Contabo VPS review: how much server you get, and the trade-offs

What Contabo offers

Contabo is a budget provider known for generous specs at low prices. Its Cloud VPS range steps up in vCPU, RAM and disk, and it also sells dedicated servers for bigger workloads. Both Linux and Windows are listed as options on the VPS plans.

The table below shows the current plans with their specs and prices. Contabo publishes prices in euros; where it does, our table converts them to dollars at the ECB reference rate, so small differences from the checkout are normal. Taxes depend on your country and are added at checkout.

Strengths

According to Contabo’s published plan details:

• Very high RAM and storage per euro, which is why the plans stand out in our server finder for memory-hungry projects
• Unlimited traffic under a fair-use policy, so you don’t pay per terabyte
• A wide footprint: Contabo lists 9 regions and 11 locations, including Germany, the UK, the US, Singapore, Japan, India and Australia
• Windows available as an operating system option on its VPS plans

Weaknesses and limits

The low price has trade-offs. The network port is capped: the entry plan is limited to 200 Mbit/s, and higher plans get faster ports step by step. For a website, a VPN or an automation server that is usually plenty; for large file downloads or streaming it can become the bottleneck.

The base Cloud VPS tiers use SSD rather than NVMe storage. For most web apps the difference is small, but disk-heavy databases feel it. Also note that Contabo quotes its VPS prices for the first 24 months; check what the plan costs after that, and the final price for your chosen term at checkout.

Who Contabo suits

Contabo fits projects that need a lot of memory more than raw disk speed: Docker stacks with several containers, n8n with many workflows, self-hosted tools, development servers, game servers, and CPU-based AI experiments with small models.

Our RAM rules of thumb: 4 GB is comfortable for WordPress, n8n or a small Docker stack, 8 GB or more suits shops and databases, and Minecraft needs 2–4 GB for up to 10 players or 8–16 GB for modpacks. Contabo’s entry plan already sits above the smallest sizes, so many projects fit on the first tier.

Because you get so much RAM, Contabo is also popular for running several small projects on one server, for example a few websites, a database and some bots side by side in Docker. That works well as long as you keep backups off the server: if one machine holds everything, one mistake can take everything down.

It is less suited to latency-sensitive setups that need the fastest disks, or to anyone who wants to pay by the hour and delete the server after a test.

Alternatives

If you prefer NVMe on every plan and don’t mind a long prepaid term, Hostinger is the common alternative; our Contabo vs Hostinger comparison goes through both side by side. OVHcloud is another European option with unlimited traffic and anti-DDoS included. For hourly billing and many locations, look at cloud providers such as Vultr or DigitalOcean.