# Contabo review (2026): is it worth $5.28 a month? > Low-priced VPS and dedicated servers from a German host Checked Nov 12, 2026 ยท graded Nov 12, 2026 by ToolGPA. Contabo, founded in Munich in 2003, rents Cloud VPS plans with unlimited traffic, plus Performance, Storage, Windows and GPU VPS variants and dedicated servers. The entry Cloud VPS 4 gives 4 vCPU cores and 8GB RAM from $5.28 a month excluding VAT on a 24-month subscription. - **Category:** Web Hosting - **Made by:** Contabo GmbH (since 2003) - **Website:** https://contabo.com - **Runs on:** Web - **Who should skip it:** Skip it if you can't look after a Linux server, as support covers the VPS only. - **Facts last checked:** Nov 12, 2026 ## Pricing As of Nov 12, 2026, Contabo is a paid product, starting at $5.28 per month excl. VAT, 24-month subscription (Cloud VPS 4). - **Pricing model:** Paid - **Free plan:** None. - **Free trial:** None listed. | Plan | Price | What you get | | --- | --- | --- | | Cloud VPS 4 | $5.28 per month excl. VAT, 24-month term; $6.60 incl. tax | 4 vCPU cores, 8GB RAM, 100GB SSD, 1 snapshot, 200 Mbit/s port and unlimited traffic. A setup fee applies on monthly contracts. | | Cloud VPS 6 | $7.20 per month excl. VAT, 24-month term; $9.00 incl. tax | 6 vCPU cores, 12GB RAM, 200GB SSD or 100GB NVMe, 2 snapshots, 300 Mbit/s port and unlimited traffic. | | Cloud VPS 8 | $13.44 per month excl. VAT, 24-month term; $16.80 incl. tax | 8 vCPU cores, 24GB RAM, 300GB SSD or 150GB NVMe, 3 snapshots, 600 Mbit/s port and unlimited traffic. | | Cloud VPS 12 | $24.00 per month excl. VAT, 24-month term; $30.00 incl. tax | 12 vCPU cores, 48GB RAM, 400GB SSD or 200GB NVMe, 3 snapshots, 800 Mbit/s port and unlimited traffic. | | Cloud VPS 16 | $35.60 per month excl. VAT, 24-month term; $44.50 incl. tax | 16 vCPU cores, 64GB RAM, 500GB SSD or 250GB NVMe, 3 snapshots, 1 Gbit/s port and unlimited traffic. | | Cloud VPS 18 | $47.04 per month excl. VAT, 24-month term; $58.80 incl. tax | 18 vCPU cores, 96GB RAM, 600GB SSD or 300GB NVMe, 3 snapshots, 1 Gbit/s port and unlimited traffic. | Read from https://contabo.com/en/vps/ on Nov 12, 2026. Prices change, so confirm with Contabo before buying. ## Key features - **Cloud VPS range:** Six Cloud VPS sizes from 4 to 18 vCPU cores and 8GB to 96GB RAM, each with unlimited, unmetered incoming traffic and fair-usage outgoing traffic. - **Other VPS lines:** Performance VPS on AMD EPYC CPUs with NVMe storage, Max Performance, Storage VPS, Windows VPS and GPU VPS are sold alongside. - **Plesk and cPanel VPS:** Plesk and cPanel VPS plans are listed, and Plesk is free for the first month on Cloud VPS, Cloud VDS, Storage VPS and dedicated servers. - **Longer terms for lower prices:** Prices shown are the effective monthly rate for a 24-month subscription, and no setup fee applies on longer contracts. - **Snapshots and storage extension:** Each Cloud VPS includes snapshots, and Core VPS plans can double their storage through Storage Extension. - **Many locations:** The product page describes hosting across the EU, US, UK, Australia and Asia. ## Good for - Buyers who want a lot of RAM and storage for little money - Hobby servers, staging environments and CI runners - Anyone comfortable committing for 24 months for the lowest rate ## Worth knowing - The price shown is the monthly rate on a 24-month subscription; the page does not show the price after the term or a plain monthly price. - A one-time setup fee applies to new Cloud VPS 4 orders on monthly contracts. - Outgoing traffic is unlimited under a fair usage policy, and Contabo may throttle servers with very high or disruptive usage. - Contabo supports the VPS itself, not the software installed on it; maintenance and troubleshooting are the user's job. ## ToolGPA grades **GPA: 1.6 out of 4**, graded Nov 12, 2026. Contabo rents VPS and dedicated servers with a lot of RAM and disk for the price. The lowest rate needs a 24-month commitment, there's a setup fee on monthly contracts, and you look after the server yourself. - **Value for money: B.** $5.28 a month excl. VAT on a 24-month term for 4 vCPU, 8GB RAM and 100GB, at the edge of the cheaper quarter ($5.28). Terms differ and the price after the term isn't shown. - **Free plan and trial: F.** No free plan and no trial on record; every plan is paid from the first day. - **Features: C.** VPS sizes from 4 to 18 vCPU, snapshots, Plesk and cPanel options, many locations. The gap: it's a bare server, and Contabo supports the VPS, not the software on it. - **Ease of use: D.** No rating on record. An unmanaged VPS means installing, patching and troubleshooting it yourself. - **Platforms and integrations: C.** Web panel only, with no integrations listed. These are ToolGPA's own grades. Graded from this listing, whose facts were read from Contabo's own pages on 12 November 2026. Not based on using the product, and shorter than our full reviews. The pricing page showed no figures to our page reader, so the prices stand on the listing. ## Where it stands among web hosts - Contabo's GPA of 1.6 is higher than 1 of the 54 other web hosts we grade, and level with 7. - It stands best on value for money (B, above 27 of 54) and worst on free plan and trial (F, above 0). - Its paid plans start at $5.28 a month, against a middle price of $9 for the category: 23 of the 52 others that charge start lower. - On features, ease of use and platforms it scores 1.7 out of 4. 23 tools score higher and cost less. The category's chart of price against score: https://toolgpa.com/charts/web-hosting ## Keep it, or make your own? **You could make this.** What Contabo does at its core is plain work, and that is the kind of thing an AI app builder makes well. You would give up 2 things, listed below, and little else. It costs $63.36 a year. An AI app builder starts at about $20 a month on our listings, and you only need it while you build. - You could make: It runs in a browser, which is where something home-made would run too. - You could not: An API that other software can build on. - You could not: AI features, unless you pay a model provider for each request yourself. A judgement by ToolGPA from this listing, by rules that are the same for every tool. Nothing was built to test it. **Tags:** Public API, AI features ## Alternatives - [Hetzner](https://toolgpa.com/tools/hetzner): German hosting: web hosting, cloud servers and dedicated servers. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/contabo-vs-hetzner) - [OVHcloud](https://toolgpa.com/tools/ovhcloud): VPS, public cloud, web hosting and dedicated servers. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/contabo-vs-ovhcloud) - [Vultr](https://toolgpa.com/tools/vultr): Cloud servers, bare metal and GPUs billed hourly or monthly. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/contabo-vs-vultr) - [DigitalOcean](https://toolgpa.com/tools/digitalocean): Cloud servers, app hosting and managed databases for developers. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/contabo-vs-digitalocean) - [Akamai Linode](https://toolgpa.com/tools/linode): Linux virtual servers from $5 a month on Akamai Cloud. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/contabo-vs-linode) ## Sources The prices, plans, platforms and features above were read from these pages on Nov 12, 2026: - https://contabo.com/en/vps/ - https://contabo.com/en/about-us/ Page: https://toolgpa.com/tools/contabo Listed by ToolGPA (toolgpa.com).