pricing

Pay for what you
actually use.

Every VM and bare-metal host is billed by the second. No subscriptions, no monthly minimum, no contact-sales gating. The monthly numbers below show what you'd pay running 24/7 — the actual bill scales down with anything less.

[ 04 / pricing ]
pricing

Pay for what you
actually use.

all prices in usd · billed per second · no monthly minimum · cancel any time
tiny
$4.25/ mo
$0.0058 / hr · billed per second
Static sites, bots, learning.
  • + 1 vCPU
  • + 1 GB ECC
  • + 10 GB network NVMe
  • + 10 TB transfer
  • + IPv6 /64 (IPv4 +$2/mo)
spin one up →
large
$38/ mo
$0.0521 / hr · billed per second
Production workloads, CI.
  • + 4 vCPU
  • + 16 GB ECC
  • + 160 GB network NVMe
  • + 10 TB transfer
  • + Snapshots (50% of NVMe rate)
  • + MFA + audit log
spin one up →
bare metal
starting at
$499/ mo
$0.69 / hr · billed per second
Whole machine. Price scales with the host SKU.
  • + Single-tenant host
  • + ECC memory
  • + Local NVMe + network NVMe
  • + 50 Gbps host uplink
  • + Console + rescue mode
  • + Per-second billing
gpu · whole-card passthrough
NVIDIA RTX 4090
dedicated card — not a slice. starts at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. add vCPU + RAM as configured. more gpu models on the roadmap.
$0.51 / gpu·hr
≈ $370 / mo · billed per second
Or fully custom. The tiers above are presets. In the dashboard you can dial vCPU, RAM, boot disk, and public IPv4 independently — pick any shape, pay by the second, see a live quote as you tweak. Same per-unit prices for everyone, no contact-sales gating.
view full catalog →
[ spec + price ]
head-to-head

Same workloads. Different math.

Metalhost VMs include 10 TB transfer on every tier. Competitor figures are closest-match plans from published pricing — DO Basic Droplets and Hetzner Cloud CPX (US). Competitor pricing verified July 2026; Metalhost rates live at build.

tier metalhost digitalocean hetzner cloud
tiny
$4.25 / mo
1 vCPU · 1 GB · 10 GB NVMe
transfer
10 TB incl.
overage
$0.0098/GB
billing
per second
spin up →
$6 / mo
Basic 1 GB
1 vCPU · 1 GB · 25 GB SSD
transfer
1000 GB incl.
overage
$0.01/GB
billing
per second (60s min)
$20.49 / mo
excl. IPv4
CPX11 (US)
2 vCPU · 2 GB · 40 GB SSD
transfer
1 TB incl.
overage
$1.20/TB
billing
hourly, monthly cap (1 hr min)
medium
2× RAM on Metalhost medium vs DO/Hetzner.
$19 / mo
2 vCPU · 8 GB · 80 GB NVMe
transfer
10 TB incl.
overage
$0.0098/GB
billing
per second
spin up →
$24 / mo
Basic 4 GB
2 vCPU · 4 GB · 80 GB SSD
transfer
4 TB incl.
overage
$0.01/GB
billing
per second (60s min)
$37.49 / mo
excl. IPv4
CPX21 (US)
3 vCPU · 4 GB · 80 GB SSD
transfer
2 TB incl.
overage
$1.20/TB
billing
hourly, monthly cap (1 hr min)
large
2× RAM on Metalhost large vs DO/Hetzner.
$38 / mo
4 vCPU · 16 GB · 160 GB NVMe
transfer
10 TB incl.
overage
$0.0098/GB
billing
per second
spin up →
$48 / mo
Basic 8 GB
4 vCPU · 8 GB · 160 GB SSD
transfer
5 TB incl.
overage
$0.01/GB
billing
per second (60s min)
$73.49 / mo
excl. IPv4
CPX31 (US)
4 vCPU · 8 GB · 160 GB SSD
transfer
3 TB incl.
overage
$1.20/TB
billing
hourly, monthly cap (1 hr min)

Competitor pricing as published as of July 2026; Metalhost from live catalog at build. Hetzner figures are US CPX tiers (Ashburn/Hillsboro), excl. IPv4. US CPX included transfer is 1–5 TB by plan (CPX11 = 1 TB, CPX21 = 2 TB, CPX31 = 3 TB). Sources: DO droplets · DO bandwidth · Hetzner pricing · Hetzner plans · Hetzner traffic · Hetzner billing

[ egress calc ]
calculator

What does your bandwidth bill look like?

Pick a tier and drag the slider to your monthly outbound transfer. We show compute + egress overage for all three — no signup required.

2 TB
0 10 TB 20 TB
metalhost
compute
egress
included
10 TB
digitalocean
compute
egress
included
hetzner cloud
compute
egress
included

Adjust the slider to compare.

Assumes a single VM at 24/7 usage. DO transfer pools per account; Hetzner US CPX prices exclude Primary IPv4.

[ faq ]
questions

Common questions, straight answers.

How does per-second billing work?

Every VM and bare-metal host is metered to the second from the moment it boots until it's destroyed. Run a VM for an hour and pay for an hour. Run it for 11 seconds during a CI job and pay for 11 seconds. No monthly minimum, no rounding up. The monthly numbers on the pricing page are just the equivalent if you ran the resource 24/7 for the month.

Can I pick my own vCPU / RAM / disk shape, or am I stuck with presets?

Either. The tiles above are presets sized for common workloads, but the dashboard lets you dial CPU class, vCPU, RAM, boot disk, GPU, and public IPv4 independently and see a live per-second quote as you tweak. Same per-unit prices for everyone (about $2.50/mo per vCPU on Intel Cascade Lake, $1.25/mo per GB RAM, $0.05/mo per GB NVMe, $2.00/mo per public IPv4; AMD Milan vCPU runs a little more) whether you pick a preset or go fully custom.

Do you have GPUs?

Yes — NVIDIA RTX 4090 via whole-card PCIe passthrough. You get a dedicated physical GPU, not a time-sliced fraction. Attach one or more per VM; the card's vCPU and RAM are reserved alongside it, so GPU VMs start at 4 vCPU / 8 GB. Billed per second at $0.51/GPU-hour (≈$370/mo) plus the vCPU and RAM you configure. The RTX 4090 is the first card in the catalog — more GPU models are on the roadmap.

Do you charge for egress / bandwidth out?

Bare-metal leases include unlimited bandwidth — no transfer cap and no egress fees. VMs include a 10 TB monthly transfer allowance (in and out). VM overages bill at $0.0098/GB, a fraction of what the hyperscalers charge. Use the comparison table and egress calculator below to see how we stack up against DigitalOcean and Hetzner Cloud.

Can I switch a VM to a bigger size without rebuilding?

Yes. Vertical resize hot-plugs vCPU and memory live where the guest supports it; otherwise it's a quick stop-edit-start. Either way, your disks, network attachments, public IPs, and snapshots come along untouched — no data migration needed.

How do I get started?

Create an account at app.metalhost.net, add a payment method, top up your wallet, and spin up a VM or bare-metal host from the dashboard. The docs walk through the full flow in under ten minutes.

Where are your data centers?

DC-1 (Dallas) is live; DC-2 is in buildout with a published expansion plan. New workloads run in DC-1 today.

Do you offer managed Kubernetes or container hosting?

Not as a product on this site directly. For container workloads we run a provider on the Akash Network — same Metalhost hardware, deploy by SDL spec, pay by credit card on the Akash console. See the 'Compute options' section on the home page.

Why two different cloud frontends?

Different workloads, different economics. VMs and bare metal on this site are right when you want familiar tooling, USD invoices, and direct customer support. Akash deploys are right when you want bid-based pricing or short-lived container workloads. The same Metalhost hardware powers both — pick the frontend that fits.