How hourly VPS billing works at HourlyVPS

Each rule is printed in full, marked “The rule”, and followed by worked numbers from the current price list. If anything here reads differently from the Terms of Service or the Refund and Account Credit Policy, those documents apply.

Prepaid credit and the initial credit

The rule: Your account runs on prepaid credit, with a minimum top-up of $5.

The rule: Ordering a server takes an initial credit of $5 ($9 for Chrono C32, $16 for Chrono C64). It is prepaid credit, not a fee: the server’s hourly usage is deducted from it, and when it runs out you top up.

The rule: You can pay and top up your credit by card or cryptocurrency.

You add funds to your account, then order a server; the server’s hours are deducted from its balance every hour. The client portal lists every top-up, every charge and every balance.

Initial credit per plan and the hours it pays for, before any tax

Hours of usage at the hourly rate, rounded down. Usage is deducted from the credit every hour, whether the server is running or stopped, and when the credit runs out you top up; the initial credit is not a monthly plan.

The payment methods page explains how each way of paying works and what it costs on your side.

Charged by the hour

The rule: Billing is by the hour: every hour a server exists is charged at the plan’s hourly rate. The price tapes and cost tables on this site count every started hour as a full hour, so they show the most a duration can cost; the cost calculator charges a partial hour to the nearest cent, as the bill does.

The rule: Every server is billed by the hour: the plan’s hourly rate is deducted from the server’s prepaid balance for every hour it exists, powered on or off, until you delete it.

The rule: Charges are deducted in whole cents: a full hour costs exactly the hourly rate, and a partial first or last hour is rounded to the nearest cent, never more than a full hour.

Nothing is paid in advance beyond the credit you hold, and nothing renews. The meter starts when the server is created and stops when you delete it. It suits work that ends, which is what an hourly VPS is for.

A partial first or last hour is rounded to the nearest cent and never costs more than a full hour, so these receipts, which count every started hour in full, show the most each job can cost.

The monthly cap

The rule: Every plan is capped at 500 hours per billing period: the monthly price is 500 times the hourly rate, and after 500 billed hours (about 20.8 days) the rest of the period is free, so a server left on all month pays exactly the monthly price and never more. A billing period is one month from your order date, not the calendar month, and the cap resets every period.

On a Quartz Q4 the meter charges $0.03/hour for every hour until the charges in a billing period reach $15.00. That happens after 500 hours (20 days 20 hours); for the rest of that billing period the server costs nothing more. There is nothing to switch on and no contract: the cap applies by itself.

The yellow strip on each example is the share of the hourly total that is charged; the gap is what the monthly cap took off.

A server that stays on is therefore a monthly VPS with no contract and nothing prepaid. How the cap compares with providers that bill hourly without one is worked out in hourly vs monthly VPS.

Days, weeks and months

The rule: There is no separate daily plan: renting by the day is hourly billing, so one day costs 24 times the hourly rate and one week 168 times, and the monthly cap still applies.

The rule: There is no prepaid monthly plan: leave a server on and its charges stop at the monthly price in each billing period (after 500 hours, about 20.8 days), with no contract and no annual term.

On a Quartz Q4 a day is 24 × $0.03/hour = $0.72. There is no daily price to compare it with and no day to prepay: if you rent a VPS by the day, you deploy the same server and delete it when the days are over.

No refunds needed

The rule: Usage is metered, so there are no refunds to claim: you pay only for the hours a server exists, never more than the monthly price in a billing period. Account credit is not paid out to your card or crypto wallet unless the law requires it.

Because nothing is prepaid for a period, there is no unused period to give back: a server deleted after 30 hours has been charged for 30 hours, and deleting it stops the meter. The Refund and Account Credit Policy sets out how account credit is handled, including the cases where the law requires a payout.

When the balance runs low

The rule: When a server’s balance is down to about 24 hours of usage, you get a top-up invoice; at zero balance the server is suspended, and a suspended server is deleted 7 days later.

On a Quartz Q4 a day of usage is $0.72, so the top-up invoice arrives while roughly that much is left on the server’s balance. Paying it keeps the server running.

The suspension and deletion periods are set in section 6 of the Terms of Service.

Stopped or deleted: when billing ends

The rule: A stopped server is still billed, because its vCPU, memory, disk and IP addresses stay reserved for you; only deleting the server stops billing.

Stopping a server is for a reboot or a short pause. If you will not need it for a while, copy off what you want to keep and delete it; you can deploy a fresh server when you need one again.

Other providers handle stopped servers differently; which VPS providers bill stopped servers compares them, with sources.

One product per plan

The rule: Each plan is one product, so there is no billing mode to pick or switch: the same server is billed by the hour whether you keep it for an hour, a day or all month, and the monthly cap applies by itself.

Say you deploy a Quartz Q4 to try a setup for three hours, then decide to keep it. Keep the same server: the trial hours cost $0.09, and from then on the Q4 bills hour by hour, never more than $15.00 in a billing period. There is no plan to move it to.

Taxes, IP addresses and traffic

• Currency and taxes

  Prices are in US dollars only and exclude taxes; any VAT or sales tax is added on the invoice according to your country.

• IP addresses

  Every server comes with one dedicated IPv4 address and IPv6, included in the plan price.

• Traffic

  Istanbul plans include the monthly traffic allowance listed for each plan, prorated for a server that exists for part of a billing period.

Every amount on this page is before tax. The pricing page lists each plan’s traffic allowance by location.

Related pages

• Hourly vs monthly VPS: the break-even point
• Which VPS providers bill stopped servers?
• Per-second vs per-hour VPS billing
• HourlyVPS pricing: all plans and billing rules
• VPS cost calculator for any provider
• Hourly VPS providers compared
• Refund and Account Credit Policy
• All VPS billing and cost guides