Cloud vs VPS vs dedicated server sizing and cost calculator

How the sizing is worked out

The recommendation comes from a single workload index, and the index is shown on the result so nothing is hidden:

• Peak concurrent users drive it. Server load tracks how many people hit the site at the same time, not the monthly total. If you leave peak concurrency blank, we estimate it from your monthly visits using a conservative rule of thumb (roughly 60 peak concurrent users per 100k monthly visits) and tell you we did, so you can override it with a real number from your analytics.
• App type weights it. A cached brochure site costs a server far less per visitor than a WooCommerce checkout, and Magento or a database-heavy SaaS costs more again. The index multiplies peak concurrency by a disclosed weight for your stack.
• Database size and isolation bump the tier. A large database needs more storage and I/O than a small one, and strict compliance work usually wants a single-tenant server. These nudge the recommendation up a tier when they apply, and the result says why.
• The spec and cost band scale within the tier. vCPU and RAM scale with the index, storage scales with your database (plus room for the OS, logs, backups and a staging copy if you asked for one), and the monthly cost band scales with where your spec lands inside the tier.

The tiers run managed WordPress and cloud, then cloud VPS, then single-tenant cloud dedicated, then bare-metal dedicated. Every number here is a planning baseline built from list-price ballparks and disclosed multipliers, not a quote. Use it to frame the decision, then confirm current plan pricing and load-test your own app before you commit.

Hosting prices and promotions change often, and that quietly changes which provider wins a tier. Watch a provider's pricing page and we will email you the moment it moves, with a one-line note on what changed. One confirmation link, nothing else until you click it.

When each tier earns its place

Managed WordPress or cloud is the right call when you would rather not run a server at all: brochure sites, blogs and light stores where the host handling caching, backups and updates is worth more than raw control. A cloud VPS is the step up when a managed plan starts to throttle you and you want dedicated CPU and RAM with root access, without paying for a whole machine. Cloud dedicated (single-tenant) removes the noisy-neighbour risk and gives you the isolation that compliance work tends to require. Bare-metal dedicated is for heavy databases, high concurrency and demanding Magento or SaaS workloads that want the most consistent performance a single machine can give.

The line this calculator does not add: data egress

The recommended spec and monthly cost band above price the box: vCPU, RAM and storage. They do not price outbound data transfer, the bytes your server sends to visitors, which is billed on a separate meter and priced in opposite ways by the two big hosting families. Most VPS hosts bundle a large transfer allowance into each plan and charge a small overage only past it. On DigitalOcean the included outbound transfer starts at 500 GB a month and scales with the plan, pooled across your droplets, with inbound free and overage at 1 cent per GB; Hetzner bundles 20 TB on its EU plans (only 1 TB on its US plans) at around 1 euro per terabyte over; Vultr includes roughly 2 to 6 TB per plan. Most sites never touch those caps. The hyperscalers do the reverse and meter egress per gigabyte from the first bytes past a small free tier: AWS gives 100 GB a month free, then about 9 cents per GB for the first 10 TB in its US regions, with inbound free (checked June 2026, prices move). At scale that one line can rival the compute bill.

This is why a cheap-looking instance and a pay-per-GB cloud can swap places the moment traffic moves: a viral spike, large downloads or video, a chatty API, or cross-region backups all push egress, and the cost scales with usage, not the tier you picked, so it stays invisible until the busy week. Put a CDN in front so cached responses serve repeat traffic and origin egress drops, and price the transfer model before you commit. The companion article on whether you are overpaying for your server works the egress line through in full.

Who this is for

Founders and developers deciding where to host next: someone whose shared plan buckles during a sale, an agency standardising client infrastructure, or a team weighing whether a database-heavy app has outgrown a VPS. If you would rather hand the whole thing off, building and running fast, right-sized sites is exactly what Mue does.

The numbers here are a starting point, not a guarantee. A real workload has spikes, background jobs and caching behaviour a calculator cannot see, so treat the spec as a sensible baseline to test against, not a final order.

Server sizing questions, answered