Merchant shortlist
49 operators we are willing to list — most of them long-running, with a readable product line and a clear niche. Filter by what you want to run, your budget, the route you need and where the datacenter sits. We print a price only where we checked one ourselves; everything else gets you a link to the vendor's own page.
Budget bands are rough annual-cost tiers converted to RMB, for filtering only — not quotes: 1 USD ≈ CNY 6.68, 1 EUR ≈ CNY 5.98 (mid-rates of 2026-10-30). A ±5% rate move does not shift the band. The live price is whatever the vendor's site says today.
BandwagonHost
$49.99per quarterchecked 2026-10-25CN2 GIA · CN2 GT · Unicom 9929 · Japan SoftBank
A long-running favourite in the Chinese community and the reference for the CN2 GIA series. Good panel, direct migration between datacenters, and retired plans occasionally command a premium second-hand — which means people do value them.
DMIT
See live pricingThe official price page returned a bot check when we looked, so no numbers here.CN2 GIA · CN2 GT · Unicom 9929
Expensive, but honestly so. The Premium line is positioned around a maxed-out return path, with lower latency in Hong Kong and Japan. Suited to anyone treating a VPS as long-term infrastructure.
BandwagonHost Osaka (SoftBank)
See live pricingSame operator, Osaka location. Prices are in the BandwagonHost entry above.Japan SoftBank
The same operator's Osaka location; the official catalogue states "Softbank IP transit 2.5 Gbps". Low latency across all three carriers, especially comfortable for Unicom.
GigsGigsCloud
See live pricingThe official price page returned a bot check when we looked, so no numbers here.Mobile CMI
An Asia specialist: CMI in Hong Kong and Singapore is Mobile's best-value path. Traffic allowances are modest, which suits light use.
RackNerd
See live pricingThe official price page returned a bot check when we looked, so no numbers here. Their promo stock turns over fast, so the live page is the only meaningful one.163 Backbone
The byword for cheap and generous; a Black Friday annual plan is the classic first box for learning. The route is ordinary 163 — do not treat it as your peak-hour workhorse.
CloudCone
See live pricingThe homepage does not list prices; you have to open the product pages. No numbers here.163 Backbone
Same tier as RackNerd, Los Angeles locations, frequent flash sales. Fine for learning, simple sites and a spare machine. They run a public affiliate programme and publish API docs.
Vultr
See live pricingThe official pricing page returned a bot check when we looked, so no numbers here.163 Backbone
A large provider billing by the hour, create and destroy at will, many locations worldwide. The safe default for sites and throwaway tests; expect an ordinary route.
Tencent Cloud Lighthouse
¥45per month, entry plan (¥459/yr)checked 2026-10-30The entry plan: 2 vCPU, 2 GB, a 40 GB SSD, 3 Mbps and a 200 GB monthly traffic bundle, at ¥459 a year (85% of the monthly rate). Bandwidth and traffic come bundled; overage follows the vendor's own rules.Domestic Hosting · Ordinary International Transit
Tencent's Lighthouse. The official FAQ lists the regions: five mainland cities, Hong Kong, and overseas nodes in Singapore, Silicon Valley, Tokyo, Frankfurt, Seoul and more. Bandwidth and traffic come bundled, which is enough for a small site. Mainland locations require ICP filing.
Alibaba Cloud Simple Application Server
See live pricingWhen we checked, the pricing block on the product page was rendered asynchronously and the official calculator needs JavaScript to produce a number — so no price here.Domestic Hosting · Ordinary International Transit
Alibaba's Simple Application Server is sold as a bundle with annual or monthly billing only. There is also an "international" variant, which the page describes as using BGP_NCO routing — that one is meant for serving overseas users from China, not for serving mainland users from abroad. The direction is easy to get backwards.
HostHatch
See live pricingWe did not get a price page from the official site, so no numbers here.163 Backbone
The large-disk specialist: promotional plans reach absurd unit prices. Keep a second copy of anything important off-site — a promo box is not a safe.
RainYun
See live pricingThe official billing page only lists disk and backup unit prices (SSD at ¥0.4/G/month, backups ¥0.1/G/month). The full machine price only appears on the logged-in purchase page, so no numbers here.Domestic Hosting · China-optimised, Backbone Unstated · Japan SoftBank
One of the few Chinese providers that puts "optimised" into the product names themselves: separate Hong Kong lines for mixed and direct three-carrier traffic, SoftBank bandwidth in Tokyo, Unicom bandwidth and a dual-line option in Los Angeles. It says it optimises for China but never says over which backbone, so it sits under "China-optimised, backbone unstated" rather than CN2 GIA. Its documentation also states that Alipay top-ups are accepted, which is unusual among vendors this size.
HUAWEI CLOUD Flexus Application Server L Instance
See live pricingWhen we checked, the pricing block and region list on the product page were rendered asynchronously and the support site returned a security-verification page — so we have no price, no region list and no payment information, and print no numbers here.Domestic Hosting
Huawei Cloud's lightweight server, the L instance, positioned as "ready in minutes, easy to run" for small sites, web apps, blogs and cloud development environments. Mind the naming: Flexus is a family, and the L instance and X instance are different products.
China Telecom Cloud Application Cloud Server
¥94per month, CPU and memory onlychecked 2026-10-30The vendor's own wording: "the table above covers only CPU and memory; the actual console packages also include the system disk, bandwidth and other charges." CPU and memory for a 2C4G box is ¥94 per month, with disk and bandwidth on top. Annual terms step down: 1 year at 80%, 2 years at 78%, 3 years at 75%.Domestic Hosting
China Telecom's own cloud. The product page calls it an Application Cloud Server, the API docs call it a light-type cloud host — same product, two names, so search for both. It is one of the few vendors here that publishes the price table directly in its documentation, but the table covers CPU and memory only; disk and bandwidth are extra.
China Mobile Cloud
See live pricingThe product, pricing and help pages are all JavaScript-rendered single-page apps; without a browser executing scripts there is no text to read, so the price, the regions and the payment methods are all unverified and no numbers are printed here.Domestic Hosting
China Mobile's cloud. The homepage confirms it sells cloud hosts and servers, but the product and pricing pages cannot be read, so this entry is closer to a "needs a manual check" note. If you are about to order, open the site yourself.
JD Cloud Lightweight Virtual Machine
¥43.56per month, entry planchecked 2026-10-30The entry plan: 2 vCPU, 2 GB, a 40 GB system disk, 3 Mbps and a 200 GB monthly traffic bundle at ¥43.56 per month. The page also quotes a range of ¥38.11–1435.5 per month, with traffic bundles ranging from 1 Mbps / 70 GB up to 35 Mbps / 8000 GB.Domestic Hosting
JD Cloud's lightweight host, with plan prices printed straight on the product page. It also carries a comparison table of lightweight application servers versus traditional VPS, which helps if that is the distinction you are trying to pin down — this site has a guide on the same trade-off too.
UCloud
See live pricingThe homepage says "light application cloud host, from ¥57", but the page does not make clear whether that is per month or per year, so no number is printed here. A separate promo price of ¥7.2 per month on the Kuaijie line is a promotional rate and does not count.Domestic Hosting · China-optimised, Backbone Unstated
UCloud, one of the few listed Chinese cloud providers (stock code 688158). Hong Kong has its own promotion area described as "optimised routing back to the mainland, BGP smart routing" — again without naming a backbone, so it sits under "China-optimised, backbone unstated". The site claims 31 nodes worldwide.
Baidu AI Cloud Lightweight Application Server
¥130per month, 8.3x off annuallychecked 2026-10-30The page reads "from ¥130 per month" and "8.3x off for one year", for the standard type of 2 vCPU, 4 GB, an 80 GB SSD and 6 Mbps. The same page also shows a first-purchase price of ¥156 for a year, marked "first purchase only, 1x off for a limited time, one per customer" — that is a first-purchase rate, not the standing one.Domestic Hosting
Baidu's lightweight application server: the standard type is 2 vCPU, 4 GB, an 80 GB SSD and 6 Mbps. Its page carries the same kind of lightweight-versus-traditional-VPS comparison table, and the price band runs from ¥130 per month up to a ¥1560 first-purchase annual rate. The pricing block is permanently covered in promotion labels — check whether you are looking at the standing price or the first-purchase one.
GreenCloudVPS
$6per month, Budget KVM VPSchecked 2026-10-30Listed prices: Budget KVM VPS, Ryzen VPS and 10Gbps VPS all $6 per month; EPYC VDS $10; Storage VPS $12. The China-optimised CN Premium Optimized line — Tokyo on CN2 GIA / CU Premium / CMIN2, Singapore on CN2 GIA / CU Premium / CMI — shows "0 Available" in the client store. That is sold out, not discontinued.CN2 GIA · Unicom 9929 · Mobile CMI
The datacenter count is almost absurd — the official data-center table lists thirty of them, from Los Angeles, San Jose and Phoenix to Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong and Hanoi. What actually matters is not the count but the CN Premium Optimized line: Tokyo splits into CN2 GIA, Unicom premium and CMIN2, while Singapore runs CN2 GIA, Unicom premium and CMI. The catch is that line is usually sold out. The client area has a Chinese interface.
HostDare
$40.99per year, cheapest CN2 GIA NVMe KVM VPSchecked 2026-10-30The homepage price card says $7.99 and the banner says "Starting at $12.99/month", while the CN2 GIA page's cheapest tier is $40.99 per year — three numbers with different scopes, not comparable. This entry uses the one whose billing period is stated. The payment-methods page is an image, so whether Alipay is accepted could not be read.CN2 GIA
A long-running vendor built around CN2 GIA, with a Los Angeles datacenter. The official page reads "CN2 GIA, CU, CM optimized network" — three carriers optimised, but not which backbone — so the CN2 GIA tag comes from the product family being named that way rather than from the route description. There is also a Japan location. The affiliate page says "Up to 15% per sale".
LightNode
$7.70per monthchecked 2026-10-30The same page carries three figures: the title says $7.71/mo, the FAQ and the structured data say $7.70/mo, and the Chinese page shows $8.7 / $10 / $12. This entry uses $7.70. The site advertises no China-optimised routing, so it sits under ordinary international transit.Ordinary International Transit
Cloud servers billed by the hour, with over forty cities in the site navigation — Hong Kong, Taipei, Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, Silicon Valley, Toronto, London, Frankfurt and Marseille among them. The density of Asian locations is its real selling point. There is a separate Chinese site, and the official page states that Alipay, UnionPay and WeChat Pay are accepted. Nothing on the site mentions China-optimised routing, so do not buy it expecting a low-latency Hong Kong route.
V.PS
€6.95per month, Cloud / Storage KVM VPSchecked 2026-10-30The pricing page lists Cloud and Storage KVM VPS at €6.95/mo, Edge at €8.95, Performance at €9.95, Mini at €39.95/yr and Nano at €9.95/yr. The Performance line is described as a "guaranteed premium network for production", but no CN2, 9929 or CMIN2 appears anywhere on the site, so it is not filed under China-optimised routes.Ordinary International Transit
An xTom brand from Estonia, eleven cities and six product families, with the pricing page noting "All prices in EUR". What stands out is the payment list: "For some countries, we support local payment methods like Alipay" — unusual among European vendors. There is a referral programme, with its entry point hosted on the sister domain vps.hosting.
VMISS
See live pricingThe $5 / $8.5 / $16 figures on the marketing pages are web hosting plans — their feature list counts websites, not servers. The actual Cloud VPS pricing lives in the client store at app.vmiss.com, which returns a bot-check page, so no price here.Ordinary International Transit
A company based in Toronto, Canada. Its About page states it offers "high-performance cloud servers", and the legal site's navigation does list Cloud VPS, so the product is confirmed to exist. Price, datacenter cities, routing and payment methods all live behind a blocked client area, which makes this entry close to a note rather than a review.
Cloudie
$19.00per month, Bull VPS Serverchecked 2026-10-30Three Smart VPS tiers: Bull at $19.00 per month (2 vCPU, 4 GB, a 40 GB HDD and 3 TB of traffic), Horse at $29.00 and Leopard at $49.00. The marketing site is a Nuxt single-page app whose text only appears once JavaScript runs.Ordinary International Transit
A Hong Kong company whose default language is Simplified Chinese, with sixteen more offered on top. Locations include Hong Kong, Taipei, Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, Los Angeles, Washington, London and Frankfurt among sixteen cities. The pricing is steep — the cheapest Bull VPS is $19 per month, and while it comes with 3 TB of traffic, the bandwidth is 100 Mbps CDIA. No China-optimised routing is mentioned anywhere.
LisaHost
¥499per year (about ¥41 a month)checked 2026-10-30The page advertises "limited-time special, only ¥41 a month" with an annual payment of ¥499; monthly billing starts at ¥68. The two scopes differ, and whether the annual rate lasts needs a manual check. The product name says "9929 premium network" while the description says "international premium network" — those do not line up either.CN2 GIA · Unicom 9929 · 163 Backbone
A Chinese-community vendor known for its "US 9929 premium network" boxes, with a finely divided product line: 9929 premium with residential IPs, 4837 high-bandwidth, CERA DDoS-protected CN2 GIA with native IPs, and a Hong Kong line mixing CMI, CU2 and CN2. Beyond the US it runs Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, the UK, Germany, Korea and Vietnam — residential and native IPs are what set it apart. Ask for a test IP before you order.
RFCHost
$24.99from, billing period not statedchecked 2026-10-30The pricing block lists HK-CO-Mini at $24.99, HK-CO-Standard at $50.99 and HK-CO-Advanced at $76.99, but no billing period appears anywhere on the page, so no annual band can be derived. The routing label is the vendor's own "China Optimization", with no backbone named.China-optimised, Backbone Unstated · Ordinary International Transit
A Hong Kong company (Ju Link Tech Limited) with a deliberately spare navigation: Product, Pricing, Terms, Looking Glass Server. The Hong Kong node is explicitly labelled China Optimization and Tier 1 International Optimization, and there are further US, Japan and Singapore locations, though the US city is not named. Alipay, UnionPay and WeChat Pay are accepted. There is no Chinese version of the site.
AkileCloud
See live pricingThe plan page calls an api.akile.io endpoint that returns a Cloudflare bot-check page, so no price, region or spec could be retrieved.Ordinary International Transit
A Chinese site whose homepage title calls it a "high-bandwidth, streaming-unlock VPS", aimed at the streaming-unlock niche. But apart from that title, no body text is readable — the product pages, the terms and the API are all behind Cloudflare bot checks. This entry is a lead rather than a review: price and locations have to be dug out by hand.
ZgoCloud
$8.00from, Los Angeles Global, international routechecked 2026-10-30The cheapest is the Los Angeles Global VPS at $8.00, which the vendor explicitly labels "International network, not optimized for China" and which carries a no-refund policy. The China-optimised lines start at $18.00: Los Angeles Optimised reads GIA&9929&CMIN2, Frankfurt reads 9929 Advanced Routing, Hong Kong and Tokyo read China Optimised. The Osaka plans start at $16.00 and are stated as "IIJ, not optimized for China". No billing period appears on the page, so no annual band can be derived. The real site is zgovps.com (ZgoShop, Inc., running its own AS197767) — the domain zgo.cloud does not resolve at all.CN2 GIA · Unicom 9929 · Mobile CMI · Ordinary International Transit
One of the few vendors that puts the routing into the product name: the Los Angeles Optimised model reads "GIA&9929&CMIN2, China Premium Optimised", Frankfurt reads "9929 Advanced Network Routing" and Hong Kong reads "BGP Network, China Optimised". It also runs its own network, AS197767, with direct connections to Telecom CN2 and Unicom 9929. In the other direction, the Osaka model states "International network & IIJ, not optimized for China" — a vendor willing to say which line is not for China is worth trusting.
BuyVM
$24.00per year, Dedicated KVM Slice 512checked 2026-10-31The KVM Dedicated Server Slices page reads "SLICE 512 ... $24.00 per year". That is the price of a carved-up KVM slice, not a spec sheet you can compare with an ordinary VPS. The FAQ lists Las Vegas, New York and Roost, Luxembourg, while the client-area store menu has since added Miami and Switzerland — the site has not caught up. There is no official payment-methods page (the wiki topic does not exist and checkout only loads a Stripe gateway script), so Alipay is unverified rather than unsupported.Ordinary International Transit
Three product lines: Dedicated KVM Slices (one dedicated server carved into segments), KVM Storage VPS and Anycast VPS. The $24-a-year headline is the cost structure of a slice, not a spec sheet comparable with an ordinary VPS. Two things to weigh: there is no official payment-methods page — the wiki topic does not exist — so we cannot confirm Alipay; and the datacenter list on the site no longer matches the client-area store menu, which has added Miami and Switzerland.
VirMach
$1.50per month, Linux KVM VPSchecked 2026-10-31The product page reads "Starting at just $1.50/month", and the figure still stood when we re-read it on 2026-10-31. Payment methods are stated in the pricing-page FAQ: "We accept credit/debit cards, PayPal, Alipay, and cryptocurrencies through Coinbase." The homepage claims fourteen global datacenters while the datacenters page lists eight, so this entry uses eight.Ordinary International Transit
One of the few budget vendors here whose official pricing page names Alipay outright: "We accept credit/debit cards, PayPal, Alipay, and cryptocurrencies through Coinbase." Cheapness is the selling point, though the specs are modest, and the footprint runs to eight locations — Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, New York and Santa Clara. The homepage claims fourteen datacenters while its own datacenters page lists eight, which is worth noticing in itself.
Evohosts
€9.99per month, VPS Schecked 2026-10-31Four tiers on the VPS Server page: S €9.99, M €16.99, L €26.99 and XL €49.99, all monthly. The page says only "As soon as you make a successful payment via PayPal or Credit Card" — two payment methods, no dedicated payment page, no datacenter list. The site never states the virtualisation type, so KVM versus OpenVZ cannot be confirmed.Ordinary International Transit
The name first: evohost.com is now a parked domain for sale, not a host. The operating company is evohosts.net (with the s), self-described as hosting since 2003, based in Dubai and quoting in euros. Its VPS Server page has four tiers, but the site lists no datacenters, does not state the virtualisation type, and mentions only PayPal and credit cards. That thinness argues for asking for a test IP and a location before ordering.
ColoCrossing
$3.95per month, 1 GB VPSchecked 2026-10-31The VPS page reads "1 GB / 25 GB SSD / 1 vCPU / 20 TB / 1 GBPS / 1 IPv4 / $3.95 /mo". The datacenter list in the site footer names ten — Buffalo, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Dublin, New York, Atlanta, Seattle, San Jose, Toronto — more than the seven the order page offers. There is no official payment-methods page (/payment-methods/ is a soft 404), so Alipay can only be recorded as unverified.Ordinary International Transit
A US budget host whose common tier pairs 20 TB of traffic with a 1 Gbps port. The datacenter list in the site footer names ten, while the order page offers only some of them. The partner page states its terms outright — "Recurring commission on each sale" — one of the few here that says plainly what the affiliate deal is. With no payment-methods page on the site, Alipay has to be marked unverified.
HostSailor
$1.95per month, HDD Storage VPSchecked 2026-10-31The $1.95 entry is the HDD Storage VPS; the SSD and NVMe KVM line starts at $2.99 and $4.99. The Chinese site carries an Alipay icon in its payment-methods block (an image file, alipay.jpg — we downloaded and checked it ourselves on 2026-10-31, and it is the official Alipay logo), while the English payment-methods page lists only card and cryptocurrency icons and never mentions Alipay.Ordinary International Transit
Amsterdam, Bucharest and Los Angeles, selling shared hosting and KVM VPS side by side — searching for "HostSailor hosting" turns up both, so check which one you are buying. Payment is its strength: the Chinese site carries an Alipay icon in its payment block, while the English site does not mention Alipay at all. The Los Angeles datacenter page describes only ordinary transit for the three Chinese carriers (PCCW/BTN, Unicom, Telecom, Mobile) with no CN2 GIA, 9929 or CMIN2 tags, so this is ordinary international transit — not an optimised line.
HostKVM
$8.00per month, HKGO2-Bronzechecked 2026-10-31From the client-area cart: HKGO2-Bronze at $8.00 per month, with HKCO-Bronze at $12.00 and the mainland-oriented HKCP-Bronze at $20.00. The site advertises the HK China Premium line as a CN2 GIA / CMI / CUG three-carrier direct route into the mainland, and a separate HK China Optimized line as connecting via CTG. The site itself is in Traditional Chinese with no English version.CN2 GIA · Mobile CMI · Unicom CUG
A Traditional-Chinese site whose homepage states that PayPal, Alipay and credit card are accepted, running since 2013 on Kernel-based Virtual Machine. The routing is specific: the HK China Premium line is advertised as a CN2 GIA / CMI / CUG three-carrier direct route into the mainland — CUG, which normally means Unicom's global egress (AS10099) though the vendor does not name the segment, so confirm it on a traced return path — it has a route page of its own here — and a separate HK China Optimized line connects via CTG. Pricing splits three ways, with HKGO, HKCO and HKCP clearly priced apart. Ask for a test IP and trace the return path.
BlueVPS
$6.00per month, NVMe-bKVM 1024checked 2026-10-31Prices on the marketing site are JavaScript-rendered and cannot be read statically; the figures come from the product JSON inside the client-area store page: NVMe-bKVM 1024 at $6.00 a month. A bKVM 512 is listed at $11.00 per quarter, which works out cheaper per month — this entry uses the monthly figure. The site has a dedicated /vps-alipay page on paying by Alipay, and a Chinese version at bluevps.cn.Ordinary International Transit
A European operator with twenty locations, of which Hong Kong is the only one aimed at mainland users — and the site says so plainly: "For all those who want to do business with mainland China, BlueVPS offers VPS in Hong Kong, the closest location to mainland China." That is worth quoting verbatim, because it claims no China-optimised routing, and indeed none of CN2 GIA, 9929 or CMIN2 appears on the site. Payment is a plus, with a dedicated page on paying by Alipay.
Shinjiru
$9.90per month, OpenVZ Linux VPS Basic, 24-month termchecked 2026-10-31The lowest price comes from OpenVZ Linux VPS Basic on a 24-month term; the KVM-only Offshore VPS Basic starts at $11.90 a month on the same term, and CloudLinux VPS Edge at $37.90. The payment page lists what is accepted in full: bank transfer, Bitcoin, PayPal, Western Union, Cashu, credit card, Payza, Perfect Money. Alipay is not among them.Ordinary International Transit
A long-running Japanese operator, self-described as founded in 2000 and built around offshore hosting: Malaysia, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Germany, Hong Kong, Singapore, Lithuania, Russia. Its payment page lists what it accepts thoroughly — bank transfer, Bitcoin, PayPal, Western Union, Cashu, credit card, Payza, Perfect Money — but not Alipay, so paying that way needs a different route. Its VPS pages do not list a Japan location, while the homepage claims eight overseas datacenters.
Hetzner
€5.99per month, CX23, excluding VATchecked 2026-10-31The European cloud page reads "CX23 … € 5.99 per month, excl. VAT", with an IPv6-only tier at €5.49 and €0.0096 per hour. On the day we checked, that tier was marked "not available" — a same-day stock state, not a standing fact. The site publishes no payment-methods list (the related FAQ link is a soft 404), and its English sitemap contains no partner, affiliate or referral page.Ordinary International Transit
A German operator with the most cloud-like footprint in this group — Falkenstein, Nuremberg and Helsinki in Europe, plus Ashburn, Hillsboro and Singapore in Asia-Pacific. The pricing page is understated: €5.99 a month, excluding VAT. For mainland users its boxes are ordinary international transit with no China-specific optimisation claimed; for latency, look to Hong Kong and Japan instead. The site publishes no payment-methods list, so Alipay can only be recorded as unverified.
OVHcloud
$4.54per month, VPS-1checked 2026-10-31The VPS page reads "VPS-1 From $4.54 /month". The page renders the currency by the visitor's location, so what we captured is the dollar price; the euro price is a separate figure. The official documentation lists only two payment method types: "Credit card" and "PayPal® account". partner.ovhcloud.com is a reseller portal, not a publisher affiliate programme.Ordinary International Transit
A French operator with 46 datacenters across nine countries — Sydney, Beauharnois, Toronto, Paris, Roubaix, Strasbourg, Frankfurt, Mumbai, Milan, Warsaw, Singapore, London, Hillsboro, Vint Hill — the widest reach in this group. VPS sizing runs to 8 vCores, 32 GB of RAM, 640 GB of NVMe and unmetered traffic. The documentation lists only credit card and PayPal, so the Alipay route is closed.
netcup
€8.26per month, VPS 500 G12.5, 12-month contractchecked 2026-10-31The site reads "12 months contract period, from monthly €8.26 €9.50 (incl. 19% VAT)" — a struck-through €9.50 against a contract rate that includes 19% VAT and commits you for twelve months. The datacenter list reads "Vienna (VIE) Nuremberg (NUE) Amsterdam (AMS) Singapore (SIN)", and the page notes that the general European pool cannot be pinned to a specific city. Payment methods: "bank transfer, PayPal, credit card and SEPA direct debit".Ordinary International Transit
A German operator whose vServer KVM range starts at 2 vCores and 4 GB. Datacenters sit in Vienna, Nuremberg, Amsterdam and Singapore; the general European pool cannot be pinned to a specific city — the site says your server "will be set up exclusively in a European data center, depending on available capacity". The quoted €8.26 is a tax-inclusive twelve-month contract rate against a struck-through €9.50, so the commitment is part of the comparison.
DigitalOcean
$4.00per month, Basic Dropletchecked 2026-10-31The Droplet pricing page reads "512 MiB 1 vCPU 500 GiB 10 GiB $0.00595 $ 4.00", with $0.00595 per hour on hourly billing. The documentation lists credit card, debit card, crypto wallet, a third party (PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay) or a bank account — no Alipay. The affiliate page states: "Earn 10% for every user you refer to DigitalOcean … you'll receive 10% commission each month, for an entire year".Ordinary International Transit
The best-documented of the group: regional availability, billing and payment methods are all spelled out, which matters to beginners more than the price does. The Basic Droplet is $4.00 a month for 512 MB, 1 vCPU, 10 GB of SSD and 500 GB of traffic. Mainland access is ordinary international transit. It is also the only entry here whose affiliate terms are published: "Earn 10% for every user you refer to DigitalOcean", paid monthly for a year through CJ.
Akamai Cloud (Linode)
$5.00per month, g6-nanode-1checked 2026-10-31The vendor's pricing pages now return 403 (both linode.com/pricing and akamai.com/cloud/pricing are edge-blocked), so the price comes from the official public API at api.linode.com/v4/linode/types: g6-nanode-1 at $5.00 a month and $0.0075 an hour, g6-standard-1 at $12.00. The brand has folded into Akamai; instances are still called Linodes and the shared line is now Essential Compute. The referral programme gives a new user $100 in credit and the referrer $25 — credit, not a cash commission.Ordinary International Transit
The name changed; the machines did not. linode.com's homepage now carries the Akamai brand, /pricing returns 403 outright, and prices had to come from the public API. The instances are still Linode's, with the shared line renamed Essential Compute. Thirty-three regions span the US coasts, Tokyo, Osaka, Singapore, Paris, Frankfurt, London, Toronto and Melbourne. A Chinese version of the site opens, but the company is still named Akamai in it — there is no official Chinese name.
Scaleway
€0.43per month, STARDUST1-Schecked 2026-10-31The page reads "STARDUST1-S 1 vCPU 1 GB 100 Mbps €0.0006 / HOUR ~€0.43 / MONTH" — the monthly figure is the site's own approximation. The same page lists DEV1-S at €6.55 and PLAY2-NANO at €20.10. Payment is credit card or SEPA direct debit; the docs state virtual and pre-paid cards are not accepted. The group also sells a separate line called Dedibox VPS (from €4.99 a month), which is not the same product as these Virtual Instances.Ordinary International Transit
A French operator with four availability zones — Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw and Milan, three AZs each — all in Europe. The entry tier, STARDUST1-S, works out at about €0.43 a month, the cheapest starting price in this group, but it is 1 vCPU and 1 GB and the monthly figure is the site's own approximation, tilde and all. Payment is credit card or SEPA direct debit; virtual and pre-paid cards are explicitly rejected.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)
$0per month, Always Free allowancechecked 2026-10-31The price list reads "Each paid tenancy gets the first 3,000 OCPU hours and 18,000 GB hours per month for free to create Ampere A1 Compute instances", plus "Start with a US$300 cloud credit. You'll have 30 days to use it". The hourly instance prices are rendered client-side — the static HTML carries only line-item names and units — so this entry quotes the free allowance and no paid unit prices. Everything beyond the allowance is metered: an allowance is not a bill.Ordinary International Transit
Forty-five commercial regions, each identifier checkable in the official documentation from af-casablanca-1 to us-sanjose-1. The free allowance is the real draw: Always Free grants 3,000 OCPU hours and 18,000 GB hours a month for Ampere A1 ARM instances, plus a 30-day US$300 credit. The company's Chinese-language site at oracle.com/cn refers to it by its Chinese name. No official payment-methods page could be found (/cloud/payment-methods/ is a 404), so Alipay is recorded as unverified.
Amazon Lightsail
$3.50per month, IPv6-only bundlechecked 2026-10-31The pricing page has two tables: the IPv6-only one starts at $3.50 a month (512 MB, 2 vCPUs, 20 GB SSD, 1 TB of traffic), while the same spec with a public IPv4 is $5.00; Windows starts at $9.50. Nineteen regions include Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore, and the page notes reduced traffic allowances in several of them. The China region and the international site are separate account systems with separate pricing — prices on one do not apply to the other.Ordinary International Transit
AWS's simplified line, with nineteen regions including Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore. The cheapest table is the IPv6-only bundle at $3.50 a month; the same spec with a public IPv4 is $5.00, and missing that distinction means an unreachable machine. Two things to keep in mind: the China region and the international site are separate account systems with separate pricing, and the payment-methods page the billing docs point to returns 403 on repost.aws, so we could not read the official wording and record Alipay as unverified.
Google Cloud
$0per month, Free Tier 1 e2-micro instancechecked 2026-10-31The site reads "Compute Engine Scalable, high-performance virtual machines. 1 e2-micro instance per month" and "$300 in free credit for new customers". Compute's hourly price table is JavaScript-rendered and the numbers cannot be read statically, so only the free allowance is quoted. The payment-method list covers credit card, debit card, bank account and Boleto — no Alipay. The affiliate programme runs through CJ, and the page mentions a dedicated offer worth $50 more than the standard $300 credit.Ordinary International Transit
The widest region list in this group: Hong Kong (asia-east2), Taiwan (asia-east1), Tokyo, Osaka, Seoul, Singapore, Mumbai, Jakarta and Bangkok, plus forty-odd zones across the Americas and Europe. The free allowance is small — a single e2-micro — so the real free value comes from the US$300 annual credit and per-machine discounts. There is no Chinese version of the site (cloud.google.com/zh-CN/ returns 404), and cloud.google.cn failed DNS resolution during our check, so confirm separately whether the China region is purchasable.
LayerStack
$7.00per month, Arm-Based Cloud Serverchecked 2026-10-31The English and Chinese pages disagree on the entry price, and we take the English one: the homepage lists Arm-Based Cloud Server at "Starting at US$7.00 /mth" and the general-purpose Cloud Server at "Starting at US$10.04 /mth", while the Chinese site shows the same Arm-Based tier at US$5.00 per month from, with a different SSD range (50GiB–400GiB against 100GiB–400GiB). The US$5.00 figure on the English homepage is in fact the China Direct CN2 Route add-on, not a machine price. The pricing table itself is JavaScript-loaded (the HTML says only "Loading"), so these figures come from the homepage.CN2 GIA · Ordinary International Transit
A Hong Kong-centred operator with datacenters in Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Taipei and Los Angeles. It sells "China Direct CN2 Route" as a product in its own right, and explains it properly: CN2 is AS4809, China Telecom's Next Generation Carrier Network, a premium direct route into China that comes in levels, of which CN2 GIA is the one carrying CN2 end to end. The direct routes are backed by China's three Tier-1 carriers. The payment page states that Alipay is supported and notes that AlipayHK is not. No KVM appears anywhere on the public site, so the virtualisation type is not disclosed.
Gullo's Hosting
$3.50per year, NAT IPv4 128 MB, banded up to $5 by locationchecked 2026-10-31The pricing table reads "NAT IPv4 128 MB 128 MB 1v Core 20 Ports + 1 SSH /80 2 GB 125 GB $3.5-$5 / Year", banded by location for the same spec. The payment note says "As soon as you make a successful payment via PayPal or Credit Card" — those two only. Mind the domain: the real site is hosting.gullo.me, while gullo.com belongs to an unrelated property developer, Gullo International Development Corporation.Ordinary International Transit
First, a common mix-up: gullo.com is a property developer and has nothing to do with hosting — the real site is hosting.gullo.me. Their mainstay is NAT VPS: a shared IPv4 with 20 ports plus SSH, starting at $3.5 a year, the cheapest machines in this group. NAT means your inbound address is shared with neighbours and ports have to be mapped one by one through forwarding rules, which is fine for a simple site but awkward if you want to run conventional hosting on it. Locations cover Bulgaria, Canada, Chicago, Germany, Finland, France, New York, the Netherlands, Poland and Singapore; there is no Hong Kong or Japan node, and the route is ordinary international transit.
Hostwinds
$10.99per month, Linux VPS 1 CPU / 1 GB / 30 GB SSD / 1 TBchecked 2026-10-31The price card shows two figures in the same block — "$ 10.99/mo" and "$ 7.14/mo" — with the second followed by "save up to 50% off the price of your server". The billing period behind that second figure is not stated, so this entry takes $10.99. The payment documentation reads "Major credit cards; PayPal; Alipay, where available; Cryptocurrency through Stripe Crypto", adding that Alipay availability "may depend on location and account settings". The datacenter page states the company runs three datacenters.Ordinary International Transit
A long-running US operator that states it runs three datacenters: Seattle, Dallas and Amsterdam. The spec is honest — 1 CPU, 1 GB of RAM, a 30 GB SSD and 1 TB of bandwidth, from $10.99 a month — with managed and unmanaged tiers both offered. The documentation puts Alipay in the payment-method list, but with "where available" attached, so whether a mainland account can use it is worth testing. The affiliate programme pays cash back: 10% recurring commission, a $10 bonus, a $100 payout minimum.
TMDHosting
$57.50per month, Managed cPanel 4GB, billed annuallychecked 2026-10-31The site reads "Prices for $69/mo Paid Monthly. $57.50/mo Paid Annually."; this entry takes the annual figure of $57.50. It covers Managed cPanel 4GB: 2 CPU cores, 4 GB of dedicated RAM, a 100 GB NVMe SSD and one dedicated IP. Note that every VPS here is fully managed with cPanel, which is a different thing from a bare KVM box you configure yourself. Payment methods appear only inside the logged-in portal and no public list mentions Alipay, so it is recorded as unverified.Ordinary International Transit
Two warnings first. The domain: tmdhost.com is now a 302 redirect, and the real site is tmdhosting.com. The affiliate programme: the site's own notice says "We will be discontinuing our affiliate service starting January 1st, 2026.", so this entry carries no affiliate link, and the vendor points publishers to the sister brand hosting.com instead. As a host it sells managed VPS across nine datacenters — Chicago, London, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Singapore, Sydney, Johannesburg, Mumbai, Santiago — and it is not cheap: Managed cPanel 4GB works out at $57.50 a month on annual billing. There is no Chinese version of the site.
hosting.com (formerly A2 Hosting)
See live pricingThe official VPS prices are loaded dynamically and cannot be read from the static HTML (the page carries only "Configure your VPS to fit your project" and the memory tiers). The $11.99, $10.99 and $2.00 figures on the homepage are first-year domain prices — the wording is "for the 1st year" — not VPS prices. Both /hosting/vps-hosting/managed/linux/pricing and /package-comparison/ return 404, so this entry carries no price.Ordinary International Transit
The brand has changed: a2hosting.com now 301s to hosting.com, whose footer reads "© 2026 hosting.com", and A2 Hosting survives only as a historic name. Managed and unmanaged VPS are both offered, and the site stresses that it runs on Proxmox rather than container virtualisation — "Unlike many low cost VPS providers who use container based virtualisation". Ten datacenters cover London, New York, US West, Canada, Singapore, Sydney, Mexico, Europe, Dubai and Mumbai. Prices need JavaScript to appear and we could not read them, so this entry gives you the link instead; the affiliate terms, by contrast, are plainly stated at 50% up to $400 per sale.
No vendor matches this combination — widen the budget by one step, or change the use case. Good routes are not cheap; waiting for Black Friday beats buying the wrong line.
BandwagonHost — verified price list
| Plan | Price | Per month | Product id |
|---|---|---|---|
| SPECIAL 20G KVM PROMO V5 — CN2 GIA ECOMMERCE 20 GB SSD · 1 GB RAM · 2 vCPU · 1 TB/mo · 2.5 Gbps · Los Angeles China Telecom IDC (CN2 GIA) / Japan Equinix OS1 (SoftBank transit) |
$49.99 quarterly | $16.66 | pid=87 |
| SPECIAL 40G KVM PROMO V5 — CN2 GIA ECOMMERCE 40 GB SSD · 2 GB RAM · 3 vCPU · 2 TB/mo · 2.5 Gbps · same as above |
$89.99 quarterly | $30.00 | pid=88 |
| SPECIAL 80G KVM PROMO V5 — CN2 GIA ECOMMERCE 80 GB SSD · 4 GB RAM · 4 vCPU · 3 TB/mo · 2.5 Gbps · same as above |
$149.99 quarterly | $50.00 | pid=89 |
| SPECIAL 160G KVM PROMO V5 — CN2 GIA ECOMMERCE 160 GB SSD · 8 GB RAM · 6 vCPU · 5 TB/mo · 5 Gbps · same as above |
$239.99 quarterly | $80.00 | pid=90 |
| SPECIAL 40G KVM PROMO V5 — OSAKA CN2 GIA 40 GB SSD · 2 GB RAM · 2 vCPU · 500 GB/mo · 1.5 Gbps · Osaka Equinix — outbound CN2 GIA / Unicom / Mobile, return path CN2 GIA |
$139.99 quarterly | $46.66 | pid=134 |
| SPECIAL 40G KVM PROMO V5 — HONG KONG CN2 GIA 40 GB SSD · 2 GB RAM · 2 vCPU · 500 GB/mo · 1 Gbps · Hong Kong Equinix HK2, direct Telecom CN2 GIA |
$249.99 quarterly | $83.33 | pid=95 |
| 20G KVM — PROMO VPS 20 GB RAID-10 SSD · 1 GB RAM · 2 vCPU · 1 TB/mo · 1 Gbps · multiple datacenters, free migration |
$49.99 annually | $4.17 | pid=44 |
| 80G KVM — PROMO VPS 80 GB RAID-10 SSD · 4 GB RAM · 4 vCPU · 3 TB/mo · 1 Gbps · multiple datacenters |
$199.99 annually | $16.67 | pid=46 |
Taken from bandwagonhost.com/cart.php on 2026-10-25. Stock and promotions change — confirm on the site before paying. The monthly figure divides the annual price by 12 and the quarterly price by 3.
How this list is built
- Only operators we could read on their own site — products and, where the page was readable, prices. 9 have a full page of their own because we checked them item by item; the other 40 sit on this list with the fields their official pages state.
- We only print prices we checked ourselves. If a vendor’s price page was not readable when we looked, you get a link to their live pricing instead of a number. A stale promotional price sends you to a checkout page where the price has changed — that costs trust. Leaving out one number costs nothing.
- No vendor logos, no trademarks. Every word on this page was written by us; the names and marks belong to their owners.
- We describe who a vendor suits — never who is "best". Each entry says what it is good for, at what budget, on what route. We do not rank vendors with superlatives: those claims have no basis behind them.
- No affiliate links on this page yet — every link is a plain link, and we earn nothing from it.
- We do not take payment to change a rating or a position.