Our first query said netcup changed no prices in September. That was wrong. On 22 September netcup replaced its G12 plans with a G12.5 generation that costs 40% more on the x86 VPS line and has half the disk, and no existing plan's price moved. OVH did much the same in June by moving each configuration up one tier name. Meanwhile 273 VPS plans at five US clouds really have held one price since February.
The five are DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, AWS Lightsail and Hostwinds, and in Europe Hetzner's shared-CPU CPX cloud line also went up, by 144% to 154% in June.
Europe is still mostly the cheap option. After its 40% increase, a 2 vCPU / 4 GB netcup VPS still costs about a third of the same configuration at DigitalOcean. Of the shared-CPU lines that got more expensive this year, only Hetzner CPX has landed at American prices.
Everything below comes from our nightly price tracking, checked against the providers' own pages and announcements on 1 October 2026. Prices exclude VAT. Euro prices are converted to dollars at the flat 1.15 rate the rest of HostingSift uses, and every price carries its billing term, because the price on a 12-month term and the month-to-month price of the same plan, billed with no commitment, are not the same number.
Every active VPS and cloud plan at DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, AWS Lightsail and Hostwinds has held a single price for the whole time we have tracked it, 273 plans in all:
| Provider | Active VPS and cloud plans | Tracked since | Nightly readings (longest series) | Distinct prices seen per plan | |----|----|----|----|----| | DigitalOcean | 90 | 12 Feb 2026 | 196 | 1 | | Linode (Akamai) | 39 | 24 Feb 2026 | 186 | 1 | | Vultr | 79 | 22 Feb 2026 | 182 | 1 since 23 Feb | | AWS Lightsail | 25 | 25 Feb 2026 | 185 | 1 | | Hostwinds | 40 | 25 Feb 2026 | 185 | 1 |
Ten of Vultr's plans picked up one contradictory reading on 22 February, the first night our Vultr scraper ran, and nothing since. That was us, not Vultr. Seven of the Lightsail plans and 20 of the Hostwinds plans entered our tracking later than the rest, so their series are shorter, though still flat. We also checked that none of the five retired a VPS plan during this period, for a reason the netcup section makes clear: a provider can raise prices without a single existing plan changing.
We also looked for announcements. As of 1 October 2026 we found no announced increase for CPU-based plans at any of the five. DigitalOcean did raise GPU Droplet prices on 1 August 2026, but GPU servers are outside the tables in this article. The current list prices for the 2 vCPU / 4 GB configuration are $24 at DigitalOcean, Linode and Lightsail, $20 at Vultr and $18.99 at Hostwinds. All five are billed month-to-month.
Six providers in our tracking raised VPS prices in 2026 in ways we could check against their own pages or announcements: netcup, Hetzner, OVHcloud, IONOS, Hostinger and Contabo. The table shows one example plan from each, with its billing term. The sections after it explain each case, including the plan generations and rate types named here.
| Provider | What changed | Date | Example | Before | After | Term | |----|----|----|----|----|----|----| | netcup | x86 VPS, G12 replaced by G12.5 | 22 Sep 2026 | VPS 500, 2 vCPU / 4 GB | €4.97 | €6.94 | 12-month | | netcup | Root servers, G12 replaced by G12.5 | 22 Sep 2026 | RS 1000, 4 cores / 8 GB | €10.75 | €18.26 | 12-month | | Hetzner | CPX shared and CCX dedicated cloud | 15 Jun 2026 | CPX22, 2 vCPU / 4 GB | €7.99 | €19.49 | Month-to-month | | OVHcloud | VPS 2026 range replaced by VPS 2027 | Jun 2026 | 4 vCPU / 8 GB / 75 GB | €6.49 | €8.49 | Month-to-month | | IONOS | VPS+ regular rate | 18 Sep 2026 | VPS M+, 2 vCPU / 4 GB | $11 | $14 | 1-year | | Hostinger | KVM intro price | 3 Mar 2026 | KVM 1, 1 vCPU / 4 GB | $4.99 | $6.49 | 24-month | | Contabo | Cloud VDS (dedicated cores) | Not datable | Cloud VDS S, 6 cores / 24 GB | €31.20 | €39.20 | 24-month |
Two of these providers gave a reason: netcup's CEO pointed to memory prices, OVH to hardware costs in general. Hetzner's price adjustment page states no reason.
On 22 September 2026 netcup CEO Alexander Windbichler posted "RAMpocalypse: We need to talk about pricing ... again" on the netcup forum. His numbers: netcup now pays about 5x what it paid a year earlier for DDR4 and DDR5 memory. The new G12.5 generation, which replaces G12, costs up to 40% more for x86 VPS, 70% to 110% more for root servers and up to 20% more for VPS Lite. netcup's price adjustment page confirms the scope.
The disk cut got less attention. Every G12.5 plan has the same vCPU count and RAM as the G12 plan it replaced, and exactly half the storage. The x86 VPS pages now list that storage as SSD, where our G12 records said NVMe.
| Plan | G12 (before) | G12.5 (after) | Price change | Disk | Price per GB of disk | |----|----|----|----|----|----| | VPS 500 | €4.97, 128 GB | €6.94, 64 GB | +40% | Halved | 2.8x | | VPS 1000 | €8.71, 256 GB | €12.18, 128 GB | +40% | Halved | 2.8x | | VPS 2000 | €16.18, 512 GB | €22.62, 256 GB | +40% | Halved | 2.8x | | VPS 4000 | €27.24, 1 TB | €38.12, 512 GB | +40% | Halved | 2.8x | | VPS 8000 | €40.29, 2 TB | €56.39, 1 TB | +40% | Halved | 2.8x | | RS 1000 | €10.75, 256 GB | €18.26, 128 GB | +70% | Halved | 3.4x | | RS 2000 | €18.01, 512 GB | €34.20, 256 GB | +90% | Halved | 3.8x | | RS 4000 | €33.55, 1 TB | €65.40, 512 GB | +95% | Halved | 3.9x | | RS 8000 | €59.97, 2 TB | €124.72, 1 TB | +108% | Halved | 4.2x |
All prices are on netcup's 12-month term. netcup shows German visitors prices with 19% VAT included (VPS 500 is €8.26 there). We divided by 1.19 so this table matches every other price in the article. Visitors who pick the US in netcup's country selector see 0% VAT, so they pay the figures in the table.
If you buy a VPS mainly for storage, this is the number to watch. A gigabyte of netcup VPS disk now costs 2.8 times what it did on 21 September. On the RS 8000 it costs 4.2 times as much. RAM per euro fell by 29% on the VPS line (the same RAM for 1.4 times the price), which is painful but nowhere near the disk change.
Existing customers are protected. netcup's post says current contracts keep their price at renewal and can still upgrade within their own generation at the old rate.
Plan by plan, our netcup price history barely registers any of this. The G12 plans stopped appearing in our data after 22 September, and the G12.5 plans first appeared on 25 September, each with a single price. A tool that compares a plan's price tonight to its price last night sees zero changes at netcup. That is exactly what our own first query reported. When a provider swaps one generation of plans for another, the increase shows up as new rows in the data and no existing row changes.