Cheap compute options
A catalogue of dirt cheap compute available, for those that want that sort of thing
I was looking for an instance to run things and spend as little money as possible. This is a basic overview of specs for each provider’s cheapest instance. The best option, tragically, is OCI’s free tier.
Table created with the help of https://www.tablesgenerator.com/markdown_tables
| Provider | Instance name | $ / mo | vCPU | RAM (GB) | Storage (GB) | Network I/O (Gbps) | Included egress | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linode | Nanode 1 GB | 5 | 1 | 1 | 25 | 40/1 | 1TB | |
| DigitalOcean | Regular droplets | 4 | 1 | 0.5 | 10 | ? | 0.5TB | |
| Hetzner | CPX11 (US) | 5.59 | 2 | 2 | 40 | ? | 1TB | With IPv4 address |
| OVH | d2-2 | 6.57 | 1 | 2 | 25 | 0.1/0.1 | ? | |
| Oracle | VM.Standard.A1.Flex | 0 | 4 | 24 | 200 | 1/1 | ? | Unfortunately, Oracle Cloud is run by Oracle |
| AWS | t4g.nano (us-east-1) | 3.07 | 2 | 0.5 | 30 | 5 (up to) | ? | ARM, and burst-able instance type |
| Azure | b1ls | 3.80 | 1 | 0.5 | 4 | ? | ? |
Value proposition
Does not include Oracle
CPU
| Provider | Instance name | $ / mo | vCPU | $ / CPU |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWS | t4g.nano (us-east-1) | 3.07 | 2 | 1.535 |
| Hetzner | CPX11 (US) | 5.59 | 2 | 2.795 |
| Azure | b1ls | 3.80 | 1 | 3.80 |
| DigitalOcean | Regular droplets | 4 | 1 | 4.00 |
| Linode | Nanode 1 GB | 5 | 1 | 5.00 |
| OVH | d2-2 | 6.57 | 1 | 6.57 |
RAM
| Provider | Instance name | $ / mo | RAM (GB) | $ / RAM |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hetzner | CPX11 (US) | 5.59 | 2 | 2.795 |
| OVH | d2-2 | 6.57 | 2 | 3.285 |
| AWS | t4g.nano (us-east-1) | 3.07 | 0.5 | 6.14 |
| Linode | Nanode 1 GB | 5 | 1 | 5 |
| DigitalOcean | Basic Regular 512MB | 4 | 0.5 | 8 |
| OVH | d2-2 | 6.57 | 2 | 3.285 |
| Azure | b1ls | 6.14 | 0.5 | 12.28 |
Conclusion
Everyone on Twitter was right! Hetzner rocks.