Choosing between hourly vs monthly VPS billing looks like a pricing detail, but it changes how you should run your servers. Hourly billing rewards you for deleting what you do not need. Monthly, or more precisely prepaid term billing, rewards you for knowing what you will need. Pick the wrong one and you either pay for idle servers or overpay for flexibility you never use. This article explains exactly how each model is charged on Cloudj, where the traffic allowance changes the answer, and how to work out the cheaper option for your own workload with the live numbers from the console.
How the two billing models work
Hourly billing charges your account balance for each hour the server exists. The important word is exists. A stopped server is still charged, because its disk and IP address stay reserved for you. The only way to stop charges on an hourly server is to delete it. Traffic on hourly servers is charged per GB actually used.
Prepaid term billing lets you pay for 1, 3, 6 or 12 months up front, with optional auto-renew from your balance. Deleting a prepaid server before the term ends does not refund the remaining time. Monthly plans include a traffic allowance that depends on the location, so normal usage does not add a separate bandwidth line.
| Hourly | Prepaid term (1, 3, 6 or 12 months) | |
|---|---|---|
| How you pay | Deducted from balance by the hour | Paid up front for the term |
| When charges stop | When you delete the server | At the end of the term, unless auto-renew is on |
| Stopped server | Still charged | Already paid for the term |
| Deleting early | Charges stop when deleted | No refund for the rest of the term |
| Traffic | Charged per GB used | Allowance included, by location |
| Commitment | None beyond the hours used | The term you choose |
| Best for | Tests, CI, short projects, unknown sizing | Production that runs all month |
Traffic changes the maths
Most comparisons of hourly vs monthly VPS pricing look only at the compute rate. That misses the second line on the bill. On Cloudj, monthly plans include this traffic per month:
| Location | Included traffic on monthly plans |
|---|---|
| Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia | 1 TB |
| Germany, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Romania, United States, Canada, Israel | 5 TB |
On an hourly server the same traffic is metered per GB. For a quiet staging box that sends a few gigabytes, metered traffic is small. For a download mirror, a media-heavy site, a VPN exit node or a scraper pulling large pages all day, it can become the bigger part of the bill. If your workload moves a lot of data and runs all month, the included allowance on a term plan is often the deciding factor.
A simple worksheet to compare costs
Open the console, pick your location and size, and note three numbers: the hourly rate, the per-GB traffic rate for hourly servers, and the price of the term you are considering. Then estimate two things about your workload: how many hours per month the server will exist, and how many GB it will send.
The comparison is plain arithmetic:
# Replace the placeholders with the live numbers from the console
HOURLY_RATE=... # per hour, from the console
GB_RATE=... # per GB on hourly servers
HOURS_EXISTING=... # hours the server exists this month (not hours running)
GB_USED=... # expected outbound traffic in GB
TERM_PRICE=... # price of the prepaid term
TERM_MONTHS=... # 1, 3, 6 or 12
echo "hourly per month: $(echo "$HOURLY_RATE*$HOURS_EXISTING + $GB_RATE*$GB_USED" | bc)"
echo "term per month: $(echo "$TERM_PRICE/$TERM_MONTHS" | bc -l)"Two rules keep the estimate honest. First, count hours the server exists, not hours it does useful work; a server you forget to delete keeps billing. Second, if your traffic estimate goes over the included allowance of a term plan, read the plan details in the console before you compare, or pick a location with a larger allowance. We do not quote numbers in this article because prices change; see live prices on the pricing page.
Hourly vs monthly VPS by workload
Usually hourly
- CI runners and build machines that you create for a pipeline and delete after. See our guide to a self-hosted GitHub Actions runner.
- Staging and review environments for a feature branch, deleted when merged. The staging server on an hourly VPS guide shows the workflow.
- Load tests, migrations and one-off data jobs where you need a large server for a few hours.
- Sizing experiments: deploy, measure, delete, and only then commit to a size.
Usually a prepaid term
- Production websites, APIs and databases that run all month.
- Bots, trading tools and monitoring that must be up continuously.
- Traffic-heavy services where the included allowance covers most of the data you send.
- Anything you would forget about, because a term ends on a known date and auto-renew is your choice.
If you are not sure a server will last the whole term, start it on hourly billing: deleting a prepaid server early does not refund the unused part of the term.
Common mistakes with hourly servers
- Stopping instead of deleting. Stopping frees nothing on the bill. If you want to keep the setup for later, save a custom image and then delete the server.
- Forgetting test servers. Review the server list in the console after each project. A name convention such as
tmp-for disposable servers makes this quick. - Ignoring traffic. A server that is cheap per hour can still move a lot of data. Check network metrics in the console during the first days.
- Letting the balance run low. Hourly billing draws from your balance continuously. Keep it topped up; Vietnamese customers can top up by bank transfer in VND.
The verdict
Choose hourly billing if the server lives for hours or days, you do not yet know the right size, you will delete it when the job ends, and it moves modest amounts of data.
Choose a prepaid term if the server runs all month, its size is settled, it sends a meaningful amount of traffic that the included allowance can cover, or you prefer a fixed cost you pay once per term.
Many teams use both: terms for production and hourly servers for everything temporary around it. Once billing is settled, the next questions are what kind of CPU to pick, covered in shared vs dedicated CPU, and whether you need a VPS at all, covered in VPS vs shared hosting and VPS vs dedicated server. For locations, start with the VPS locations guide.
FAQ
Does a stopped hourly VPS still cost money?
Yes. An hourly server is charged for as long as it exists, running or stopped, because the disk and IP stay reserved. Delete it to stop charges.
Is traffic included on hourly servers?
No. On hourly billing traffic is charged per GB used. Monthly plans include an allowance that depends on location, from 1 TB in Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong and Australia to 5 TB in Europe and North America.
Which term lengths are available?
You can prepay 1, 3, 6 or 12 months, and turn on auto-renew so the server renews from your balance.
How do I keep a server's setup without paying for it?
Save a custom image of the configured server, then delete the server. You can deploy a new one from that image later.
See the numbers for your setup
The quickest way to settle hourly vs monthly is to put real numbers into the worksheet. Choose a location on the cloud servers page, then open the Cloudj console, which shows the exact price of both options before you deploy.