Guide · Costs
Hourly vs monthly VPS: the break-even point
Where hourly billing has no cap, it costs less for a server that lives part of the month and more for one that runs most of it; the line between them is the break-even point. Where hourly charges stop at the monthly price, as they do at HourlyVPS, hourly never costs more than monthly. Here is the math, the numbers for every HourlyVPS plan, and which providers cap.
The short answer
- Without a cap: below the break-even point (monthly price ÷ hourly rate) hourly costs less; above it, a monthly plan does.
- With a monthly cap: hourly never costs more than monthly. Once the charges reach the monthly price, the rest of the billing period is free.
- At HourlyVPS every plan has the cap. A Quartz Q4 stops charging at $15.00 after 500 hours (20 days 20 hours) in a billing period.
- Of the 20 providers in our Fine-Print Index, 11 stop hourly charges at a monthly price and 9 do not.
The break-even formula
Hourly billing charges for each hour a server exists. A monthly plan charges one price for the month. Without a cap, the two cost the same when the hours in the month times the hourly rate equal the monthly price, which gives the break-even point:
Break-even hours = monthly price ÷ hourly rate
Share of the month = break-even hours ÷ hours in the month
With a monthly price of $15.00 and an hourly rate of $0.03, the break-even point is 500 hours, 69% of a 30-day month (720 hours). Without a cap, a server that exists for the whole month would cost $21.60 by the hour, so past the break-even point the monthly plan is the better buy.
The formula is only as good as its inputs. Before you compare providers, check three terms:
- Which hours count. If stopped servers are still billed, count every hour the server exists, not only the hours it runs. Which providers bill stopped servers.
- The billing increment. Per-second, per-minute and per-started-hour billing give different totals for short, repeated jobs. Per-second vs per-hour billing.
- Caps and cancellation terms. If a provider stops charging hourly once the monthly price is reached, hourly never costs more than monthly. If a provider bills a monthly plan in advance and does not refund it, ending it early still costs the full month.
What a monthly cap changes
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.
With the cap, the break-even point turns into the cap point. Up to 500 hours a Quartz Q4 simply costs its hours; after that, nothing more until the billing period ends. 30 days on the meter would be $21.60, and the bill is $15.00. There is no plan to switch to and nothing to decide in advance: the same server becomes a monthly one by staying on.
- Per hour$0.03/hourEvery hour, powered on or off, from deploy to delete
- Per day (24 hours)$0.72/day24 hours on the same meter, a week 168; nothing is prepaid
- Monthly cap$15.00/monthReached after 500 hours (20 days 20 hours); the rest of the billing period, one month from your order date, is free
Cap points for every plan
Computed from the current price list. “Cap reached after” is the hour in which a server’s charges reach its monthly price; the last two columns compare a full 30-day month on the meter with what is charged. Every monthly price is 500 times the hourly rate, so every plan reaches its cap after 500 hours.
Cap points by plan
| Plan | Per hour | Monthly cap | Cap reached after | 720 hours × rate | Charged |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quartz Q1 1 vCPU · 1 GB | $0.01 | $5.00 | 20 days 20 hours (69%) | $7.20 | $5.00 |
| Quartz Q2 1 vCPU · 2 GB | $0.02 | $10.00 | 20 days 20 hours (69%) | $14.40 | $10.00 |
| Quartz Q4 2 vCPU · 4 GB | $0.03 | $15.00 | 20 days 20 hours (69%) | $21.60 | $15.00 |
| Quartz Q8 4 vCPU · 8 GB | $0.05 | $25.00 | 20 days 20 hours (69%) | $36.00 | $25.00 |
| Quartz Q16 8 vCPU · 16 GB | $0.09 | $45.00 | 20 days 20 hours (69%) | $64.80 | $45.00 |
| Chrono C8 2 vCPU · 8 GB | $0.07 | $35.00 | 20 days 20 hours (69%) | $50.40 | $35.00 |
| Chrono C16 4 vCPU · 16 GB | $0.13 | $65.00 | 20 days 20 hours (69%) | $93.60 | $65.00 |
| Chrono C32 8 vCPU · 32 GB | $0.25 | $125.00 | 20 days 20 hours (69%) | $180.00 | $125.00 |
| Chrono C64 16 vCPU · 64 GB | $0.48 | $240.00 | 20 days 20 hours (69%) | $345.60 | $240.00 |
US dollars before tax. d = days, h = hours; the percentage is the share of the billing period after which the rest of it is free.
Capped and uncapped providers
The 20 providers in our Fine-Print Index, checked October 2, 2026, split into two groups on this one term. Each provider’s own page is linked from its cell in the index.
- Hourly charges stop at a monthly price (11): Akamai (Linode), Atlantic.Net, AWS Lightsail, DigitalOcean, Hetzner Cloud, IONOS Cloud Cubes, LightNode, RamNode, UpCloud, Vultr and X-ZoneServers. For them, as for us, hourly never costs more than the monthly price; what differs is how soon the cap is reached and what it covers.
- No monthly cap on hourly billing (9): Cherry Servers, Civo, Exoscale, Google Compute Engine, Kamatera, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud (OCI), OVHcloud and Scaleway. Here the break-even formula decides: past that point, their monthly plan costs less than their hourly rate.
To run these numbers with any provider’s own prices, cap or no cap, use the VPS cost calculator.
How to choose
- Short jobs. Tests, CI runs, demos, one-off conversions: a Quartz Q4 costs $0.03 an hour and nothing more. See hourly VPS.
- A day to a few weeks. The same meter: a weekend on a Q4 costs $1.44. See daily VPS for the 1-day, 3-day and 1-week prices of every plan.
- Servers that run around the clock. Websites, bots, monitoring, databases: a Quartz Q4 never costs more than $15.00 in a billing period. See monthly VPS.
- When you do not know how long you need it. You do not have to decide: deploy, and the bill follows the hours until the cap takes over. Delete the server when it is no longer needed and billing stops.
What else changes the result
A few of our rules matter most when you compare. A server that is stopped overnight still counts every hour. A ten-minute test is a partial hour, rounded to the nearest cent and never more than one hour’s price.
Billing unit
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.
Whole cents
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.
Stopped servers
A stopped server is still billed, because its vCPU, memory, disk and IP addresses stay reserved for you; only deleting the server stops billing.
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.
Every rule, with worked examples for credit, the cap and a low balance, is in how hourly VPS billing works at HourlyVPS.